clc day 1

Hi, this is Tony Robbins. Welcome to Creating Lasting Change. The seven master steps for maximum impact. Listen, I want to thank you for joining me in this program. You and I are about to begin a journey, and that journey is one of the most exciting and fascinating ones that I've experienced in my life. And that is the journey into the human psyche, into understanding what makes us do the things we do.

Why is it that human beings can be so generous and yet so mean? What is it that makes us say we want to do one thing and then live our life in a totally different way? What creates those internal conflicts, and how can we resolve them?

Even more importantly, I mean, why would a person like a guy like Wesley Autrey? Did you hear about this man? An African-American man is in the subway of New York with his four-year-old and six-year-old son and daughter when all of a sudden, beside him, he sees a young white college student who starts to go into seizures and worse, falls onto the subway track, smacking his head, bleeding. And as this is occurring, it's like a movie. The subway train is coming full speed. Instinctively, Wesley pushes his kids away and dives on top of this man to try to save his life. The train literally comes over the top of the two of them, missing Wesley's body and head by one inch. Think about it. What would make a man instantly be willing to sacrifice his life for a stranger?

And yet, contrast that with someone, somebody who takes pleasure in other people's pain, somebody who lives for torturing someone else physically, mentally, or emotionally, and feels a sense of joy or significance from that. And both types of people live in this world, don't they? Is it our background? Is it our environment that shapes that?

Well, if that were true, then you have to answer this question: How is it that someone who's been given everything, unbelievable support and love from their family, tremendous education, economic opportunity, how is it that people like that very often spend the rest of their life going in and out of rehab? And then you have people that have been given nothing, their dignity has been taken from them, they've been punished in ways that are abusive, inhuman, mentally, emotionally, physically, you name it. And very often, those people find a hunger inside, a drive to learn, to grow, to give, and they often become the people that inspire us most in the world. We know the stories of the Oprahs of the world. You know, she wasn't given things.

But see, the illusion that our society has tried to teach us is that we are our biography. Biography is destiny. That the past equals the future. But at any level of personal honesty, we know this isn't true. But today, that is the model that drives most people, right? "Why am I the way I am? Look at my past and blame something in the environment." But what that does is put us in a circular fashion of constantly finding something to blame. And ultimately, at some level, we blame ourselves, and nothing changes.

I'm here to say that the path to creating lasting change is a very different path than blame. And it's not finding the excuses, it's finding the decisions that you can change your life. It's being willing to identify the patterns that have stopped you. And with this three-decade obsession, I've had a unique privilege in that my laboratory for understanding human behavior has not been like a Freud, where I'm dealing with just one type of person, really mentally ill people. I've had that privilege as well, but I've dealt over the last 30 years with more than 3 million people from more than 100 countries in this world, from the most successful people you can imagine to the most challenged.

I've been in situations where I'm doing a seminar for a group of business executives, and all of a sudden, this person who's been in an institution starts splitting personalities, a multiple personality disorder person with 52 personalities. And Diane Sawyer is there filming my business environment, and I've got to figure out how to turn that person around right now. And I did. Took them a year to follow up to make sure that the changes lasted. And they interviewed the psychiatrist and said, "How is this possible?" And he says, "It's a miracle. I can't explain it to you." She never split again.

Or, you know, somebody who all of a sudden, their partner comes up and tells me, "My partner, I got his notebook here, and I read this, and I read the notes, and it's the person's plan for killing themself and their children." And I've got to do something right now to turn them around. Or in 9/11, when I'm in front of the room, and I've, all of a sudden, that morning, you know, we have at three o'clock in the morning, we're in Hawaii, and I get the phone call that the buildings have just been destroyed, and more than 4,000 people, they thought at that time, had died. And out of that, in my room, we have more than 200 New Yorkers and more than 45 people that lost their entire company, all their friends, their family, their loved ones. And we've got a group of people that are celebrating because they have a different belief structure, people thinking it's the end of the world, the end times have arrived. Watching people fight, celebrate, cry, and I've got to make a difference right now.

The tools I'm going to share with you in the next few days, I've used in practical ways and dramatic ways, and you can do them as well. I'm not special. But once you master these fundamental tools that we're going to learn in the next 10 days, you're going to be able to make changes you once thought were impossible. Make changes that you may have thought would take years, in a matter of hours, or certainly within a few days.

This process is called Human Needs Psychology. And when you understand it, your appreciation of human beings, both their challenging behaviors and their beautiful behaviors, will expand geometrically. And your ability to make a measurable difference is going to soar. And I can tell you, as a result of using these tools over the last, you know, 30 years of my life, certainly the last 15, I've become the guy that gets the call when the fire is burning. You know, when the athlete is burning down on national television and he can't get himself back on the court, and I've got to do something right now to produce the result. That's part of what's honed these skills. I had to produce results in the moment.

Or when the son or the daughter or the man or the woman is suicidal, and I've got to do something right now. And, you know, knock on wood, it's been 30 years, I've not lost one out of thousands of situations, not one suicide. That doesn't mean I won't someday, I probably will. It's human will, people can make their own choices. But by understanding these needs, I've been able to consistently produce this result.

I get the call, true story, when the President of the United States says, "You know, I'm going to be impeached in the morning, potentially. What do I do?" And my answer is, "Could you call me sooner?" You know, but you've got to do something. You've got to help. And you're not going to be perfect in every situation, but you can make a difference. You can make the shift occur.

Now, the beginning of my cycle of making these changes started out in an interesting way. I wasn't a traditional psychologist or psychiatrist. I'm still not. What I was, was a person that loved people. And I hated, as I do today, to see suffering. I mean, if you picked up this program and you want to make a difference for other people, you and I must have the same heart at some level. You probably can't stand to see people in pain, and you want to do something. You feel a need. You know, maybe it's, you know, somebody in your family, or maybe it's a total stranger. For me, honestly, it's just about anybody. So that made me have this obsession to look for tools that could make a difference.

And as I began to find some tools that were just evolving at that time, you know, cognitive therapy was expanding at that point, you know, Gestalt, you know, hypnosis, especially Ericksonian approaches, if you're familiar with that, Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP in the late '70s. These were things that were really growing. I was just a kid. But as I started to dig into these things and educate myself and find people that were the best in the world, this, I would be so disgusted with a traditional psychologist that might be hanging out with someone for seven years to deal with a phobia when other people were resolving it in 15, 20, 30 minutes or an hour and really having it work.

So, in the beginning, I honestly was somebody that attacked traditional psychologists. You know, because I was a young punk kid and I thought I had all the answers. But I was already helping people. In fact, I built my reputation by challenging traditional psychologists and psychiatrists on the radio live. I would say, "Listen, give me your worst patient, and I'll handle them in less than an hour. Give me somebody you worked on for years." That was my code, my approach. You know, obviously, it comes from wanting to try and prove yourself and being immature. Today, that's obviously changed. I've begun to appreciate all the different approaches to psychology and psychiatry. And while I may have preferences, I know everything adds value.

So, yes, I'm passionate about alternatives. And what I want you to see here is how effective they can be. And the reason I created this program is, you know, today I'm on a different side of the fence. Chloe Madanes is now my partner. Between us, we've trained now over a hundred thousand therapists around the world. Chloe is an extraordinary human being. Has helped me refine my material and teach it to therapists around the world. You know, after all, I've put out all these different programs over the years. And if you're familiar with my Inner Strength films, you know that we have made these films of the interventions I've done over the years, some of the most dramatic ones where I've taken on people that are in quote, "impossible situations," where nothing has worked for years, sometimes decades or more, where people are on the verge of suicide or their relationships about to end, and I've been able to step in and create the change.

And in these films, we follow up and show that it doesn't just change for a moment. This miraculous moment affects their psyche and affects them long-term. So we follow up with them two years later, three years later, five years later. And I'm really proud to tell you that the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Associations for Marriage and Family Therapy, all provide continued education credits for the required continued education of anyone who wants to be a therapist and stay licensed by studying my work. So we're really helping to make a difference in that area.

