Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins: Summary and Notes

After the war, a gasoline shortage left him unable to drive for food, so he attached a small motor to his bicycle. Neighbors wanted one too. Short of capital for a motor plant, he wrote a personal letter to each of the 18,000 bicycle shop owners in Japan and convinced 5,000 of them to advance the money. When the first motorbike proved too big and bulky, he made a lighter version, the Super Cub, which earned him the Emperor's Award. Robbins reports that Honda Corporation now employs more than 100,000 people in the United States and Japan.

He closes the section with six keys: remember that a decision is a tool you can use in any moment, and that a real decision is measured by new action; make decisions intelligently but quickly, and never leave the scene of a decision without taking a specific action toward it; make decisions often; learn from your decisions by asking what is good about a setback; stay committed to your decisions but flexible in your approach; and enjoy making decisions, since the next person, phone call or book could open the floodgates.

"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."

Section threeThe Pain-Pleasure Principle

After quotations from Jeremy Bentham on the two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure, Robbins states the driving force behind all human behavior: everything we do, we do out of the need to avoid pain or the desire to gain pleasure. He calls it the triple P, the pain-pleasure principle, and says it governs choices from what to wear to whom to marry. Procrastination is his first example. People put off an action because they link more pain to doing it than to delaying it, until the balance flips, as it does for taxes around April 14th. People leave a destructive relationship when they link pain to its past, present and future at once.

Two complications follow. Most people decide based on short-term pain and pleasure, while most things worth having require breaking through short-term pain for long-term pleasure. And people are driven by their perceptions: the fear that something will lead to pain and the belief that something will lead to pleasure. That is why willpower alone fails. Someone who links pain to eating the foods that support them will diet, push and discipline themselves, and stay overweight. Robbins calls these linkages neuro-associations and says people can condition themselves to link pain or pleasure to whatever they choose.

His own example: growing up, his family sometimes could not afford the foods everyone wanted, so as an adult with a substantial income he overate, gaining and then losing 38 pounds. He realized he linked pain to leaving food on his plate. He cranked up his favorite music, worked himself into a peak state and pushed the plate away again and again until it felt great to leave food on it.

The brain forms these links automatically, searching for a cause whenever it feels significant pain or pleasure, and it can link the wrong cause. A baby who falls off the edge of a couch may decide that couches cause pain. An artist Robbins knew had avoided relationships for 12 years because her brain linked a painful breakup to her own passion, when the real cause was that she and her partner had different values and rules. A first failed speech can create a lifelong link between public speaking and pain. Robbins rejects the idea that people are purely conditioned, but argues that conditioning takes over by default unless people override it. He says his own decision to link incredible pleasure to learning shaped his destiny.

His advice: become aware of when neuro-associations form, and watch your focus in those moments. Someone who comes home angry and keeps looking at a spouse's face while still steamed creates a false link between that face and anger. Question false associations, and change what you link pain and pleasure to by focusing on the price of inaction and the pleasure of acting now.

"The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you."

Section fourBeliefs: The Power to Create and to Destroy

Beliefs, Robbins says, separate a Mother Teresa from a Charles Manson and can change the body in moments. He reports an interview with Dr. Bernie Siegel, the Yale professor, who shared research on people with multiple personality disorders whose eye color changed from brown to blue as their personalities changed, whose physical markings disappeared and reappeared, and whose diabetes or high blood pressure came and went with the personality. Robbins presents this as Siegel's research and gives no further source.

He defines a belief as a feeling of certainty about what something means, supported by references, the life experiences that hold it up. His image is a tabletop: an idea is a tabletop with no legs, and it becomes a belief once references give it legs. Someone who believes they are sexy has legs such as a mate's compliments and a body kept in shape. A person who sees themselves as a failure will mold the life they predict; a person who believes in their capacity to learn, change and adapt has unlimited possibilities.

To change a belief, Robbins returns to the pain-pleasure principle: link massive pain to the old belief, in the past, present and future, and tremendous pleasure to a new one. Create doubt, the way people once came to doubt beliefs they now find embarrassing, such as meeting Russians and finding them people just like themselves. A belief reinforced by stronger references becomes a conviction. His example is a decision to stop eating meat, strengthened by talking to vegetarians and studying the effect of animal protein, and turned into a conviction by a visit to a slaughterhouse. He suggests visiting a shelter to build a conviction against drugs, or an intensive care wing to quit smoking, and then taking action, since each action raises emotional intensity.

The section ends with an exercise. Take five minutes to list every empowering belief, then an equal amount of time for every disempowering one. Circle the three most empowering and ask how each strengthens your life. Circle the two most limiting and knock their legs out with questions: how is this belief ridiculous or absurd, was the person I learned it from worth modeling, and what keeping it will cost emotionally, physically, financially and in relationships. Then write replacements. When results fall short, ask what you would have to believe to succeed, and when you feel bad, ask what you would have to believe to feel this way.

