Much of the time, we need reminding about things we basically know, but don’t always embrace in everyday life. Here’s a simple, but excellent example from Tony Robbins :
Think of a major mistake you've made in the last year... you can zero in on what you did wrong, or you can reframe the experience in a way that focuses beyond it to what you may have learned.... One of the keys to success is finding the most useful frame for any experience so you can turn it into something that works for you rather than against you."
From "Unlimited Power" by Tony Robbins - p.296-297
Wednesday 25 April 2012
Monday 23 April 2012
Tony Robbins is one of the world’s leading life coaches and writers on personal development. His practical insights into human nature, why we behave in certain ways and how to bring about lasting change are superbly explained in his monumental book “Awaken The Giant Within”. Make no mistake, this is about as far away from the realm of dreamy, psychobabble as you could wish to find.
Today, I want to focus on what Tony Robbins refers to as ‘the force that shapes your life’. (The passages below from Tony are in purple, with my own concluding comments after in black).
One thing is clear to me : human beings are not random creatures; everything we do, we do for a reason. We may not be aware of the reason consciously, but there is undoubtedly a single driving force behind all human behaviour. This force impacts every facet of our lives, from our relationships and finances to our bodies and brains.
What is this force that is controlling you now and will continue to do so for the rest of your life? PAIN and PLEASURE! Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.
Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about. Failure to understand this force dooms you to a future of living in reaction, like an animal or a machine. Perhaps this sounds like a complete oversimplification, but think about it. Why don’t you do some of the things you know you should do?
After all, what is procrastination? It’s when you know you should do something, but you still don’t do it. Why not? The answer is simple: at some level you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off. Yet, have you ever had the experience of putting something off for so long that suddenly you felt pressure to just do it, to get it done?
What happened? You changed what you linked pain and pleasure to. Suddenly, not taking action became more painful than putting it off.
Our behaviour, both conscious and unconscious, has been rigged by pain and pleasure from so many sources: childhood peers, mums and dads, teachers, coaches, movie and television heroes and the list goes on.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough that what you link pain and pleasure to will shape your destiny. As you review your own life, can you recall experiences that formed your neuro-associations and thus set in motion the chain of causes and effects that brought you to where you are today?
What meaning do you attach to things? If you’re single, do you look upon marriage wistfully as a joyous adventure with your life’s mate, or do you dread it as a heavy ball and chain? As you sit down to dinner tonight, do you consume food matter-of-factly as an opportunity to refuel your body, or do you devour it as your sole source of pleasure?
Though we’d like to deny it, the fact remains that what drives our behaviour is instinctive reaction to pain and pleasure, not intellectual calculation. We’re not driven so much by what we intellectually know, but rather what we’ve learned to link pain and pleasure to in our nervous systems.
It’s our neuro-associations - the associations we’ve established in our nervous systems - that determines what we’ll do. Although we’d like to believe it’s our intellect that really drives us, in most cases our emotions - the sensations that we link to our thoughts - are what truly drive us.
Many times we try to override the system. For a while we stick to a diet; we’ve finally pushed ourselves over the edge because we have so much pain. We will have solved the problem for the moment-but if we haven’t eliminated the cause of the problem, it will resurface.
Ultimately, in order for a change to last, we must link pain to our old behaviour, pleasure to our new behaviour and condition it until it’s consistent. Remember, we will all do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. Going on a diet and overriding our pain in the short term by pure willpower never lasts simply because we still link pain to giving up fattening foods.
For this change to be long-term, we’ve got to link pain to eating those foods so that we no longer even desire them and pleasure to eat more of the foods that nourish us. The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviours.
With smoking, for example, all you must do is link enough pain to smoking and enough pleasure to quitting. You have the ability to do this right now, but you might not exercise this capability because you’ve trained your body to link pleasure to smoking or you fear that stopping would be too painful. Yet, if you meet anyone who has stopped, you will find that this behaviour changed in one day; the day they truly changed what smoking meant to them.
In the extracts I selected, Tony Robbins mentioned dieting and stopping smoking as two areas where people frequently do the opposite of what their intellects determine they should do, but obviously there are numerous examples in all spheres of life.
I can illustrate what he’s talking about with my own experience of smoking. When I was a small boy, my uncle lived with us for a while. Both he and my dad were heavy smokers, favouring the strong, untipped brands that were prevalent at the time. My abiding memory was of both of them going through a prolonged coughing ritual each and every morning. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I just knew that this wasn’t good and was extremely unappealing.
In fact, all my associations with smoking at that time were negative. I found it bizarre and off-putting that both of them had dark brown stained fingers, I also intensely disliked the smoke that hurt my eyes and especially the all-pervading stench that seemed to accompany them everywhere, particularly from the ubiquitous full ashtrays.
Many youngsters start to smoke, because they think it makes them look cool or grown-up. I fortunately suffered no such delusions. I recall the Consulate commercials on TV using the slogan “Cool as a mountain stream”. Even as a small boy, I always found it baffling that the adjective ‘cool’ should be used to describe something that was basically on fire.
