Tony Robbins Personal Power Day 9 Values and Beliefs The Source of Success or Failure

[Music] Thank you. Welcome to Day 7 or Day 9 of Personal Power. I'm gonna assume from now on you're on the 30-day program, which means you're on Day 9. Let's begin.

Today, we're starting a new Power Pack. It's called the Ultimate Secret to Lifelong Success. And today's lesson is on values and beliefs, the sources of success or failure in life. Pretty big statements to make, but I think you're going to find that your values and your beliefs are really the driving force behind you.

Now, you might say, "Well, Tony, you've already said that pain and pleasure are the controlling force of my life." That's true. But specifically, you and I, throughout our lives, have learned to give labels for different levels of pain and different levels of pleasure. And those labels are what we call values.

Specifically, if I said to you, "Which would you rather have: success, adventure, outrageousness, love, comfort, or feelings of security?" I asked you to pick one of those. Which would you pick? Let me try it again. Which would you pick? Either success, adventure, outrageousness, love, comfort, or security. If you can only have one of those, which one of those states would you pick?

Well, it's different for everyone. Some people say, "Well, gosh, it's clear to me. I want to absolutely have success. That's what life is about." Other people go, "Well, success is nice, but, you know, you can succeed and not be adventurous. I want to be an adventurer." I would go, "Now, hey, I want to be outrageous. If you're outrageous, you're gonna have fun. You're gonna play. You're gonna have a great time in life." Other people go, "Well, that's all nice, but what I want is love. I mean, you can have all those other things, but if you don't feel love, you don't have anything." Other people say, "No, no, no, man. I mean, you can be loved, but still not feel comfortable. Who wants to be loved and be in pain all the time? I want to be comfortable." Other people say, "Hey, forget all that stuff. I just want to feel secure. If I was secure, then I'd have peace of mind."

All of us in life have learned to take different words that we call emotions and to give them levels of importance. That is, we have learned to value different emotions at different levels of intensity. See, all of these emotions, for most people, are pretty much pleasurable. Think about it: feeling successful, feeling outrageous, feeling adventurous, feeling love, feeling comfortable, feeling secure. But you don't value all these states at the same level.

So, how can we use this understanding to affect our lives? Well, we all have what we call a hierarchy of values that is guiding our everyday focus. In other words, on the last tape, we talked about the fact that at any moment in time, human beings are deleting most of what's going on around them. We're not paying attention to everything. We only pay attention to a small band of our experience. What we pay attention to, what we focus on, is based on our values. Our values tell us what states we should pay attention to because they're going to lead to lots of pleasure. And we also have some values that we pay attention to because they're the painful values. They're the states that we think will be most painful, and we want to avoid them at any cost.

We call these two types of values moving towards values. Those would be states like love, attraction, power, success, adventure, happiness, security. You get the idea. States that would create pleasure if you were to experience them. Those are values or states we try to move towards. We'll try and get in our life. We also have a set of values, a twin target that we're trying to avoid. We call those moving away from values. Those would be states like frustration, or anger, or physical pain, or depression. Do you get the idea? States that you, again, would try to avoid.

Now, even those states, you do not value equally. Let me ask you a question: Which of these states would you avoid most? Which would you do the most to avoid: frustration, anger, physical pain, humiliation, embarrassment, or depression? Let me go through them again. Which one of these states would you do the most to avoid having to experience? Frustration, the emotion of feeling totally frustrated? Anger, feeling totally angry? Physical pain? The feelings of humiliation, embarrassment, or the feeling of being depressed?

Now, again, not only would you pick one of those as the one you'd avoid most, but you would literally put those in an order, or what we call a hierarchy of importance. That is, which ones would you do the most to avoid? A ladder of importance.

So, try this, if you would, in your mind. Imagine that here's how your brain works. Your brain is all the time trying to do virtually anything it can to avoid major painful experiences. You'd agree with me on that by now, wouldn't you? And it's trying to do almost anything it can to gain pleasure. So, whenever something comes up in life, let's say you've got an opportunity to go skydiving, how does your brain decide whether it's going to do this or not?

Well, it does it first by evaluating. That's what it does. Evaluating, valuing the experience. And what your brain does is say, "Is this going to lead to pleasure or to pain?" Now, part of how it does that is it looks at what you think is important in life. Now, if in your life, you've gotten all kinds of, let's say, acknowledgment and rewards for being outrageous and playful and adventurous, it's highly likely, and maybe you've done some experiences where maybe you were afraid, but gosh, after you did it, you felt so incredible that your brain made a neural association that said, "Adventure means total pleasure. I mean, ecstasy."

