For those of you who already know me, you will also know that I’m a big fan of Tony Robbin's work.
I’ve been following him for many years now, but, until last year, I’ve always remained “in the distance”, not allowing myself to fully embrace his philosophy.
Last year, I attended Date with Destiny, Tony's signature event in Miami. I wanted to share my learnings to give everyone an idea of what you can get out of coaching and self-development, as this event profoundly changed my life and I’m continuing to experience breakthroughs on a weekly basis.
What is Date with Destiny?
DWD is a six days’ program designed to understand why we feel and behave in a certain way, and ultimately change our life for the better.
Warning: In order to get the most out of it, you need to be extremely open minded and, most importantly, free of any expectation.
During these six days, you’ll most probably cry like a baby, hug strangers, dance like a fool, shout, jump… it will be emotionally and physically challenging. If you attend with someone else, you’ll be separated into different groups, as each individual needs to go through some deep individual work.
You also need to know that it will be really intense, each day will last from around 10 AM to really late .. sometimes even 3/4 AM. So be ready, you’ll need a lot of energy!
My Main Takeways:
1. Life doesn’t happen TO US, but FOR US
This is probably the most powerful learning I had: what if the most painful things in life happened exactly so we could become who we were meant to be today?
Think about it; would you be the person you are today if you had a different life, different paths, different experiences?
What if all the pain you went through served for a greater purpose?
In my personal experience, if my father had been the father I wanted, I wouldn’t be as independent, driven and tenacious today.
I wouldn’t have experienced pain, so I wouldn’t be able to care about other people’s feelings as much as I do.
Nothing can change the pain you have experienced, but you can change your story and re-write it in a way to see the gifts that came out of it.
2. Certainty is a survival instinct to avoid pain
According to Tony, any human being is motivated by the desire to fulfil six core human needs:
We all have these needs; what differs amongst us is how we value them.
Every single thing we do, consciously or unconsciously, is a direct consequence of a need we’re trying to satisfy.
We develop patterns of behaviours that we rely on to meet our highest value needs.
Unfortunately, some of these behaviours might be destructive, unhealthy and dangerous.
Someone who has certainty at the top of their needs will live a radically different life than someone who values variety first.
As an overachiever, I soon realised I was driven by certainty and growth. Today, I’m progressively shifting my mindset and behaviours into putting connection and love as my number one need, and actually downgrading certainty to my least important need.
This allows me to experience negative happenings from a place of curiosity, not from a place of personal failure.
3. Change your words, change your life
Emotions are a direct result of the meaning we give to any situation in life.
At any moment in time, the meaning we give to a situation is highly influenced by the words we use to describe it.
To put it in a simpler language: how you talk to yourself will affect how you end up feeling about yourself, and most probably how others will see you as well.
If you spend your days labelling yourself as a failure, describing yourself as a lazy human being who is unable to conclude anything, is that going to give you the motivation to actually change this situation?
It seems too simple to be true, but if we actually change the words we use to describe ourselves and our emotions, we can change patterns of how we feel and the quality of our life.
4. Where focus goes, energy flows
What we focus on also determines the quality of our emotions and our life.
Tony explained this concept through a simple exercise: he asked everyone to look around and find the colour brown.
Then, he asked us to close our eyes and remember everything we’ve seen in red colour.
Obviously, we couldn’t recall almost any of the red colour in the room.
We repeated this exercise and we now focused on seeing the red.
You know what happened next right? We all found red everywhere.
And this happened because we were focused on finding it. Whatever you are looking for, if you focus on it, you’ll find it.
To take control of your life and your state, you’ll need to focus on two things:
a) Things you are grateful for
b) Goals you want to achieve
If you start your day by being grateful, you can never feel angry or sad.
Reflect: what can you be grateful or proud of about your life today?
How does it feel when you are filled with gratitude?
If you wanted to be excited about your life right now, what could you get excited about?
How do you feel, speak and move when you’re excited? Do you feel different?
5. The Power of Incantations
If you are in a disempowering state, one of the fastest ways to change how you feel is by making an immediate shift in in your physiology.
Incantations are not to be confused with affirmations.
Don’t get me wrong, affirming positive thoughts can never be bad, but if you affirm “I’m happy” a hundred times every day, are you actually going to be happy?
Of course not.
An incantation is a phrase or language pattern that is said our loud with an engaged physiology.
Incantations are the most powerful mechanism available for conditioning new beliefs and patterns, because they engage language, focus and physiology.
We’ve worked on finding the words that most accurately describe who we want to be and used them during the incantation exercises – this is something I’ve continued to do daily in my life.
You can find an example of incantation HERE.
6. What's your primary question?