But I wanted to do something different here. What I want to do here is say, "Come with me behind the curtain." And let me show you not just what I did in that therapeutic intervention, but what do I do in all of them? What's the common thread between all of these situations that can help you make a change in situations that seem impossible or difficult? That's what Creating Lasting Change is about. And that can be learned through these seven master steps. Again, there's no perfection in anything. But my experience is that if you can use all these tools by understanding the person in more depth first, everything changes.

So, what do I have to bring to the table for you? Well, in the three decades that I've been studying human behavior, I haven't just looked at it from traditional training. You know, having been with three million people now from 100 countries, I've seen everything you can imagine. And I dealt with a kid in the South Bronx addicted to cocaine, and I've got to do something now to turn them around. And I dealt with a top CEO in Hollywood addicted to cocaine. You know, and they give me different reasons why they're there. One, because of his horrible childhood. The other, because of all the pressures of success. I mean, and I had to begin to say, "Wait a second here. All these human behaviors, there are patterns here." You know, the things that I've learned and heard about are wonderful, but let me witness what works. And I've had a chance to have a laboratory where I'm working with such a diverse population of people.

And in that process, I really became more the "why" guy. I've been asking the question for 30 years: "Why do people do what they do?" You know, people often come to me sometimes and say, "Well, you know, hi, you're Tony Robbins. Well, I don't, you know, I think what you do is really good, but I don't need any motivation." I'll say, "Well, that's great, because, you know, that's not what I teach." Now, look at me. I say, "I'm the 'why' guy." I said, "You clearly don't need any motivation. You've got all the motivation in the world. My question is, what is your motive for action? Why do you do what you do? Why is it that you keep saying that you want to do this, but you never do it? In fact, you say you don't want to do something else, like smoke or drink or overeat or sleep in, and yet you do it all the time. You're quite motivated to do the thing you say you don't want to do."

And what happens is, people usually get a little hooked. And I said, "I can tell you the answer. It's an understanding that comes from three things: understanding human needs, understanding human beliefs, and understanding the emotions that you've become habitually addicted to that you'll find a way to get to, no matter what." These three filters affect us.

Now, I'm going to come back to these, but let me say to you something maybe simpler first. If you want to know what I believe at the core level of what shapes shift behavior, it's not our background. It's not our conditioning. Those play a role. It's not our internal conflicts. It's not whether we have enough friendly people around us creating an environment to help us to change. It's not what drugs are surging through your body. All that's quite useful, don't get me wrong. It's not any of these things by itself. It's not just your meridians. It's your decisions.

My core belief is this: It's not our conditions, it's our decisions that shape our destiny. It's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. And you're making those decisions even right now while you're listening to me speak, either blow me off or you're saying, "Wow, this is some common sense. You've got me intrigued. I'm interested. Tell me more. I want to know how I can take what I see in the world that I don't like within myself or others, and I want to see how I can make a difference and change." If you're in that spot, we will continue. If not, you probably already hung up on me now, turn this darn thing off and moved on to some really cool music. All right, so let's move on.

So, what are the three decisions you're making every moment of your life? You're making it right now as I speak. Decision one, and this is what shapes your destiny: What you focus on. See, we feel whatever we focus on. Where focus goes, energy flows. Now, people develop patterns of what they focus on. Some people's patterns are to focus on the past. Some are on the future. Some is just on this moment. Whatever you focus on, you're going to change. If you started thinking about your life 10 years ago and some horrible event that occurred, and you put enough focus into it, are you going to start feeling it? You bet you are. It's going to be in your body right now. Your biochemistry will change, right? You can look at that from an energy psychology approach, you can look at it from a cognitive approach, you can look at it from a Freudian approach, but it's the same darn impact. Where focus goes, energy flows.

Or some people focus on the future. And the future is horrible. The future is great. But it's a pattern. Some people's focus is always on themselves. When people are depressed, they have to be selfish. Think about it. You can't get depressed when you're helping other people. The only way we get depressed is focus on what you're not accomplishing, what you're not achieving, what you're not experiencing, how you're not doing enough for your kids, how you haven't accomplished it, how you're not enough. It's a me, me, me, me, self approach that allows us to be depressed. So if you focus on yourself constantly, we can predict some of your challenges. If you're always focused on others, you're going to have a very different life. If you have the ability to flex between them, you're going to have a more balanced life, quite obviously. So the focus is a critical component.

And, you know, a simplistic example that I give in seminars all the time, so if you've heard this, I just give it to you again because it's such a simple and quick way of describing this. Have you ever had an experience where someone told you about a friend or a family member, and they told you that they did something, they said something to harm you, but you know this friend or family member is loyal to you and they love you? And so your first response is, "Oh, you must have misunderstood them, or you're wrong." But the person continues to tell you this story with passion and depth and intensity. And at one point, you start to go, "Wow, I can't believe they said this about me." Even though you weren't there, you know, this person seems to be so certain. You take it in. Now, when you focus on how they did you wrong, you immediately start having those feelings, don't you? Upset, or hurt, or angry, or frustrated. It just comes immediately in the body.

Now, what's interesting is, have you ever had this happen and got really upset with this family member or friend or what they did to you? And now you go to confront them, and you find out that the person was dead wrong, they made it up, or they misinterpreted what they told you. And then you felt like an idiot because you were so angry. See, focus equals feeling. So even if it's not true, it feels true to you. I always say to people, "Focus equals reality to the individual." If you focus on something and you think someone's late for dinner, and you focus on the fact they're late because you imagine them being in a car accident, you're going to feel it. It's going to be real to you. If you focus on they're not here for dinner because they're out screwing around with somebody else, it's going to be real to you. Focus equals reality to the individual, even though it's not reality in actuality. Focus equals feelings. And every moment, you're deciding what to focus on.

Now, the minute you focus on something, the second decision happens in milliseconds in your brain. It happens either consciously if you direct it, or unconsciously if you don't. And that decision is: What does this mean? What does this mean? Somebody comes in and they start to use a loud voice and tell you what you should do. Does that mean they hate you? Does that mean they've abused you? Does that mean they're having a tough day? See, whatever meaning you create is going to instantly change how you feel about something. And feelings are the fuel of life. Feelings, human emotion, is the basis of a quality life or a painful life. That's what we're really shifting more than anything else. That's what fuels our behavior, our actions. That's what gives us the experience of our lives that we enjoy, or that we dislike, or even hate.

If something happens and you focus on it, the question is, right now, is this the end or the beginning? If you decide in a millisecond, "This is the end," are you going to feel differently than if you think, "This is the beginning of a relationship"? Are you going to behave differently from that emotion? You bet you are. Or something that seems to happen in your life that's disappointing or frustrating or seemingly horrible, is it God punishing you, or God challenging you, or God rewarding you? Or does it have nothing to do with God? Is it karma? Is it, you know, "You deserve it"? If you think you deserve a pain or a problem, you're going to deal with it very differently than if you think, "This is me being challenged by God to become more, to give more, to create more." See, whatever meaning we give, that's what controls our life. Meaning is the answer.

You want to know who one of my great heroes is in life? Pick up a book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. You probably already have read it. It's an old classic. But if you haven't, you deserve to take it in. One of the great things that Viktor Frankl believed was that human beings always have free will. We can make a decision. We can choose to believe something new. We can choose to take another action. We can choose to feel the conflict inside of us and resolve that conflict, not just say, "I'm doomed for life by my biochemistry or by my childhood experiences." It's a brilliant man in this area.

See, if we want to shift our life, we've got to shift what we focus on consistently, the meaning we give it, and the actions we take. Are you going to pull back as your action, or move forward? Are you going to give up, or break through? It's all a decision. So my belief is these three decisions shape your destiny. If you look back on your life, you can look at moments in your life where if you made a different decision, your life would be totally different today, can't you? I mean, can you think of a situation where if you made a different decision, you'd be different physically, or mentally, or emotionally? You'd have a totally different relationship or career or life? We cannot deny, when we're honest with ourselves, that this power has been given to us by life, by God, by nature, whatever you want to call it. We have the power to decide anew. And in that free will, in that choice, in this moment, we can shift everything.