"Beliefs have the awesome potential to create or to destroy."

Section fiveNeuro-Associative Conditioning: The Six Master Steps

Robbins opens with a joke: how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but it is very expensive, it takes a long time, and the light bulb has to want to change. He uses it to attack the cultural myth that change must be slow and costly, and argues that every change happens in a moment; what takes time is getting ready. His method is neuro-associative conditioning, or NAC, a step-by-step process for linking massive pleasure to what you want and pain to what you need to avoid, so the nervous system runs on automatic pilot without constant willpower. He calls it a syntax, an order and sequence for using any technique for change, and illustrates syntax with the difference between "the dog bit Johnny" and "Johnny bit the dog."

Two beliefs come first: that you can change right now, and that you are responsible for your own change. Then the six steps.

Step one: decide what you really want and what is preventing you from having it now. In private counseling, Robbins says, many people spend 15 minutes describing what they do not want. You get what you focus on, so specify what you want, and find the disempowering beliefs in the way.

Step two: get leverage. Change is a question of motivation, and he notes that anyone with a gun to their head could find a way to change their state. Ask pain-inducing questions about what not changing will cost mentally, emotionally, physically, financially and spiritually, then pleasure-associating questions about how changing would feel and what momentum it could create.

Step three: interrupt the limiting pattern. When clients began crying in his office, he would stand up and shout "Excuse me" and add that they had not started yet, and they would regain control at once. He suggests yelling "Hallelujah, my feet don't stink today" when depressed. For a memory of a boss yelling, run it as a movie, turn it into a cartoon, play it backward fast, add rainbow colors, Mickey Mouse ears, a Pinocchio nose and goofy music, and repeat at least a dozen times, like scratching a needle across a record.

Step four: create a new empowering alternative. Robbins calls the lack of a replacement probably the major reason changes stay temporary. Someone who quits smoking needs new ways to relax; worry can be replaced with massive action and a plan. Model people who have made lasting changes.

Step five: condition the new pattern until it is consistent. Rehearse the new behavior with emotional intensity until the brain carves a pathway. He says he read that Larry Bird, filming a soft drink commercial in which he had to miss a jump shot, made nine baskets in a row before he could miss. Reward small milestones immediately: a day without smoking, a plate pushed away.

Step six: test the new pattern for ecology and effectiveness. The new behavior must keep the benefits the old one provided and fit your values. Robbins gives a five-point check: pain is linked to the old pattern, pleasure to the new one, the new pattern aligns with your values, beliefs and rules, the original benefits are maintained, and when you imagine the old trigger you feel certain you will use the new pattern.

"Every change you've ever made in your life actually happened in a moment, didn't it?"

Section sixYour Magnificent Obsession

The final exercise, introduced with quotations from Carl Sandburg, Donald Curtis and Victor Hugo, is designed to build a compelling future. Robbins argues that everyone already has goals, since the mind always pursues something, but most people's goals are to pay the bills, get by or make it through the day: caught in the trap of "making a living rather than designing a life." Current conditions, he says, reflect the size and quality of the goals people focus on, and every goal must be followed by a plan and massive, consistent action. Many people stop setting goals to avoid the pain of disappointment; champions keep their vision and change their approach as often as necessary.

The exercise covers four areas: personal development goals; career, business and economic goals; adventure or toy goals; and contribution goals. For each, brainstorm for at least five minutes without stopping, asking what you would want if you could not fail and skipping detail ("Dream House Big Garden SF" will do). Then give every goal a timeline of one, three, five, ten or 20 years, since goals are dreams with a deadline. Finally pick the single most important one-year goal in the category and spend two minutes writing a paragraph about why you are absolutely committed to it. His toy examples include a castle, a helicopter, racing camels between the pyramids and beating Michael Jordan one-on-one; his contribution examples include building a homeless shelter and helping clean up the oceans.

The result is four master one-year goals. The assignment is to rehearse and emotionally enjoy achieving each of them at least twice a day. Robbins says he did this himself: while living in the 400-square-foot apartment he pictured, in detail, a home he now owns, the Del Mar Castle, built in 1925, 10,000 square feet overlooking the ocean, down to a circular office he had never seen.

"Having a powerful and irresistible why will provide you with the necessary how."

Robbins adds that absolute confidence in these goals attracts the coaches and role models who can save years of trial and error, and tells the listener to start the process that day.

The program closesThe Closing Challenge

Robbins ends by repeating the challenge he issued at the start: take the skills from the program and use them. Ideas, techniques and skills are only as effective as the listener makes them, and he says there are no limits to how effective that can be. He asks the listener to claim this moment to make their own dreams real, says he hopes to meet them one day and hear their story, and signs off with "Till then, remember to live with passion."

"I challenge you to awaken that giant within you and discover how rich, how truly precious and passionate and fulfilling life can be."