Now, if that's true, it's highly likely on your values list. In other words, on the priorities that you hold in your life of what to move towards. Am I making sense? In other words, the states you'll do a lot to gain. It's likely that adventure and outrageousness are going to be high on the list. Does that make sense? Let's say freedom, outrageousness, and power, and excitement. Let's say those are on your list. It's also highly likely that up at the top is probably not security, right? Because maybe you've gotten reinforced that security is nice, but, you know, it also can be a prison.

Now, think about the personality of that person. Person who's, let's say, number one value in life is adventure. And as you go down their list, if you get to the bottom of their list, maybe they got something like 25 levels down is something they call security. Can you get an idea what that person's personality might be like? If you ask them, said, "Hey, let's go skydiving." What do you think the response might be? They might get a little scared, but also, are they going to be interested? You better believe it, because it appeals to their values. In other words, it appeals to what their brain is linked up will lead to pleasure.

Now, what if at the same time, you have somebody sitting right next to them who you also invite to go skydiving, but their number one value in life is security. That's number one. And the thing they'll avoid most in life is the possibility of physical pain or fear. Well, guess what? It's pretty clear that they're not going to go skydiving with you. Or if they do, it's not going to be based on their desire. It's kind of because they got dragged there. Maybe what they did is somebody threatened them physically if they didn't go skydiving, they'd hurt them. In which case, that seemed more scary than the other process.

The point is that if you know a person's values, you can pretty well predict, overall, the basic direction of their life. Does that make sense? If I told you I know someone whose number one value in life is freedom, and that's the primary focus of their life, does that kind of give you an idea of how they probably approach their life? What also they're sensitized to? They're probably pretty sensitized to losing their freedom, aren't they? They don't want anything to be taken away. How do you think they feel about commitment? Well, it's highly likely, not in every case, but highly likely, that's something that sometimes they're a bit concerned about because it might be a constraint.

Now, what if I told you I know this other person whose number one value is security? How do you think, can you picture how they would approach their life? What kind of relationships they might have? How they would look at activities and possibility? Quite different, wouldn't you agree?

Now, what would happen if one day we took somebody whose number one value in life was security, let's say you went down their list of importance and you got down to adventure was like at the bottom at 25. And one day you swapped them. You took security off the top, put on the bottom of the list, put adventure on the top. Would that change their personality any? You better believe it. It literally changes the priorities of their entire life. It changes the way they look at everything, the way they evaluate everything, their physical actions, their behavior, their ultimate destiny.

And by the way, that's what we do in our seminar, Your Date with Destiny. Here's a little commercial for you. But that's literally what we do. We take people who go through the whole university, and we commit four days of that university program to Date with Destiny, where we find out exactly what a person's present values are. We find out what is it that they want most in life, and they may not even be aware of that consciously. And then we also find out what are the things they're trying to avoid, because our whole lives are shaped by what we want most, but also what we fear most.

Then, after we do that, we find out what are the triggers that cause someone to really be able to feel good or bad in their lives. What are the rules they have for these values? And then we have them design their life's purpose, at least as it is right now. And the essence of that is really finding out what is most important to you. What is your life really going to be about? And then finally, we have them design their new values so that their values literally pull them in the direction of their goals, the direction of their life purpose.

Because for most people, there are conflicts. On the one side, they have success as their number one value in life, and on the other side, they have fear of rejection as the number one value they're trying to avoid. Do those two go together? You better believe you're gonna have some problems. That person is never going to succeed because they're going to be so afraid of failure, they'll start to succeed, and then they'll sabotage. They've got conflicts. Sometimes our values literally pull us apart.

I call it the Gary Hart syndrome, where somebody's got two different value systems. I mean, think about it. Here's this young man growing up named Gary Hart, who went to church and was taught that he shouldn't even dance if he was a good Christian. Simultaneously, had these other role models out here that were telling him that Warren Beatty was the lifestyle that he should have. Now, all of a sudden, he literally had two different value systems within himself, pulling him apart. And that's what causes a lot of people to sabotage.

So, I've given you a little commercial from your Date with Destiny. But beyond that, let me tell you what we're going to do right now. I want you to understand the power of understanding your values and using them. The first key is to know what they are. How do we find out what our values are?

Well, first thing you've got to do is ask a simple question of yourself. And it's a different question for different types of values. If you want to find out your moving towards values, the values you're trying to get to, the experiences of pleasure you want, you simply ask yourself the question, and you might want to stop the tape even to write this down or remember it. Say it to yourself again and again: "What's most important to me in blank?"

"What's most important to me in blank?" In other words, if I say, "What's most important to me in my life?" I'm going to get my life values. So, you may say, "What's most important to you in life?" I might say, "Contribution, making a difference, growth, happiness, joy, physical health, being vibrant, being strong, being passionate, making a difference." All of these elements turn me on. Those are the states that really drive me as a human being.