What Human Needs Psychology brings to the table, I believe, is an understanding of what's controlling these three decisions in you. Because it's great to say, "Yeah, I've got to focus on better things, and I've got to come up with better meanings, and I've got to take better actions, and that'll all create better results, and I'm going to feel better." But why do I make decisions the way I do? And how do I get to the controlling forces? What I've been passionately driven to find is what are the invisible forces that are controlling all of your decisions, and that's what's controlling your destiny.

So let me take it to the next step. If we really believe that decisions shape our destiny, then what are the invisible forces that shape our decisions? I say invisible forces not to sound so mythical or overly dramatic, but if you think about life, the things that affect us most in life are invisible forces: gravity, radiation, you know, love, joy, anger, frustration. These are all invisible, and yet they shape our lives more than anything that's visible. The visible parts of our life come from the way we utilize the invisible.

So what shapes our decisions? Well, we're going to take two frames on this. First, what shapes our decisions in the moment? Have you ever done something or said something, and right after you've done it, you thought, "Why did I say that? Why did I do that? That was so stupid." Of course, yeah, we have. And we've also, I'm sure, had times in your life, I have, where you've done something and afterwards you can press tech out of yourself, and it's like, "I don't know how I did that, but that was in the flow, baby. I loved that." Well, you're the same person. The only difference in what you focused on, on the meaning and feelings and actions you took, the results you produced, moment to moment, it's based on the state you're in.

Loving people get in angry states, and when they're angry, what do they do? They do things that reflect that anger, not the loving person they are. Honest people can be dishonest in moments if they get in certain states where they drop their standard for themselves. So the state you're in affects your life immensely. And a huge part of my work over the years, especially in peak performance and how I help people to change in a moment, is identify the states of mind and body that they go into when they're at their best, and they show them how to trigger that, how to make that happen. And I find the states that are causing them to not make progress or causing them to behave in ways they're not proud of, and I show them how to break those patterns.

Now, I'm not going to go through in detail now. And if you're familiar with my work, I'm sure this is a fundamental that I teach. But just to remind you, if you're in an angry state, you're probably going to focus on things differently. You're probably going to come up with a different meaning. You're going to probably feel differently and act differently than if you're in a state of gratitude. That's not hard to figure out. How do we change those states? Again, if you're familiar with my work, you know I teach that there are three forces that shape your emotional state moment to moment, the three molders of meaning, which I call the triad. And the three patterns, the way you're feeling in every moment is controlled first by the way you use your physical body, the pattern of physiology. Somebody who is very happy has a very different way of moving, breathing, speaking, facial expression, their body, than somebody who is very angry.

If you're depressed, you know what's happened? The body takes on a very specific posture, doesn't it? So you said there's somebody depressed over here behind curtain number one. I'm going to give you a hundred thousand dollars to your favorite charity if you can describe their physical body in detail without seeing them. Tell me what their posture is like. Could you do it? Of course, you could. You know, what's their body like? Where are their shoulders slumped? Where's their head up or down? It's not hard to figure out. Down. Are they breathing full or shallow? If they're feeling depressed, obviously shallow. Are they talking loud and fast or more quiet and hesitant? Obviously quiet, hesitant. And we can do this with people, with 10,000 people in a room, and everybody knows the answer because we've all felt depressed or down, and we have to use our body a very specific way to do that. Emotions don't just happen, we do them. We do them through patterns of physiology.

The second part of your molders of meaning, or your triad, that affects what you feel is what you focus on. As we've already described, you know, if you're focusing on what you think's been done to you, you feel very different than if you're focusing on what you can give in this situation. Focus equals feeling. And then finally, the third thing that affects how you feel in the moment is your language patterns. Because when you have an experience, it changes when you add language to it. You're sitting on the edge of a cliff, and you're having an experience. The wind is blowing against your skin, you're looking out over the ocean, a seagull comes flying down by you, or a hawk. And as you watch it soaring, you're experiencing what you see. But then there's a moment when language enters into it, and you say, "Wow, that's an ugly seagull." Or let's say the hawk goes down and dives down and grabs a fish, and you say, "Oh, that's terrible." Or you say, "Well, that's beautiful," or "That's God." The minute you add words to it, beautiful, ugly, God, a problem, horrific, you change what you feel. You've changed the experience.

So language is a filter to meaning. You know, if you go through this huge experience in life, and some people develop the habit of using certain words or phrases, and they become hypnotic. They put us in a state. If every time something that you don't like happens, you go, "There's God punishing me again." Well, sure enough, after a while, you feel like you're, there's something wrong with you, or you feel like you deserve it, or you feel angry. But if things happen that are uncomfortable, when you go, "Oh, that's just another lesson. Well, that's another opportunity." Let me give you a simplistic, funny example. I have a dear friend of mine, Ken Blanchard. He wrote those One Minute Manager books. I remember he was stuck in Africa. He was going on this trip, and they're out in the middle of the plains, and there's, you know, everything out there, zebras and elephants and obviously, you know, lions. And they ran out of fuel. And three people had different reactions. One was hysterical, "Oh my God, we're gonna die, we're gonna die." And the other person was angry. And Ken's response was, "This is inconvenient." You know, and it wasn't, he wasn't being a joke. That's just his habit. And so since he uses that language so often, he isn't being cute, it lowers the intensity of the emotion. Do you get it? It changes the way you feel.

So the three molders of meaning are the way you use your body, what you're focusing on, and the language you use. So these molders of meaning become habits. We get into certain states. And as I said before, some people's state that they live in most often is frustration, and they find a way to get there. Or anger. Some people live in a place of awe. Very few people, but there are some. They live in this place of curiosity and a sense of grace, or the beauty of life. It's a very different life depending upon which filter you use, isn't it? And whichever triad, whichever filter, whatever state you go into most often, it affects your decisions. It affects what you focus on. It affects what things mean. It affects what you do. It's like a cycle. The state you're in affects the decisions you make. The decisions you make affect the state you're in. That happens moment to moment.

So very often, if I want to help someone to change, rather than talking to them about some cognitive principle they have in their head or some thought process, I'll just change their body. I'll make a shift, shift their breathing, get them to do something they're not used to doing. And take somebody who's depressed and say, "You know, come with me on a walk." And in the walk, you begin to direct and change their body, and they feel better after the walk, and they're able to now focus on something new. They're able to come up with a different way of looking at things. So there are many forms of intervention here. You know, people in the somatic approach would say, "You're feeling the way you do because your biochemistry." Well, your biochemistry can be changed by a shift in breathing, by demanding your muscles, by a movement, and they can be shifted in so many ways.

If you want to know the most powerful drug that most people consume, it's what they eat each day. And yet, most of us are completely uneducated and don't look at its impact on our blood sugar and our emotion and where we're shifted. So it's so easy to shift someone by changing their physiology, or changing their focus, or changing the pattern of questions you ask them, because whatever you focus on, questions are the language that change your focus, and what your focus on changes the way you feel, which affects your body. So again, I'm not trying to give you a whole lesson in the triad, but just know this: If the decisions you make shape your destiny, your decisions are powerfully shaped by the state you're in. And the state you're in each moment is shaped by these three forces: pattern your body, pattern of focus, pattern of language. If you're angry, you're going to make different decisions than if you're feeling grateful, as we said before.