Needless to say, because of these early neuro-associations, I have never wanted to smoke and feel grateful that I have not jeopardised my health in that way. Mind you, before I sound too pious, I have developed other bad habits, where my experiences, perceptions and subsequent neuro-associations were different.
I consider Tony Robbins’ comments regarding pain and pleasure to be spot on and something that we should all consider, firstly to understand why we do things and secondly, to bring about the changes we desire.
Next time, we shall develop this further, looking at how we are affected by the advertising industry.
Today, I want to focus on what Tony Robbins refers to as ‘the force that shapes your life’. (The passages below from Tony are in purple, with my own concluding comments after in black).
One thing is clear to me : human beings are not random creatures; everything we do, we do for a reason. We may not be aware of the reason consciously, but there is undoubtedly a single driving force behind all human behaviour. This force impacts every facet of our lives, from our relationships and finances to our bodies and brains.
What is this force that is controlling you now and will continue to do so for the rest of your life? PAIN and PLEASURE! Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.
Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about. Failure to understand this force dooms you to a future of living in reaction, like an animal or a machine. Perhaps this sounds like a complete oversimplification, but think about it. Why don’t you do some of the things you know you should do?
After all, what is procrastination? It’s when you know you should do something, but you still don’t do it. Why not? The answer is simple: at some level you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off. Yet, have you ever had the experience of putting something off for so long that suddenly you felt pressure to just do it, to get it done?
What happened? You changed what you linked pain and pleasure to. Suddenly, not taking action became more painful than putting it off.
Our behaviour, both conscious and unconscious, has been rigged by pain and pleasure from so many sources: childhood peers, mums and dads, teachers, coaches, movie and television heroes and the list goes on.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough that what you link pain and pleasure to will shape your destiny. As you review your own life, can you recall experiences that formed your neuro-associations and thus set in motion the chain of causes and effects that brought you to where you are today?
What meaning do you attach to things? If you’re single, do you look upon marriage wistfully as a joyous adventure with your life’s mate, or do you dread it as a heavy ball and chain? As you sit down to dinner tonight, do you consume food matter-of-factly as an opportunity to refuel your body, or do you devour it as your sole source of pleasure?
Though we’d like to deny it, the fact remains that what drives our behaviour is instinctive reaction to pain and pleasure, not intellectual calculation. We’re not driven so much by what we intellectually know, but rather what we’ve learned to link pain and pleasure to in our nervous systems.
It’s our neuro-associations - the associations we’ve established in our nervous systems - that determines what we’ll do. Although we’d like to believe it’s our intellect that really drives us, in most cases our emotions - the sensations that we link to our thoughts - are what truly drive us.
Many times we try to override the system. For a while we stick to a diet; we’ve finally pushed ourselves over the edge because we have so much pain. We will have solved the problem for the moment-but if we haven’t eliminated the cause of the problem, it will resurface.
Ultimately, in order for a change to last, we must link pain to our old behaviour, pleasure to our new behaviour and condition it until it’s consistent. Remember, we will all do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. Going on a diet and overriding our pain in the short term by pure willpower never lasts simply because we still link pain to giving up fattening foods.
For this change to be long-term, we’ve got to link pain to eating those foods so that we no longer even desire them and pleasure to eat more of the foods that nourish us. The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviours.
With smoking, for example, all you must do is link enough pain to smoking and enough pleasure to quitting. You have the ability to do this right now, but you might not exercise this capability because you’ve trained your body to link pleasure to smoking or you fear that stopping would be too painful. Yet, if you meet anyone who has stopped, you will find that this behaviour changed in one day; the day they truly changed what smoking meant to them.
In the extracts I selected, Tony Robbins mentioned dieting and stopping smoking as two areas where people frequently do the opposite of what their intellects determine they should do, but obviously there are numerous examples in all spheres of life.
I can illustrate what he’s talking about with my own experience of smoking. When I was a small boy, my uncle lived with us for a while. Both he and my dad were heavy smokers, favouring the strong, untipped brands that were prevalent at the time. My abiding memory was of both of them going through a prolonged coughing ritual each and every morning. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I just knew that this wasn’t good and was extremely unappealing.
In fact, all my associations with smoking at that time were negative. I found it bizarre and off-putting that both of them had dark brown stained fingers, I also intensely disliked the smoke that hurt my eyes and especially the all-pervading stench that seemed to accompany them everywhere, particularly from the ubiquitous full ashtrays.
Many youngsters start to smoke, because they think it makes them look cool or grown-up. I fortunately suffered no such delusions. I recall the Consulate commercials on TV using the slogan “Cool as a mountain stream”. Even as a small boy, I always found it baffling that the adjective ‘cool’ should be used to describe something that was basically on fire.
Needless to say, because of these early neuro-associations, I have never wanted to smoke and feel grateful that I have not jeopardised my health in that way. Mind you, before I sound too pious, I have developed other bad habits, where my experiences, perceptions and subsequent neuro-associations were different.
I consider Tony Robbins’ comments regarding pain and pleasure to be spot on and something that we should all consider, firstly to understand why we do things and secondly, to bring about the changes we desire.
Next time, we shall develop this further, looking at how we are affected by the advertising industry.
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