Now, what you do is you write those down one at a time. You say, "What else is really important in my life? What else is most important to me in my life?" And you write them all down. Now, something may come up when you do this. You might say, "Well, what's most important in my life is family." Or, "What's most important in my life is some people say money." Or, "What's most important in my life is being successful." Well, being successful is a value. It's a feeling. It's a state. But money and family are what we call means values. And what you want to find out are what are your ends values.

Let me clarify and listen carefully, please. You don't want family just to have family. The reason you want to have family is because of the states you think you'll get by having a great family. Maybe the states by having family that you get are love, or security, or closeness, or spiritual connection. I don't know what it is for you personally. Maybe it's contribution. But family is a means to an end. Are you following me? It's like if you ask some people, "What's the most important in life?" They go, "In my car." You know. Rather than saying, "You look pretty shallow," you say, "Okay, well, great. What do you get out of your car?" And I go, "Well, freedom." See, what they really want is freedom. The car is nothing but a means to an end.

And what we want to find out are what are your ends values. What are the states that you want most? Money is not an end. It's a means. The only reason people want money is what they think money will give them, which many times it doesn't. But they think, "Okay, if I have money, then I'd have more power, or I'd have more choice, or I could contribute, or I'd be more free," or whatever the case may be. They only want money for its ends.

So, if you write down something like family or a relationship, you don't want relationship. You want what you think a relationship will give you. So, write down that, "What will you get out of a relationship? What's the feelings that you want?"

Now, once you've asked this question, let me clarify again: "What's most important to me in..." So, if I want my life's values, I say, "What's most important to me in my life?" What if I want to find out my values in business? Then I'd say, "Well, what's most important to me in my career or in my business?" And I begin to write down, "What else is important in my business?" Or, "What's important for me in a company I work with?" If I'm going to go to work for a company, what would be most important to me? And I began to make a list.

So, you might say, "Well, there's a chance to express myself, the ability to contribute, the chance to make a difference." You can find out your values in a relationship by saying, "What's most important to me in a personal relationship?" And you might find there you say, "Well, gosh, love, freedom, power, passion." I don't know what it is for you. But you make a list. So, that's step one: Ask yourself the question, make a list.

Step two is, what you're going to want to find out is what are the values or states you're trying to avoid. Because remember, your brain will do more to avoid pain than it'll ever do to gain pleasure. So, you better find out what those values are, too. So, let's take a look at those. What are the feelings or states you do almost anything to avoid? Make a list. What are some of the emotional feelings? Some of the emotions? Some of the feelings in your body you do almost anything to avoid?

Now, some people have a hard time with this one. But if you have a hard time, just ask yourself, "What are some of the feelings I've had that I hate? That I don't want to experience? What are some times in my life I felt really lousy?" And you'll come up with frustration, anger, humiliation, embarrassment, depression, overwhelm, you know, disappointment. I don't know what it is for you. But make a list of those as well.

So, that's step one to finding out your values. Why do you want to find out your values? Because you want to know what your brain is focused on. See, if you know your values, you know what your brain is paying attention to most. If you change your values, you change your destiny, because you change what you focus and pay attention to daily, and what you notice, and what you behave and act on, and therefore the results in your life. You literally set a whole new set of causes in motion. You get a whole new set of effects. It takes you in a new direction, and ultimately, a new destiny.

But rather than going and changing them, let's start with finding out what they are. Because you may find some conflicts. You may find you have something on your list like, maybe number one on your list is something like success, but health is not even on your list. Well, guess what? Can you really be successful without health? So, this is the kind of thing that'll give you some clarity. You need to at least take a look.

So, the first thing you've got to do is find out what your values are, so you at least know what direction your brain and body are being pulled in life. And by the way, I got a question for you: Where did your values come from in the first place? Are they the result of intelligent choices in a master plan? Hardly. In most cases, the values, the things that you pay attention as being most important, are the result of a mismatch of human experience, of you doing things and having painful experiences and pleasurable experiences, and your brain just making a jumble of neural associations. Isn't that really true?

Where'd your values come from? Maybe from your parents. And how do your values get installed? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Values come out of pain and pleasure. That's how they happened. You were growing up, and when you did things that your parents really liked, your mom, who's probably one of the major people, traditionally at least, to install values in you, you did something she liked, and you immediately got rewarded. You got attention, you got held, you got loved. Simultaneously, if you did something you didn't like, that wasn't in alignment with what they thought was right or their values, then immediately what happened there was rejection. You either were ignored, or you were scolded, or maybe even physically were given pain. And that's how the process started.