But here's what I want to focus on now, and this is where I think you're going to find the process of unraveling human behavior and helping people change to be most powerful. What affects your decisions long-term, not just moment to moment? What creates a long-term pattern that makes somebody really angry or really depressed, not just in the moment, but long-term, but they start to live that way? Or somebody feel really excited or grateful or happy or playful or fun? That's shaped by three forces, the three forces of destiny, that together create kind of your worldview, the way you interpret life, the way you make decisions. This is the ultimate filter, the box that we all live in is different. You know, I like to call it the worldview, or let's say your blueprint, kind of what your mindset is about how to make decisions. And the three forces within this box, if you will, are: Number one, the needs that are driving all your decisions. See, if you're doing something, if you're going after something, whether you're trying to make a billion dollars, or you're trying to help your children, or you want to create peace on earth, or you just want to create comfort for yourself or your family, whatever you're doing, you have a reason. And the good news is, having been with 3 million people from 100 countries, it became obvious to me after a while that there were some common patterns. And I believe there are six reasons people do anything. I call them the six human needs. And they are, briefly:

Number one, certainty. Now, when I talk about certainty, I'm not talking about something that you may value or not value. Our goals or beliefs are very different than needs. Beliefs are learned, needs are inborn. This is the driving force, one of them, and all human beings. Certainty means to have a sense of certainty that you can avoid pain and that ideally you can have some comfort or pleasure. Certainly, you can be comfortable at some level of certainty. You can survive. So how do people get certainty? Well, we can get certainty in ways that are empowering, kind of neutral, or disempowering. So, for example, you can do it by working very hard to master something, so now you're not fearful, you're not uncertain, you know, you know how to make this thing happen, you've been doing it for years, right? Or you can do it a negative way. You can lower your expectations. You can say, "Okay, I know it's all a waste of time because nothing ever works anyway. You know, why even try?" So the only differences in people are how do they get their certainty, how much do they get, and they do it in a way that's obtainable or sustainable. Does that make sense?

Now, what's interesting though, is if you were totally certain every single moment of your life, if you knew what was going to happen, how it was going to happen, then after a while, what would you start to feel? Bored. Bored out of your mind. So I always tell people, God clearly has a sense of humor because our second human need is uncertainty. Right? We need uncertainty to feel alive. Think about it. Variety is the what of life? Spice. You know, I always ask people, you know, if your life was the same every moment, every day, you knew what was going to happen, what someone's going to say, how they're going to say it, you'd go crazy, right? So you've got to have variety. Oh, by the way, how can you get variety? You can get it by an interesting conversation, by spending time with a friend. You can get variety by trying new things. You can go extreme, like jumping out of airplanes. Or you can do it by watching an interesting movie or reading an interesting book or taking on a new goal. There are so many ways to do it. You can get variety from different foods. All variety is anything that'll change your state, that'll give you a different feeling. Does that make sense?

Third human need: the need for significance. The need to feel unique, they need to feel special, they need to feel important. Who would you say needs to feel significant? Everyone. The only difference in people is how do you go after it? What are your beliefs about how to meet this need? Do you get significance by serving, or do you get significance by dominating? Do you get significance by dressing cool and unique and having tattoos and earrings and locations we don't even want to talk about, you know, so you feel cool and unique and special? Or do you get it by being more generous than almost anybody else around you and knowing that you come from your heart, and so you know you're unique in that way?

Let me tell you a principle now, a very important one. One, if you're going to help create change in yourself or other people, you gotta understand anytime a person links up in their mind, consciously or unconsciously, that thinking, believing, feeling, or behaving a certain way meets at least three of these needs, then that thought, that feeling, that emotion, or that behavior becomes an addiction. It becomes a habit. So, for example, violence has been with humanity for almost ever, and probably always will be unless we have a consciousness change, because it meets three needs powerfully: certainty at a ten, significance at a ten, and variety at a very high number, because whenever it occurs, you don't know what's going to happen. It's different every time.

It also meets a fourth human need called connection. Connection and love is the fourth human need. Who needs to feel connected? Who needs to feel loved? The person says, "I don't need any love. You know, I'm an island. I'm all by myself. I don't need anybody." Oh, mouse, protest too much. Every human being needs it. In fact, it's in our DNA. Our need for love is our survival instinct. When you're a baby, the only way you survive is someone loves you. What does it mean when say someone loves you? It means they put you above their own needs. They put you first. So we all need connection and love. It's the deepest part of our soul. The problem is, love is a bit scary, isn't it? Man, if you love somebody and you open up, you're so vulnerable, and now man, somebody could come and hurt you, they could take it away. So most people settle for connection. So you can connect through intimacy, through lovemaking. You can connect to a walk in nature. Anyone can get connection and love. The question is, do you do it by problems? Do you do it by giving? Do you get the need met in neutral ways, negative ways, or empowering ways? Because our life is shaped not by our needs so much, but by the ways that we've learned to meet them.

So this is the first force of destiny, and these are the first four needs. The force of destiny is your needs, the driving force of life. Think of it as the target you're after. Remember I said there's six of these needs. So what's number five and six? Well, the first four, I call basically the needs of the personality. What I mean by that is everybody finds a way to meet these first four needs. But the ultimate needs, not everybody meets. And these are what make you feel fulfilled, not just alive, but vibrantly alive, fulfilled. And they are the needs, I think of the spirit. Meaning, I'm not talking about religiously, I'm just saying this is what your spirit craves. And I've mentioned them earlier. Number five is: you must grow. Everyone on earth, we either grow or we die. Everything in the universe grows or dies. A relationship is growing or it's dying. There is no neutral in between place. It's a constant process that's occurring throughout life. And the reason we grow, I believe, is to meet our sixth human need, which is the need to contribute. We grow so we have something to give. Giving beyond yourself, contributing something, is what gives life meaning.

So, as I said earlier, I mean, think about it. There's only so much pleasure you can get by yourself. You know, you do something, you achieve something, you have an experience of something. What's the first thing you want to do? Tell somebody. Share with somebody your experience. Because what does it do? It magnifies it. As you contribute that state, that feeling, that emotion, that thought, that insight to them, that's why we want to share. That's why we want to contribute at some level to other human beings. You get kissed, you make a million dollars, you achieve the ultimate goal in your position, you get your kids to pass through school with flying colors, 4.0, magna cum laude, whatever. That moment is temporary. What makes you feel alive is that constant growth and feeling like it's more than just about me. If there's a lesson of life, when you want to help someone make a change, whenever they're experiencing enormous pain, they're almost always focused on themselves. They may say, "No, no, I'm focused on my kids and I'm not making a difference." I should, but they're really focused unconsciously on "I'm not doing what I should have done. I'm not enough for my kids." To focus on themselves. Get outside yourself. Find a way to contribute. And it's very easy to make meaningful change. And your life has depth.

So these are the six human needs. Now, as I said, there's only two differences in people. And one of those differences is which one of these needs do you value most in your own life? And by the way, I know this changes some situation to situation, but in your own life overall, there's a center of gravity of where you tend to focus. What I'm most interested in knowing is what are your top two needs of all six needs that you've got to meet, which two do you value most? Some people value certainty above anything else. And man, you can see it in them. They're trying to control everything and everyone. They get upset if you start to change things. They're really upset if you're late. I mean, they're trying to lock everything into place. Now, everybody values certainty, but some people value this number one. If you value uncertainty, you have a totally different life. You're like, "Ah, who cares?" You know, if you value certainty, I can promise you, you know where all the exits are in this room or the building when you go in. If you value uncertainty, you don't care. "I'll get out of here somehow." It's a very different approach. Now, everybody needs both, but which one do you value more? If you value being significant, that means you have to be most important, most unique, most different. We can predict that's a very different life than if you value love most importantly. If you're going to treat people differently, you're going to interact different, things are going to stress you. Is this making sense?

So which of these six needs in your own life, for a moment, do you believe are top two for you? Now, at the core, we all want to give and experience love. That's the most important one. But when I say which two needs do you value most, I don't mean in your gut. I mean the way you live operationally. Do you tend to like, you're a lover inside, but you want to have certainty before you open your heart? So you really value love, but the way you live is you value certainty first? Or are you a person that values significance first, because you have to do these significant things before you know you're good enough to be happy or feel good or love yourself or others? Love you. What do you value first? If you're really honest with yourself, what would you say the second one is? It's hardest to be honest with yourself about this because you're in the middle of it, isn't it?

