Awaken The Giant Within

The sole purpose of Tony Robbins' book, Awaken the Giant, is to help people take control of their lives and achieve success. According to Robbins, people have trouble changing behaviors because they don't understand the reasons behind them. Several proven strategies are then discussed for making one's behavior conscious rather than unconscious. People can unlock seemingly endless possibilities for achievement when they remove the limiting thoughts that keep them stuck in their current circumstances. In Awaken the Giant Within, Robbins conveys this information in an easy-to-understand manner. Let’s take a small tour through the chapters to have a better understanding of the main messages.

Dream of Destiny:

Robbins goes on in this book about how each and every one of us had many dreams growing up but we’ve completely forgotten about them for a number of reasons. An essential factor in accomplishing those dreams and achieving those goals is change. Change is very essential in your pursuit of improving the quality of your life. Robbins provides us with a few steps to help us during this process.

1. Raise Your Standards:

Anthony states here that the very first step in improving the quality of your life is turning your “shoulds” into “musts”. Until you do that, nothing will improve because in order to get to where you want in life, you have to raise all of your standards. It only makes sense because you are aiming for the top, and the top can’t be reached with low energy and standards.

2. Change Your Limiting Belief:

To Anthony, failure is a state of mind. If you have limited yourself to a certain degree and believed that you will never improve beyond that point, then you never will. Once you acknowledge this fact, you will notice an instant change in things. So what you can do is set your mind to the following:

• Take action toward your dreams by reshaping and reforming your beliefs.
• Your life can be extraordinary if you choose to do so.
• Thoughts come to you, but they do not define you.
• If- and only if- you take Massive Action today, you can overcome any obstacle and have the life you desire.

3. Change Your Strategy:

Change your strategy by modeling the best. You need to work backward from what you've learned. Tony Robbins said, “success leaves clues.” Starting from scratch is incorrect. Make use of what others have already figured out, so you don't have to start from scratch. That way, you'll save time, and you'll find paths and approaches that actually work.

Decisions, The Pathway to Power:

We are what we decide. Decisions are one of the most vital things that you do in your life, whether big or small. So Robbins advises us to stay focused on becoming better decision-makers because that’s the only thing that matters when you’re at the beginning of your journey. He then continues to explain how making a lot of decisions is a great exercise for improving your decision-making abilities because you will be constantly learning from the wrong or bad ones.

The Force that Shapes Your Life:

Robbins talks about how we can use our emotions as a driving force that will turn us into fiercely dedicated people. Each emotion is linked to certain thoughts, if we managed to identify which of these emotions empower us, we can focus more on that and become stronger and have an easier path to success.

Belief System:

Here, Tony talks about two types of belief systems, the limiting belief system, and the empowering belief system. The only way to eliminate the Limiting belief system is to associate old beliefs with pain, and convince our minds that when we stick to the old limiting beliefs, we will not grow in life, and will never improve. Therefore, in order to grow and move forward in life, we must eliminate the old limiting beliefs. We will feel good about adopting a new empowering belief if we associate pleasure with it.

Conditioning:

Here Robbins explains, once we adopt change, it becomes difficult to maintain that change for a long time. He suggests that we have to train our nervous system to succeed over and over so that we can maintain it for a long time. So, for example, saying I quit smoking one day is easy, but quitting forever is quite the challenge; therefore, we need to control ourselves and train ourselves to be able to quit.

Turn Your “Why” Into a “How”:

Once you figure out what you want and why you want it, your way will become much clearer. What to do is now out there in front of you waiting for you to take action.

Change Your Habitual Questions:

The book says that by asking a good question, you can live a good life, but by asking the same question, again and again, you are not expanding your horizons, so Robbins suggests changing your habitual questions.

Vocabulary Matters:

The power of words allows us to express our deepest desires and noblest intentions. They can make us laugh and cry. Thus, Robbins summarizes how words can hurt our egos or inflame our hearts. By choosing more meaningful words to describe our emotions, we can instantly transform our emotional experiences. It is critical to understand that the words we use habitually influence how we communicate with ourselves and what we experience in life. Would you think that if you started saying you hated things - you hated your hair - you hated your job - would this have a greater impact on your negative emotional states than if you had used a phrase such as "I prefer something else"?

The Four Basic Ways People Use to Deal with Their Emotions:

Anthony believes that there are four main and most commonly used ways that people usually use to deal with their emotions:

1. Denial:

It's common for people to dissociate themselves from their feelings by saying that they don't feel that terrible while they continue to think about how terrible things are. This behavior is completely wrong, and it's going to affect you and your life in the long run.

2. Avoidance:

Painful Emotions should be avoided at all costs. Therefore, most people try to avoid situations that could trigger the emotions they fear- or even worse. Some people try not to feel any emotions at all. As a result, they avoid situations that could result in rejection, they avoid relationships, and they avoid challenging jobs. Avoiding problems can only be helpful for you in the short term, but it won't be effective forever, and it's not a healthy way of dealing with things in the first place. The braver and healthier approach would be to try and find positive meanings in all of the negativity around you.

3. Competition:

The result of people deciding to fully indulge in their painful emotions, rather than learning the positive message they are trying to convey, is that they intensify the emotion and make it worse than it already is, making it a badge of courage and competition. Avoid comparing yourself to others. The only competition you have is yourself. Life will be easier for you if you adopt this mindset.

4. Learning and Using:

Making your emotions work for you is the key to making your life work. They are here to stay. They won't go away if you ignore them, they won't go away if you trivialize them, and you can't just let them run your life. Although emotions can hurt sometimes, they help you move forward toward your goals and take action.

Final Note:

It’s one of the best-selling self-help books for a very clear reason. A lot of helpful and useful takeaways that will make your path to success easier and smoother. Remember that believing in yourself is your most powerful weapon.