But it didn't end there. Then you had the unique experience of going out in the real world, where you met other people who had different values, other kids. And there your values got shaped again, because what happened is these little kids, you had to play by their rules too, or they had to play by yours. And you had to figure out how that worked out. And by the way, if you didn't work with them at all on their rules, if you didn't live by some of their values in life, invariably there was pain, wasn't there? You weren't their friend. They either hurt you physically or verbally, or worse, they ignored you. The ultimate pain. Ah, interesting. And we all want to avoid pain. So, we sometimes kind of change our values just a little bit based upon who our friends were.

And that continued while you grew up, didn't it? See, who you were around on a consistent basis has shaped your values. Your teachers have affected your values, whether you wanted them to or not, and whether they wanted to or not. They came through and what they rewarded you for, what they acknowledged you for, how they communicated with intensity, what they got you to link pleasure and pain to. I mean, that's the basis of all value structures that we have within ourselves.

Did it end there? No. You went to work. Well, you learned a whole another set of value structures, because in order to succeed and move up the corporate ladder, let's say, for example, there are certain ways you got to be. And you either decide you're not going to play the game, which creates values, or you decide you're going to play the game, and then you make some shifts in your values. Now, that doesn't mean they're bad shifts. Maybe they're empowering shifts. Sometimes you develop better values. But the point is that they are affected, because if you don't live by those values, you're probably not going to get promoted, because the people who decide who they're going to promote base it on their own values.

So, constantly, they're being shifted. They're being affected by role models, by your heroes, and sometimes by anti-heroes. A lot of kids today, they see their hero, let's say, as a musician, and they love the way this guy can play music. But then they pick up a lot of other things this person does as well. They say, "That's what he does, and he takes drugs." And maybe that's what I should do too. Values are affected consistently. Values are affected by the goals you've achieved. You set a goal, and all of a sudden, you achieve it. Once you achieve it, that's not enough. In fact, it kind of affects your self-esteem. You feel a little better. You're now at this new level. What do you do? You look for the next goal. And pretty soon, within a few years, the things that you're living now are so different than where you were four or five years ago, that your brain says, "Hey, you know, I could never do that. I mean, look where I am now." See, values are being affected all the time.

The key is awareness. To make sure you know, because they are the crux. Remember, the brain is always trying to avoid pain and gain pleasure. The only way it decides what to do is it goes inside your head and says, "How does this relate to the experience this person has had? Will it relate to the kinds of things this person thinks are pleasurable? Or will it create the kind of pain this person wants to avoid?" And how do we work all this stuff out? These are the twin targets in your brain that are driving you.

So, for now, the thing I want you to understand is they drive you. And I want you to understand what they are. That's the most important thing. And just looking at your values sometimes, you can make a change. You can see in your head, "This is creating problems." And as soon as your brain links that up, sometimes that's enough by itself for your brain to say, "Hey, that's creating pain. I don't want that." And you'll be able to change them and design some new ones.

Now, in this program, we're not going to go through in detail how to do that, because that's like a three-day process by itself. But you can do it consciously, just by making the decision. And I want you to know that as well.

Let me tell you what I think is even more important. And the real primary purpose of this tape. Once you know what your values are, that's great. Even if you don't change your values at all, there is something you must do to take control of your destiny and your life. And that is, you must understand the power of your beliefs to impact the quality of your life. Your beliefs and values work together to determine how you're going to feel.

What do I mean? Well, let me ask you a question. For example, is it possible for someone to have a value? Let's say, one of the things they value is success in life. A classic example of, say, a business person. A lot of business people, I say, "Hey, what's most important to you?" They go, "Success." Okay, that's wonderful. So, the question I have for them is, "What has to happen for you to be successful?"

What I'm finding out is this: the target is the values, but how do they know if they've hit the target or not? That's based on your beliefs. And your beliefs are generalizations that you've made, rules you've set up for yourself about what has to happen for you to experience a certain result in your life. Am I making sense? In other words, we have rules. Rules are like what I call "if-then." "Well, if I make enough money, then I'm successful." Or, "If enough people like me, then I'm successful." Or, "If I'm happy, then I'm successful." Or, "If I grow and learn, then I'm successful." People have these rules within themselves. Or, "If you respect me, then you never raise your voice to me." Or, "If you like me, then you'll kiss me." People have all kinds of interesting rules.

But you know what's interesting? All of us in the world have different rules. We may even have the same values, but have different rules about what has to happen for those things to be met. Let me give you a classic example. I was doing a seminar once, a Date with Destiny seminar, and we had a group of people there who are all from the same organization. And the CEO of this company, a Fortune 500 executive, incredibly powerful, successful man by virtually everybody's standards, my standards, by the way. Incredible family life, so close to his children and his wife, incredible. A real leader and role model of possibility, a communicator who could really articulate what made a difference in his life, and really had a powerful and positive impact on the people around him. Extremely successful in business, extremely successful financially.