So when people are talking, you want to see what's driving the conversation, because if you help people meet their needs, you can change the game in a heartbeat. See, people get hooked up about how to meet their needs, and that's the second force. Remember I said two things? One is which of these needs do you value most? Here's the second force: the destiny, your belief systems. See, you have beliefs about what has to happen for you to meet these needs. We have a map. Think of your needs as the target. And if you're targeting the center of the target, the bull's-eye is significance, you're going to be moving in one direction of life. If the bull's-eye is certainty, you're going to go to a different direction. If the bull's-eye is love, a different direction. But how to meet that bullseye is driven by your belief systems, your map, your rule book. So how you go about meeting your needs. Think of it this way, in the most simplistic terms. There are many kinds of beliefs. Beliefs about what life is, beliefs about who you are, different values you have, different rules. We'll cover these, and I'll do it in a really simple way. There are seven kinds of beliefs. We'll cover them on another day. But for

Right now, think of it this way: two people could both value significance at the top of their list as the driving force in their life. But the difference is, they may have a different map about how to become significant, a different set of beliefs, a different rule book.

One is Osama bin Laden. His way to become significant is to do what? To kill people, strangers, men, women, children, who he believes have a different belief, or a different life, or a different religious approach than he has.

Now, you see that same day of 9/11, when he was meeting his need for significance by killing people, there were firemen. New York firemen. We all will remember for as long as we live, you know, if you're American, the images are probably deep, deep, deep in your psyche of these men and women, in some cases, running into this building where they knew their chances of coming out were very small. Doing it with pure courage. Why? Why would they risk their life? Some did it because it's the ultimate significance: to sacrifice your life for another. They have a different map. Their map is, "If I die serving a stranger, my life has deeper meaning." Someone else is, "If I die killing a stranger, my life has deeper meaning." Same need structure, different belief system. Does that make sense?

So, very often in life, we look at people's behaviors and we make generalizations. "Oh, they're doing that for this reason." And the truth of the matter is, people do things for lots of reasons, but they may be doing it for a different reason than you think. Some people do it for certainty. Some do for significance. Some do it for love and connection. Some do it for variety. Some do it for growth. Some do it for all the above. The more needs you can meet by taking on a behavior, or a thought, or an approach, the more fulfilling it is.

So, think of it this way: if there's a target you're after in life, and instead of need, you're trying to meet that are most important to you, and that's subconsciously driving all of your decision-making, where you're going, what you're doing, what you like, what you dislike, whether you're going to meet or not, based on your map, this list of beliefs, rules, values, fears, desires, and we'll cover those in more detail, but they're guiding you on how to get to it. Well, a lot of people's map of the world, their blueprint, their belief systems, are outdated. They've never been updated. You came up with them years ago, and so you don't get where you want to go.

But the third factor that affects us is the one I've already spoken about, and that is emotion. Emotion. See, as I said earlier, people find a primary emotion, a place that they go to live. Some people, again, always find a way to be frustrated, or sad, or angry. Some people always find a way to feel deep emotions of feeling insecure, or not enough. Some people find certainty, no matter what, or they find confidence, or courage, no matter what the situation is. Some people are always playful. Whatever patterns of emotion you buried into your body on a regular basis, they filter your map and they filter your needs.

So, what we're going to discover as we go to work with people is, instead of just saying, "They have this behavior, so we're going to label them as bipolar. They get euphorically happy, and they get incredibly depressed." Well, if we really take the time to understand this person, instead of just drugging them, we may find out that this person is trying to be significant. That's the driving force. And they want certainty. They can do it, and they have these big swings because they think that significance comes from being successful in financial terms, or making their business go. That's their ultimate dream. They think if they achieve that, they're going to feel so significant. But then, all of a sudden, they deal with the natural challenges and problems that you do as you're pursuing something in your business or your life, and it's not working out. And so now it looks like it's never going to happen. They're never going to be significant. Now they're depressed. And so they go up and they go down. Instead of saying, "That's a biochemical thing," let you and I get to what the source is. What needs are they after? What beliefs do they have, and are they outdated and they need to be shifted? What emotions that they got addicted to? They're trained in their body as a pattern. And let's see if we can change the emotion. Let's see if we might change the beliefs, the values, the rules, or let's change the need that they're focusing on, or find a better way to meet that need.

See, this is what human needs psychology is about. Not labeling, not pushing somebody aside, but figuring out what their needs are and fulfilling them. When human beings' needs are fulfilled, they are an incredible place. Listen, the best leaders I know. General Schwarzkopf is just an amazing human being. And I remember talking with him right after the first Gulf War, when he really had made a difference, to say the least. And I talked to other people about him, and they all talked about that he's a practical psychologist. That's what this whole course is about, by the way. Not figuring out all these details, you can label somebody, figuring out how you can understand someone so you can help them, so you can help them meet their needs, so you can make the shift right away, so they get fulfilled.

Well, Schwarzkopf's great genius was when he was talking to a guy from Duke, he had a different tone of voice, a different way of meeting his needs. And he's talking to a guy that came from the South, that's been working on the railroad before he got there. He understood what their needs were. He figured out how to meet them where they lived. And these men would live and die for this general. See, that's true of a business person. That's true of a parent. That's true of an intimate. That's why we're taking the time to understand this, not just understand a bunch of principles or distinctions, but to use them in a pragmatic and practical way that touches human beings' lives. That's what leadership's about. We're going to influence somebody. We got to know what already influences them. That's probably the most important distinction to remember out of this conversation. If you're going to influence someone, you got to know what already influences them. And these three forces are what influence our destiny the most.

So, take the time to discover them. In the next 10 days, each day we're going to go through one step a day. Take all this that I'm dumping on you, take heart, and break it down to one thing and just really master it, so that at the end of the 10 days, you'll have it in your body and you'll be doing this for the people you care about, or in your business, or for yourself, or anywhere else you want to make a difference. Okay, so much from dumping on your brain here, but you know what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to lay out for you, kind of the whole map. And I don't expect you to have absorbed it all in this one little conversation, but now it's like there's a place in your brain ready for the steps that I'm going to offer you.

So, I want to finish this first session by covering what I call the formula for happiness. I remember I was invited to go on CNN a few years ago with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, really great man, the reporter there for CNN. And he was doing a special on happiness. And he called up and said, "What do you think? Is happiness overrated? Do you think that, you know, we're just deceiving ourselves that we have to be happy all the time?" He had some very interesting questions. So, we had a very interesting discussion on camera. And at one point, I said to him, "You know, not everybody values happiness at the highest level. Some people feel like if they're happy, they have no certainty to be able to keep it. Someone's just going to dash that happiness. So they don't want happiness, they want certainty." More happiness is a value, certainty is a need. Remember what I said? People violate even their own values to meet their needs. You know, some people think being happy means that you're insignificant. You don't understand the complexities of life. So they don't want to be happy. Their body sure would like it, but they'd rather be significant. And having complex understandings of life makes them feel more significant. So I said, "No, not everybody values happiness." But in our nature, it's certainly there. Look at any child.

So I said, "Here's the secret I can give you right now: the formula for happiness." And he looked at me like, "Oh, yeah, sure, sure." I said, "I know it sounds like hyperbole. So let's test it with you." And I want you to do the same thing as I'm speaking with you right now, personally. I want you to think in your own life. Think of an area of your life you're really happy about. Now, some people don't use the word happy. You know, your life you're pleased with right now? What's an area of your life? Even if you're not thrilled with your life, even if your life has a lot of challenges in it, if you broaden and look at all of it, your life, your body, your emotions, your sense of meaning, your relationships, family, your friends, your intimate, your work, your career, your finances, your spirituality, your connection with your creator and nature, your sense of celebration, life. There must be some area you're really pleased with, and probably lots. Think of one right now.

And so I said to him, "Tell me an area of your life that you're really, really pleased with." And he said, "My children. I love my children." And he has one child, and he had another one, I believe, coming up that was in the hopper, so to speak. And I said, "Well, that's beautiful." You could see him smile from ear to ear. And I said, "Tell me why are you so happy in your relationship with your kids?" And before you did, I wrote down four letters: L.C. L.C. which stands for Life Conditions equals B.P. which means Blueprint, or your mindset, or your core expectation of how life's supposed to be. So I just wrote the letters up there. And he said to me, "Well, he said, I love my children. They love me. And it's just so much fun to be with them. And it's exactly what I envisioned, you know, of what being a father would be. It's just, I just love the entire experience of being a dad. It's perfect."

So then I pointed to the letters and I said, "Then you're happy right now because you're living this happiness formula. Your current life conditions, your L.C., your life conditions are equal to your blueprint, your core expectation about how life should be with children. It matches. So you're very happy." Now, if your children were yelling at you, smacking you on the side of the face, never listening to you, crying continuously, if every time you try to touch them, they ran from you, that wouldn't match your blueprint, would it? And you'd be pretty darn unhappy in that area of your life.

So let's look at an area you're unhappy with. What's an area you're not happy with? And I said, "I'm sure you're Mr. Sanjay Gupta, so you're very happy with everything. But if there's an area you're not totally pleased with, what would that area be?" And he said, "Well, my time." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, I don't know, just, you know, I got a lot of things going." And he's an amazing man. I mean, he does his work in his surgery, and he reports for CNN. He's just an incredible guy, great family. So he said, "You know, I got all these things going at once." And he said, "I just, it's frustrating. It's like, I know, I feel like I can't do the things I should do at times I should be doing them, very often. And it's just, you know, it's not where it should be. It's not how I want it to be."

And so I took the same little formula, L.C., and what the equal sign was, I put a slash through it. Does not equal B.P. Blueprint. I said, "The formula for unhappiness is when your life conditions don't equal your blueprint." What's your blueprint? Your core expectations, the needs you're trying to meet, the beliefs you have about how it's supposed to be, the rules of how it's supposed to be in life. Right now, your life conditions don't match the way you think it should be. And so you have pain. You know, pain is part of life. But I said, "If it shifted, if you could shift your life conditions to where they matched your blueprint, you'd be pretty darn happy, wouldn't you?" I said, "How would you do that?" He goes, "Well, I don't know. It's kind of overwhelming. I, I guess if I, if I said no to some things I've been saying yes to, you know, if I didn't do a few things, then I'd have a little more free time. And I, I think it'd be more balanced." I said, "Okay, well, that kind of gives you a direction that would move you closer to your blueprint and closer to happiness."

I said, "Let me show you the formula for suffering." I said, "Think of a time in your life." And I'm asking you as you're listening to do the same. You're my Sanjay Gupta in this discussion. So I want you to think of an area, really happy. Why are you happy in that area? Isn't it true because your life conditions kind of meet your core expectations? It may not perfectly, by the way. If your life is even better than you expected, then you're over the moon. If your life conditions don't match the way you think it should be in an area of your finances, or your body, or your health, or your relationships, or, you know, whatever area, you're not happy in that area. Makes sense. But suffering, when do we really suffer? You know, everybody hates suffering. What is suffering? Some people say, "I never suffer. I am, you know, I'm a man. I'm a woman. I just don't suffer. I'm too powerful to suffer." Well, have you ever felt like the night was never going to end? You know, winter was forever? Like the, the pain that you're experiencing was beyond what you could deal with? I mean, if you're human, my bet is you've had that experience. And if not, it's coming. That's what you have to look forward to, because that's part of life, isn't it?

So, if you've ever really suffered, where you felt pain that felt like it wouldn't go away, or overwhelmed by it, or just felt this frustration or anger that just you couldn't solve it, where's that suffering come from? Suffering happens when your life conditions don't equal your blueprint, and there's one more thing involved, and that is, you believe you don't have control to change it. You believe you're helpless. That there's something outside your control, some force, the government, God, a husband, a wife, a brother, a sister, you know, a worker, a boss, something you can't control. And so you can't make it better. You can't make your life the way you want it to be. And by the way, that's an illusion.

You say, "Well, how can you say that, Tony?" Was this positive thinking? No. We can't always control the events of our lives, but we can't control what it means to us. But to do that, you have to understand that when you experience pain, and if you experience suffering, which is intense pain, you really only have three choices. Follow me on this. First choice that most people pick is blame. Blame something. Because one way to get out of my pain or my suffering is to say, "Here's why I'm suffering. Here's why I have the pain, and it's not my fault." The first thing we like to blame is events. You know, something that happened when you're a kid, or last week, or last month, or something that isn't you, that's the source of this problem. Right? Because the great thing about events is they don't interrupt your story and make you wrong. They don't say, "No, you're full of it. I'm not at fault." Events don't have a voice. So it's easy to blame events. And for the moment, as we blame the event, we don't have to feel like we're not enough. We don't feel like we're impotent. We have to feel like there's something wrong with us. It redirects our focus, and we focus on something else. We don't feel so bad for the moment. But blaming events doesn't last.

So the second thing people do is they usually blame people. You know, "It's because of my parents. It's because of this person who treated me badly when I was 12. It's because of the situation that occurred." And we love to blame people that aren't there. The third choice, of course, that most people eventually revolve back to is they blame themselves. They go, "You know, it's my own fault. I'm lazy, or I don't care, or I'm not a good person." Or whatever story we make up. Now, the problem with blaming things is it's a black hole. Even blaming yourself. Being responsible is different than blaming yourself. You're never going to change your life in a state of blame.

So there are two other choices. And these two choices, in my mind, are the only two real choices. The only choices that change your life for the better. And that is, if your life conditions don't match your blueprint of how life should be, then what you got to do is either change your life conditions or change your blueprint. Does that make sense?

I'm going to give an example. Let's say, you know, someone in there in such pain, you want to help them, and you can't understand why they're so angry all the time. And it's a woman, and she's, let's say, 59 years old, and she just seems to be so cranky with everybody. She's harsh to her friends. She's harsh to people at work. She seems like such a mean person. Well, one principle to remember is you can never really influence someone effectively long-term if you're judging them. So if you go, "They're just a mean codger. They don't care. Or they're just harsh." That judgment is not going to allow you to understand someone. You're doing the same thing as, you know, somebody who labels them with a disease and then drugs them. Only you're not even drugging them.

So maybe we get underneath it. We start to talk to this woman. And we find out, interestingly enough, they're her blueprint for life. She's unhappy. She's unhappy, I promise you. Her life conditions don't match her blueprint. So let's find out her blueprint. What's life about? What did you believe life is about? What did you want from your life? What do you want from your life? And eventually, you find out that this woman always dreamed of having four children. She wanted to have children more than anything in her entire life. And she just never developed the relationship that would make that happen. And her belief system was, "To have a real life, to have meaning in your life, you should have four perfect children that you raise and have a white picket fence and live your life in a certain way." And now she's 59 years old, and she's been married once and gotten divorced, and she's had no children of her own. And she's miserable because, guess what? Her blueprint will make her in pain every day. So she has one of two choices. She either has to change her life conditions and have a child, which at 59, barring a medical miracle, is probably not going to happen. Or she's got to change her blueprint, or she's going to stay miserable as long as she lives. Does that make sense? Yes. We can drug her and numb her, or try to make her feel good, but we haven't dealt with the problem. This is the source of her problem. Life doesn't match her blueprint. So she has to change her life or change her blueprint.

So, guess what? In this case, she's got to change her blueprint. She's going to stay in pain. Maybe her blueprint is, "I can have children. I can raise them." But they're going to be kids I mentor, or I'm going to adopt at 59. Or who knows? Maybe medical technology will catch up and she can change her life conditions as well. But shoot, she's going to be 80 years old, her kids 21. So I don't know if that's the best approach. But, you know, teach each other. My point is, if you're suffering, change your life conditions or change your blueprint.

I talked to a woman the other day. She raised her hand. She said, and I was talking about how to create change, and she got very forceful and intense with me. She goes, "You're making it sound like it's so easy to change." She said, "My boyfriend, I've been with him 13 years, and he keeps cheating on me. He keeps saying that he has to have many women in his life. He does it all the time." "Oh, what am I supposed to do? Just change my state and be happy about it?" I said, "I don't think I ever recommended that." And she was so upset. She wasn't upset with me, right? She was upset with her life. Her life conditions don't match her blueprint.