And I turned to this gentleman and I said, "Are you successful?" Because that was real high on his list. It was like number one, if I remember correctly. And he turned to me and said, "No." Now, here's the most important value for him, is pleasure. It's the state he wants most. And yet, he doesn't feel like he has it. I said, "Well, how come? Why do you say that? Why aren't you successful?" You know what he said to me? He told me his belief. He said, "Well, in order to be successful, if you're successful, then..." and he went through this long list. He said, "Then you've got to make this much money." And I think it was like three and a half million or four and a half million dollars a year, and he was only earning two million dollars a year at the time. Only. It was, "You have to always be up and never feel down or disappointed." How's that for setting yourself up for failure? It was, "You have to be totally physically fit," which for him meant not just being at your ideal weight, but having a body fat ratio, I forget what it was, something like 14 or 13 or 12 percent. And of course, he was about four points above that. You know. And you have to... I've forgotten all the list. I mean, it was unbelievable. This man's rules about what has to happen to succeed, his beliefs were keeping him from experiencing the level of joy and pleasure he deserves to have.

Now, do you ever do this to yourself? You better believe you do. But you've got to find out where it is so you can make some changes. That's the purpose of today's tape.

Now, let's take another example. I turned to another guy in the room, because, by the way, the room was aghast. They could not believe this guy didn't feel successful. So, I turned to somebody else in the room and I said, "Sir..." And the person I picked, by the way, was probably the most vivacious, outrageous person in the room. I picked him because he's bouncing off the walls, basically. And I said, "Sir, are you successful?" He said, "Of course, I am." And I said, "Well, how do you know?" And by the way, that's how you get someone's beliefs. You ask them the question, "How do you know?" When they tell you something, "How do you know?" That's true. And they'll tell you the belief that's behind it. He said, "Well, I know I'm successful because every day above ground is a great day." I said, "What?" He said, "Well, look, if I believe that every day above ground is a great day, that's my basic belief about life. And so, if I look down and I'm above ground, then it's a great day. If it's a great day, then I'm successful." That's logical, isn't it? He's like bouncing off the walls. See, his rules for success, his beliefs, what is required for him to feel successful, are very easy to meet.

Now, you might say, "Well, that's really stupid. He'll never succeed." He's a very successful person. Listen, a lot of people think that, "Gosh, if I feel successful, I'll lose my motivation." No, if you feel too comfortable, you lose your motivation. But as long as you believe that you must continue to grow to be happy, and as long as you keep setting your sights on new goals and you enjoy the process, you have some real power for your life.

See, most people in life do one or the other, right? And I used to be that way. I was real outcome-oriented. My whole thing was, "Succeed." So, I went for the outcome, and I went for it, and I achieved my outcomes. But then I achieved my outcome, and my brain would go, "Is this all there is?" And I didn't have happiness along the way. What I learned is that life is a process. You've got to learn to enjoy the flight, not just being there, or not just getting to some place or destination. Life is not a destination. Life is a process that needs to be enjoyed on an ongoing basis.

And you know what the problem is? Most of us in life have values we didn't design. They're taking us in a direction that we have no clue about. I mean, we got security up there, we have no idea the fact that that's shutting us down. Or we got adventure, and we don't have it tempered with intelligence, let's say. And so we're out there like a maniac, doing crazy things. Or we've got something like success, but on the other side, we've got fear of rejection and failure. So, sure enough, we start to succeed, and then we sabotage because we want to feel the pain of failure. And we run into these things where we sabotage and sabotage and feel lousy, keep all the stuff happening all the time. That's problem number one.

But even worse, on top of that, we got all these beliefs about what we have to do to succeed that are absurd. We make it so difficult. Hey, listen, remember, every state that you want to feel, all those values that you want to get, you can have them right now. I mean, think about it. If you wanted to feel successful, you could do it right now. Try it. Sit right now the way you'd be sitting if you felt successful. Oh, come on, do it. Do it. Do it. Don't just sit there and listen to me. Sit up. Come on. Sit the way you'd be sitting if you felt absolutely totally happy and successful. Breathe right now the way you'd be breathing if you felt totally happy and successful. Put the kind of look on your face, maybe the smile, like you'd have if you felt totally happy and successful. Put a little strut in your shoulders like you would if you felt totally happy and successful. Think about what you'd say to yourself if you really felt totally happy and successful. What would you picture? What would you see?