So I said to her, "How do you want it to be?" "Well, you know, I was expecting we'd get married and live our life together, and we'd go make a difference. And, you know, I'm a massage therapist, and I do herbology, and I thought he was going to help me with this." And I said, "But he's not. He hasn't for 13 years." I said, "Well, how can you be upset with him at this stage? You either have to change your life conditions, which is, you got to say to him, 'No more. It's over between us.' Or it's over between us if we can't commit to one another. Or you've got to change your blueprint and stop complaining about it, saying, 'Okay, this is the life that I want.'" But living in this never-never land when you're making yourself crazy is not going to make your life any better. Step up. Make a decision. What is more important to you? How do we get there? See, this is where you start to make change. Until we address this truth, we're going to have ourselves in a state of frustration.

I'll give you one of those dramatic examples, and then I'm going to let you go for this day, since I've dumped so much on you. And tomorrow, we'll start fresh and walk you through the seven master steps and how to make a change. With this woman I just described, because I didn't finish there, obviously. I had to do some things to help her make this shift. I'm giving you the 30,000-foot view. But I'll give you one of the more dramatic examples.

I remember I was doing one of my Date With Destiny seminars, which is one of my favorite programs that I do. I take a couple thousand people, and we go for six days. You've got people from all over the world, usually 40 or 50 countries. We're translating, usually four or five languages simultaneously. And I love it because you never know what's going to happen. Because when you have that many people, and you have like, you know, you can have a business executive, and then I've got, let's say, Anthony Hopkins, the actor, here. And then I've got a child, a young person, here. And I've got somebody that's incredibly challenged, and somebody incredibly successful. And it's, you never know what's going to happen. And it's pure magic as we go through and discover our forces of destiny. These people discover what needs are driving them. They discover all the beliefs that are controlling their thoughts, their feelings, their emotions, their behaviors. They discover the emotions that are dominant in their life that are the filters they're experiencing life from. And then we change it. They shift it consciously. They figure how to line up their life with their blueprint by changing their blueprint, or changing the life, or changing both, to something that's updated, not some old thought you got from 10 years ago that's still guiding you and making you crazy. We got to update, don't we?

So I'm having this experience, and there's a point in these seminars where invariably I'll ask, "Who here is suicidal?" And the room kind of looks. And the reason I do that is because in any room with two or three thousand people, no matter how successful they are, there's always a half dozen to a dozen people that are suicidal. And before I got to that point, during one of the stretch breaks, this woman came up to me, and she said, "Oh my God, my, I need you to read this. This is my partner's book." People have a little notebook that they write their notes in. And she said, "I didn't need to read this. I picked it up by accident. I thought it was mine." But look, and the woman's face was ashen. So I didn't know what it was. I opened the book, I looked at the page, and there is this description of this man, her buddy, who's describing how he's going to kill himself and his children. And the process was laid out in detail. So without going through the gory details, I think you can imagine my state change. I thought, "Oh my God. I mean, you know, obviously we got to do something." So I said, "Go ahead and sit down, and I'm going to call on him."

So I come to after the break, and I say, "Who here is suicidal?" And then I usually pause and say, "I love suicide. Come on, who's out there?" Just to break the pattern. And there's this nervous laugh, and some people kind of gasp. And I said, "The reason is because if you're suicidal, it's clear that you have a set of beliefs and values and rules and emotions and needs that are in conflict at a massive scale, and you're in such pain that you're considering not being here." I don't mean there's room. I mean life. And I want to bring somebody, and I want to show how they're wired, and then show you how to change it. And I've been doing this for, you know, 30 years. Trust me, I can help. So raise your hand. You can help yourself. Let's do it gradually. You'll get one or two hands, and then become safe, and then usually five, six, seven. Sometimes it doesn't end. And I'll call on these people, and I'll ask them to tell me why they're depressed, why they're suicidal. And you hear some amazing stories. And I usually pick one, make an example. But as I'm doing this, the man's notebook, his name was Bob. So each person, I say, "What's your name?" "No Bob." So I listen to their story, and I go, "The next funny thing, I've gone through everybody. No Bob." So I finally say, "Bob, I read your notebook. Are you out there?" Because I didn't know what he looked like. And then I said, "Come on, Bob. I said, step up. I said, let's deal with this." And gradually, this man, about 20 rows back, stands up, right on the edge of the aisle. And my brain was blown. Because, you know, how sometimes you have an expectation of thinking, you know, what kind of person would you picture someone's going to kill themself and their own children, for God's sakes? So I, I don't know what I pictured, but it was pretty vicious. And who stands up is this kind of portly, late 40s, early 50s guy with a little paunch, you know, kind of graying beard, and these twinkling little eyes, looked very sad. But, you know, he wasn't so sad. He looked like Santa Claus almost. I mean, it was just, it was amazing. It wasn't what I pictured. I said, "You Bob?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Bob, aren't you suicidal?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Bob, you're not only suicidal, but you got a plan to kill yourself and your kids, don't you?" And the whole room, like, it's like, "Oh my God." You know, everybody knows. You can feel it viscerally. And people start looking at this guy like he was the devil. And, and he kind of like grimaced and said, "Yeah." I said, "Bob, why? Why do you want to kill your kids? Why do you want to kill yourself?" "Because that's a long story." "I said, tell me the story."

He started telling me the story about the fact that, you know, he hasn't worked for three years, and he's got five kids, and that he's a total failure in life. And that at this point, he's better off dead. But he loves his kids. "What?" "Yeah." "He loves the kids. I don't want to hurt my kids." He said, "I just, I take their lives because I wouldn't want to be scarred. I wouldn't want them to live knowing I killed myself and thinking that I did it, not caring for them." He said, "I know people have been like that." And he said, "That's not something a human being should have to bear." So in his model of the world, in his blueprint, he was so worthless, he was completely insignificant. He was not capable of being deserving of love because he had not taken care of his wife and his kids and provided for them. And he was in a position where he had no certainty he could ever make it better in the future. I mean, everything that valued, everything this man needed, he felt like he couldn't meet. So when we're in such pain, he just thought it'd be less pain to be gone. And he didn't want his kids to be scarred, so he's going to take their life. To him, that was logical. Clearly, his life conditions don't match his blueprint.

So I want to know what his blueprint was. So I said, "Bob, I said, do you really want to do this?" He goes, "No, I don't want to do this." "Because I prayed for an alternative." "I said, well, I think there are several." There's this kind of nervous laugh in the room, you know. And I said, "We're going to make sure you get them. You're not leaving here without some alternatives." Bob, he kind of had a little beginning of a little sheepish grin. And I said, "Play with me on this. I said, tell me what you thought life would be like. I said, have you ever been happy?" He said, "Not in, not in, I don't know, probably a decade." I said, "Well, tell me what you're like when you're happy. Tell me what you thought life would be like." He said, "Well, you know, I used to ride a Harley." And the whole audience, I couldn't believe it. Bob rode a Harley. And he looks like this guy you never imagined. He goes, "Yeah, I used to ride a Harley, and I used to raise hell." And all of a sudden, as he does this, as he focuses on those days, focus equals feeling, right? His whole state changes. His body changes. His language changes. He goes, "Yeah, you know, I was kind of a hell-raiser. And, you know," he said, "I had so much fun. I mean, life was fun, man. Life was the open road, you know? Life was about freedom, man. You know, every day was new and different. You knew it was going to happen." And he said, "My wife was my girlfriend then." And he said, "You know, frankly, we used to, we used to just do it, man." He said, "I used to take her and put her on the pool table, and we just go at it." And he said, "No, I just loved my life." And old Bob looks about, you know, 15, 20 years younger, and a different guy. And he's not looking depressed. I said, "Bob, are you depressed right now?" He goes, "No." He starts to laugh. "I said, feel like taking your own life?" "Because no." Just the state change. All of a sudden, he's focusing on things differently. He's coming up with a different meaning. Just in the moment, right? He's starting to feel different. He's starting to, you know, maybe have some different decisions. Now, that's just for the moment. That's not going to change this guy. We got to get into his model of the world.

So I dug in a bit more. I said, "Bob, tell me something. So what was life about then?" He said, "Well, life was about, you know, having fun, and and living fully, and enjoying yourself, and enjoying your woman, and and being on the open road, and freedom." So now we know Bob's model. I said, "Bob, so what about now? What changed?" He said, "Well, you know, we got married, and we had our first boy, and, you know, and then we have the second, and then the third, and then the fourth, and the fifth." And I said, "Do you ride your Harley anymore?" He goes, "No." He said, "No, it's not ridden. Can't remember when." "Make love your wife on the pool table anymore?" He started laughing. "I can't remember the last time that happened." I said, "What changed?" He said, "Well, you know, I became a father. I had to be responsible. And, you know, I had to, you know, live life differently. And you can't be a father and ride a motorcycle. What if you get hurt? And, you know, you know, I had to get, you know, different kind of job, you know, because I had to be able to support my kids. And and I was, you know, supposed to be a better husband. And, you know, husbands don't go gallivanting around and being crazy. And I don't know, it's just." And as he said all these things, he went right back to that state where he was like deaf. And you just see all the energy drain out of his face. I said, "Bob, I said, you know, you changed your rules. You changed your map." Bob, you know, what what you really wanted, you said you wanted freedom. You wanted to feel alive. And how did you do that? You lived this life where you are connected to your wife and your friends. You're connected in nature. You're connected to your motorcycle. You're doing cool stuff. You thought was significant. You had certainty. You controlled your life. You had so much variety in your life. You're grown in different ways. I bet you're contributing in different ways. But I said, "Now tell me about your needs. How certain are you about your life that you can make it work?" And he goes, "What do you mean, how certain?" "I'm, I don't have any certainty." "I said, zero to ten." He goes, "Minus ten." "I said, well, how much positive variety in your life today?" "He said, well, I don't know, one or two." "I said, how significant do you feel as a man?" "He said, that's why I don't want to be here." "What's the number?" "Minus." "I said, I'm a failure." Every bit of energy he had a few moments ago that was moving the room, it dropped out of his body. Connection and love. He goes, "You know, I know my wife's a good woman. I love her. But, you know, I don't feel anymore." Growth, contribution, zero, zero. It's not hard to figure out why the guy's not going to be around. I said, "Here's the problem, Bob. I said, the problem is not your life. I said, your problem is your blueprint." I said, "You got to find a way to meet your six needs in a better way." And I said, "You really think killing your children, you know, that might protect them from being scarred? But have you ever thought about what that might mean in the hereafter?" I said, "Do you have any religious beliefs?" And I'm searching to see if there's a place in him for leverage, a place where there can be a shift, a place where I can make changing a must, not a should, where the change will happen, not because I'm there, but because his own belief systems take over with a conflict inside of him. He values something more to make him live than to make him die. And I'm not going to tell you how this got resolved. I think you have to go to tomorrow to find it out, because I'll take you through the seven steps then. But I will tell you this: Bob lived. But there's more to the story. But I've gone so long today, I better turn you loose.

So, how about this? How about we just recap for a second? What have we covered today? Wow, quite a bit more than we will on most days. This is your introduction. So I hope it's been useful for you. What we've been talking about here is how do you become an agent of change? How do you be able to make change happen in situations other people think is impossible? How do you make changes in minutes or hours that most people might take weeks, months, or years to do? And then we've begun to expose you now to the three decisions that shape you: What are you going to focus on? What does it mean? What are you going to do? By the way, how important are those three decisions for Bob right now? By focusing on the wrong things, giving it a negative meaning that he's worthless, has made him feel like he doesn't want to be here. And what he's about to do, if we don't intervene, is not pretty, to say the least.

We've talked about what affects us in the moment is the state we're in. When Bob's in this state where he's remembering being on his Harley, and he's focused on that, his physiology changes, his language changes, Bob's a different guy. He'll make a different decision. But Bob goes back to focusing on how he's done nothing, he's failed his kids, his life is terrible, his life is worthless, and his body changes, his emotion changes, and he can make a really terrible decision for himself and others. We've said, though, that changing someone's state in the moment might change them for the moment. If you're going to change them long-term, got to change their blueprint. Got to change their model of the world. Got to find out which of those six needs is driving them, and maybe there needs to be a shift in those, which one they value most. Or maybe we just need to shift the belief systems, the maps, outdated, need some new beliefs, or some new rules. Bob clearly needs some new rules. He thinks that the only way he can be worthwhile as a man is to provide a certain income, and since he's not doing that, he's worthless. He's failed to realize the difference he can make with his children just by loving them and being in their presence, regardless of his income or his job. He's missing out on the connection with his wife, by the way. I asked him, I said, "Bob, what about your wife?" He said, "Oh, she'll be fine." That's why he's not going to kill her. She'll make it through this. Interestingly enough.

We talked about the needs, the six needs, the map about how to get there, and we've talked a bit about the emotions that guide us. And now we've talked about the formula for happiness: your life conditions equal your blueprint. The formula for unhappiness: your life conditions do not equal your blueprint. And the formula for suffering: your life conditions don't equal your blueprint, and you believe you can do nothing to change it. You're helpless. Your three choices: blame events, people, or yourself. Or the only two real choices: change your life conditions, change your body, change your relationship, do something now, or change your blueprint. And Bob is our first instructional example, which we will continue tomorrow as we walk into the seven master steps of ultimate change, ultimate impact.

I hope I've hooked you. I hope you're with me. I promise you that if you'll stick with me for these 10 days, each day, some days will be shorter, some will be a bit longer, but each day I promise to make sure I bring forward to you some of the best insights that I found. And that by taking these in, you'll become more impactful as a leader, as a friend, as a parent, as a lover, as a person who really is a force for good, or as I would say, an agent for change.

So, as you go to turn off this audio session, what I'd like you to do is take one form of action. It's real simple to kind of integrate this. Let's start with you. If we want to influence somebody else, probably useful to influence ourselves. Much harder to influence ourselves than a stranger, anyway, or someone else. So I'd like you to just jot down again, what needs are driving you? What are the top two of the six: certainty, uncertainty, significance, love and connection, growth, or contribution? Not which one do you value most, which one do you live most operationally. Secondly, I want you to think of an area of life you're really pleased with, and lock it in. And notice why you're pleased, why you're pleased. Capture it. Notice that it matches your core expectation, at least at a basic level. Then think of an area you're not pleased with, and actually jot it down. "I'm not pleased in this area, and here's why." And then notice how your life conditions don't match your blueprint. And then make a decision. It's the final step. Do I need to change my life conditions? Do I need to start working out instead of complaining about my body? Do I need to shift my relationship? Do I need to focus on something else spiritually or emotionally? What do I need to do? Or do I need to change my blueprint? Stop having a ridiculous expectation, because I'll tell you one thing, most people's blueprint is where the problem is.

You know, I've met so many people over the years. I'll give you one last example of my dear friend, Anthony Hopkins. And he's, somebody who's just, he's not like what you'd see on the silver screen. Yes, he's an unbelievably brilliant actor, but he's one of the most generous, playful, warm human beings you can imagine. And Tony had the experience of going on my Date With Destiny. And I'll never forget, he got up on, I think the fourth or fifth day, and he kept raising his hand, and I was ignoring him because I was making sure security people were around him and nobody would bug him so he could have his own experience. I don't even know he was there. It's pretty hard to hide Hannibal Lecter, but we did our best, you know. And he finally raised his hand, he shouted out, he said, "You don't need to protect me anymore." And I said, "Okay, Mr. Hopkins, Sir Anthony." He smiled. He said, "I just want to share." He got up and he told the story about feeling the greatest joy he ever felt. He said, "Because now I understand myself." He said, "I've been knighted by the Queen. He said, you know, I've had an Academy Award." And he said, "But somewhere inside, I wasn't allowing myself to experience this because," he said, "I've had this blueprint that's impossible to meet. This blueprint of how I have to be all the time." And he said, "It's made me unhappy even in some of the best times." He said, "So this is the greatest gift. This gift of change can happen at the deepest level when you get to the source. When you and I begin to master the invisible forces." That's what the session was, the introduction to. In the next few days, we're going to go into the mechanics of it.

So thanks for your time. It is my privilege to serve you. And I'm looking forward to spending the next few days with you and then finding out about the people that you've touched as a result of your mastery of the 10 master steps of maximum impact. God bless and live with passion. I'll talk to you tomorrow. You.