And you know what? If you work at this, can you feel successful right now? You better believe you can. Remember, all the emotions you could ever have are nothing but physiological storms in your brain. Put your body in the right place, focus on things the right way, you feel them. Now, you don't have to do anything to feel those things. But here's the problem in life. Most people have set it up so it's almost impossible to win the game of life. They've set up the rules of this game so it's so tough to win that they wonder why they're disappointed or frustrated or angry all the time. It's because they've got lousy beliefs, and they got values somebody else created.

Where'd your beliefs come from? You didn't create them. You learned them from your environment, the people around you. See, what my whole life is about now, my primary focus in our Destiny Technologies, is getting people to design values and beliefs that automatically make it easy to feel alive and win every single day, no matter what happens. Because we can't always control our environment. Hey, you can't always control the wind, but you can control your sails. And so, what I've learned to do is set up values and beliefs that empower me. And every day, I'm making more distinctions with myself, as well as the people that I share within seminars.

So, I want you to take a really good look. What are your core beliefs? Now, I'll tell you, there are two types of beliefs, and we'll wrap this up and get you doing an assignment. Belief number one are what I call global beliefs. Global beliefs are giant generalizations you've made about life, or people, or things. In fact, global beliefs are usually languaged in the form of "life is," or "I'll give you the words," or "is." That's why I look at global beliefs. So, "life is," "people are," "I am." Does that give you an idea of the kind of beliefs I'm talking about?

So, what are some of the beliefs you have about who you are? And do they govern how much of your ability or skill you really use? How much of your personal power you tap into? What if you've got a belief that says, "Well, I'm not very intelligent anyway," or "I'm not very skilled," or "I don't have enough education," or "I don't have enough ability"? Do those beliefs affect the quality of your life and the success that you have or don't have? Do they affect what you're willing to try or not try in your life? You better believe they do.

Hey, I told you where I was years ago. I wasn't exactly a picture of success. Virtually every area of my life, I was unhappy with. And the primary reason was I had a bunch of values that were pulling me in opposite directions. And I aligned those. Now, you can do that a little bit on your own here, as it is. But I'll tell you what I did that was equally important that you can absolutely do today, and that is, I changed some of my core beliefs. I had global beliefs like, "Well, I'm not really just smart enough," or "I'm too young." Now, think about that. "I don't have the education." And by having those kinds of beliefs, it kept me from giving a thousand percent. I thought, "How can I share this with other people? How can I go teach these psychiatrists when I don't have a PhD? I mean, they're not going to listen to me. Besides that, I'm too young. Besides that, I don't have enough money." I had all these beliefs, one after another, after another, that kept me from doing because, "I'm not quite smart enough anyway." With those kinds of beliefs, I literally shut down my ability.

Hey, remember, whether you believe something is true or you believe it's not, you're right. Your beliefs are literally the floodgate that opens up your power and possibility. Limiting beliefs shut you down and immediately chain you to limitation. If you want the key, all you have to do is adopt a new belief. And you can do it literally in a moment or two, because you know what? You have conflicting beliefs in you already. You've been taught things like, "Look before you leap," but you also believe, "He who hesitates is lost." Isn't that interesting? So, which one do you pick?

See, most people think of beliefs as being like permanent things. They are not permanent. And in tomorrow's session, we're going to show you exactly how to change virtually any limiting belief. For now, though, you want to identify what they are and see what the challenge is. Do you have some beliefs about, let's say, other people? "People are honest." "People are dishonest." "People take advantage." "People are givers." Does it make a difference which of those beliefs you subscribe to? Will it make a difference how you relate to people, how you treat others, and how they treat you, because of the way you perceive them before they even open their mouth?

I'll give you an example. What if you had a global belief that said this: "Martians steal." And let's say you walk in a room and, uh, as you walk in, you notice, "Hey, notice there's some Martians in here." And so, sure enough, you forget about it for a while because you're caught up in what you're doing. And then later on, you leave, and after you've left, you notice, "Oh my gosh, I forgot my purse. I forgot my wallet." You run back to the room, and guess what? Sure enough, that wallet or purse is missing. What is the first question, since we've already talked about questions, what's the first question that fires off in your mind? Tell me, "Which Martian took it?" It's not, "Where did I leave my purse or wallet?" It's, "Which Martian took it?"

See, our beliefs determine which questions we even are willing to ask. Interesting, huh? See, in the last tape, we talked, if you recall, on the questions that we ask determine what we focus on and what we feel. I'm here to tell you also that the beliefs you have determine which questions you're willing to even ask yourself, and which habitual questions you have. See, if you think that you're inferior, you're going to probably ask questions like, "Why do I always do this? How come I'm not enough?" And if you keep going, "How come I'm not enough?" your brain will go in there and search for reasons to show you why you're not enough, and you'll feel really wonderful. See, we've got to change our core beliefs. We've got to get beliefs that support us.

So, global beliefs: "Life is," "People are," "I am." Second kind of beliefs, we've already talked about. I call them rules. Rules are "if-then." You have rules for, "Well, if you love me, then you would do this." "If you appreciated me, then you would do that." "If you respected me, then you would do that." And you know what? People have different rules, don't they?

I'll give you an example. My wife, Becky, and I, when we first met, we both value respect. We think it's important. We grew up in families where it was highly valued, and that's where we got those values. The difference is, we have different rules about respect. I'll give you an example. My wife, Becky, grew up in a family where, by if you, first of all, respect was very, very important. If you got it, you had lots of pleasure, and if you didn't have respect, there was a lot of pain. Does that make sense? Now, so she learned through basically punishment and reward that respect was an important value to have, and it's built into her nervous system. She doesn't know why. She just got it in there, just like you don't know why your values are there.

What happened? Well, her beliefs or rules about respect are these: She was taught, "You never, ever raise your voice with a person if you respect them. Even if you're upset, you never do that." And of course, you'd never use anything that would even possibly be considered as profane language. Now, I grew up in a family whereby respect was very, very important, so was honesty. They were like tied together. And in my family, if you respect somebody, you've got to be honest with them. You've got to communicate how you really feel. You can't hide any of those feelings, and you'd express them with all the honest feelings you got. You're not to hide anything or hold anything back. In my family, that was considered to be lying, which would be major pain for you. So, you're supposed to express it. And it didn't matter if you raised your voice. In fact, that was called being real. You raised your voice, and if you got a little bit upset, you expressed that. You know, you might be wrong, and you knew you might be wrong, but you were at least willing to express it.

Well, you can imagine how these two went. In fact, in my family, if you didn't express what you really felt, you didn't feel any respect for that person, and they didn't respect you. Want to add some more of these rules? In my family, the bottom line was this: there was only one way you could be totally disrespectful, besides not communicating, and that was in the middle of an argument to get up and walk out of the room. My wife, Becky, grew up in a family where if you were to maintain your own respect, if somebody began to be disrespectful by raising their voice, there's only one way you could keep your self-respect, and that was to get up and leave the room.

Now, you can imagine how these two fabulous value systems with these rules interacted when we first got together. You talk about hairy fights. We're talking major. Now, after a while, we began to discover each other's rules, and we said, "Okay, we need to create some new rules for our lives, because we're big kids now. We can create our own. We don't have to be living the scripts of our past." And so, I agreed not to raise my voice to certain levels of intensity, and she agreed not to get up and leave out of the room. Of course, I remember one time, something happened, I got upset, raised my voice, you got it, left the room. I yelled to her, I said, "You said you weren't going to leave the room!" I said, "Oops."

So, I'm not saying it's easy, but you gotta at least notice what's going on with your values and beliefs, because they control your life. Hey, any upset you've ever had with another person comes down to a rules upset. You have rules about how they should behave or act, or treat, or speak, or do something, and they're not living by the rules you have. How can you expect somebody to live by your rules when you haven't communicated what they are? And besides that, are your rules really right? You say, "Of course, they are." Where'd they come from? Well, my learning and my growing up. Well, maybe it's time to reevaluate your rules and see if they make sense. Maybe you should make it easier to win the game of life and create rules for success, for example, a little bit easier things that you could experience daily. That way, you'd feel successful every day, instead of once every blue moon when you make eight billion dollars and are the king of the earth. See, take another look. That's what I'm asking you to do on this tape today.

And I know I've dumped a lot on you. I've dumped it here in one little tape, what we should do over a period of three days to a week. But you don't have to understand it all. Remember, we said in this program, is that each day we're just going to do a little bit more, make a few more distinctions. Just remember, distinctions are power. Just one more understanding, one more way of looking at something, one more distinction can change your whole life.

I want you to know, as you're going through this program, that if you think you have to understand all of this stuff, you're going to feel overwhelmed, because I'm putting more under this 30-day program than a person should be able to go through. I hope you'll go through this program again and again. I hope this won't be your only time to go through. I hope it'll become like a mental diet for you. Well, when you need to knock yourself back into shape, or even if you don't, if you want to be in condition. Hey, for me, I finally decided in order to achieve my life's goals, I had to put health at a higher level of value. And one of my rules is, I exercise every single day. Now, that was impossible. I mean, before, I would be lucky to get myself to do it once or twice a week. But I do that every day, and now my body and my energy levels are at a whole new level of conditioning, because I do it daily. And it doesn't take long. In fact, I'm addicted to it now. I love it. That would I was like the furthest person from that. You remember me, 38 pounds overweight, no desire to exercise in a million years. But I found the right exercise for myself, and I made it happen.

I also, every day, condition myself mentally and emotionally. I do what I call success conditioning. And this tape program offers you that same possibility. So, make sure you set yourself up to succeed.

Because some people evaluate God is this program working for me by, "Has my whole life changed already?" "Where day eight hasn't changed?" That may not be the best question to ask, and that may not be the best evaluation. Maybe if you've made any new understandings that you're able to use at all, or if each day you just make one more distinction, then you've learned one more thing and you get a chance to use one more thing, then I'd say you've succeeded.

See, for me, success, my beliefs about success are, if I learn something from the situation, I succeeded. See, I used to be afraid of failure because, God, that was ultimately painful. I now see it as impossible for me to fail. Why? Because in order for me to fail, I'd have to learn nothing. And if at any moment I realize I haven't learned something from it, then I just learned that I didn't learn. You know, and I'll turn it around. I'll say, "Okay, what can I learn?" As soon as I ask, "What can I learn?" I'll come up with an answer. So set yourself up so that you can win this game of life. Be good to yourself.

Here's your assignment. Assignment number one: I want you to take out your success journal and I want you to write down the answer to the question, "What's most important to me in my life?" And make sure you write down *n's* values, not *means* values. Remember, not money and cars. What would money and cars and family and friends and relationships give you? So then you write down the states: love, passion, happiness, security, whatever it is for you. Then, once you've written these down, put them in order. What's number one of importance? What's number two of importance? What's number three in importance? Because then you'll understand how your brain makes decisions.

See, if on your list is something like, number one is success, and you go down the list, the number five is, let's say, love, then it's obvious that if somebody asks you to come to the office at ten o'clock at night, and your family wants you to be there as well, it's pretty clear what you're more than likely going to decide. Most of the time, you're going to go to the office because that's success, because you already feel like love is not quite as important. If love is number one and success is number five, there's a good chance you're going to say, "Look, I need to stay here with my family," unless your family says, "Hey, we support you, we love you, go for it. I know you need to do that." Are you following me? You have to understand your life's priorities because the priorities you've set for yourself are directing your life.

So, what's most important to me in my life? Make a list. Or you could do it: your values in a relationship. What's most important to me in my relationships? Then go for the moving away from values. What are the emotions I'd like to do almost anything to avoid? Put them in order and ask yourself with each one, "Which one I do the most to avoid?" "What's the one I do the next most to avoid?" So you can see what pain your brain is always evaluating. "If I do that, will it mean that?" Well, then I won't do it. So you need to know what the targets are that are driving your life. What is the carrot in front of you, and what are the sticks behind you that are driving your behavior?

And then ask yourself, under each one of these values, "What has to happen for me to feel whatever it is?" So again, if the number one value is success, "What do I have to have happen in order for me to feel successful?" Real good question to ask. Or if it's love, "What has to happen for me to be willing to feel loved?" "What has to happen for me to feel like I really have that level of love in my life?" And find out what your rules are. You might find it in order for you to feel loved, people have to tell you they love you every single day, and they have to touch you and kiss you and do 19 billion things. Maybe at that time, you say, "Look, I am loved. How do I know I'm loved? Because I'm alive." Or, "How do I know I'm loved? Because I'm a loving person. So therefore, I'm loved." Wouldn't that be a better belief?

See, the gentleman set it up: "At every day above ground is a great day." And if I'm above ground, I'm successful. He set himself up to feel successful every day. He's above ground, which means every day he's alive. Not a bad strategy. See, you want to set it up for yourself so you can win too. Create a game that works. Those are your assignments. Find it. You're towards values. Find out you're away from values. Put them in their order of importance. Find out your key beliefs and then mess with them. Go in there and take a look at some rules and say, "This doesn't make any sense anymore. I don't know where I got this. Here's how I really want to evaluate whether I'm successful, whether I'm loving, whether or not I feel joy. I want to make it harder to feel pain."

I used to get embarrassed if anybody even questioned what I said. Now my new belief is, "What does it take for me to feel embarrassed?" "Hey, I have to not live by what I believe is right." That would embarrass me. Wouldn't that be a better belief about what it would take for you to be embarrassed? It means it would be a lot harder for you to get embarrassed again. Again, I know there's a lot here. Do as much as you want, but at least do the minimum exercise we've described. Remember, simple awareness alone can change your life massively.

When you come back tomorrow, we're going to show you how to change these core beliefs. Once you've decided on some new ones, how to change the beliefs that are limiting you and install some beliefs that absolutely support you with a brand new technology. Till then, go for it. Have fun today. Pay attention to your beliefs. Empower yourself. And remember, live with passion.

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Thank you.

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