What I learnt from Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within - Part II
This was intended to be one blog post but there was just so much good stuff! So here is part two of my personal takeaways and reflections from Tony Robbins, UPW 2019.
The Importance of Physiology
A huge component of the UPW course is physiology. Robbins defines this as how you use your physical body, such as breath, posture, and movement.
Throughout the four days, Tony and the other trainers are wiring into us new ways to use our physiology to change our emotions and subsequently our actions. These are the main things I took from UPW about physiology:
Breathing. When I was younger, I used to get worried that I wasn't breathing correctly and there was maybe some special technique I hadn't been told about. Turns out I was not an anxious child but streaks ahead in my understanding of the human body! Apparently, most of us do not breathe properly most of the time. When we are stressed, our breathing becomes shallow, we fail to use our full lung capacity and therefore our lungs are not able to remove toxins as effectively. Tony recommends a technique for breathing to get maximum oxygen into the body. In this power breathing exercise, you inhale, hold, and exhale at a ratio of 1:4:2. You should do this 10 times, 3 times a day. So, for example, you inhale for 8 seconds, hold for 32 seconds and exhale for 16 seconds. My asthma (and a childhood of poor breathing) makes me useless at this, so I am starting with 4, 16, and 8 seconds. Give it a try!
Head up, Shoulders Back. I am sure this is something that most of us know but to what extent do we live it every day? Tony talks a lot about how body language influences your emotions and the difference between feeling anxious and insecure and feeling powerful and confident is just a small shift in the position of your shoulders. He seems to be echoing the Amy Cuddy research on power posing and I know the findings on this have proved difficult to prove and replicate. Tony says himself that he tends to go with what instinctively feels right to him rather than what is necessarily scientifically sound. So, I am unsure if there is solid science behind this but to me it does make sense. How you position yourself and how confident you look certainly influences how others perceive and therefore treat you and that can create a positive cycle that boosts your confidence. It has also been proved that making people smile more (e.g.: by watching a funny film or recalling funny moments) can alleviate depression.
Find your Power Move. At UPW Tony and the other speakers spent a lot of time creating a positive association with body movement. They anchored positive experiences to the movement, so thinking of a moment you are proud of, a time you felt loved, and a time of enjoyment for example. Your move represents you channeling all those positive moments to find new energy/strength/courage. When 12,000 people are all making their power move to a shouting Tony Robbins and energetic music this is an impactful move. I am not sure if the impact of the power move will last, I think it needs regular reinforcement of positive moments rather than being something that will work independently to boost your mood forever.
Shake Your Ass. Tony's right-hand man Joseph delivered an amusing piece on the power of movement. According to Joseph and his infinite wisdom, it is impossible to feel in a negative state while shaking your butt. I think there is something about doing something silly that just makes you not take yourself too seriously and see the lighter side of things. Maybe this one is not for everyone, but worth a try - just maybe not in the office in front of everyone.
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Lymphasising. This was a new one for me. This refers to the process of rebounding where you jump up and down on the spot. Apparently, this process of vertical movement provides the perfect conditions for cleansing cells. All I felt after a morning at Bounce with my nephew was pure exhaustion, but it seems my cells were jumping for joy. The movement strengthens cells and leads to improved posture, muscle tone, sharper vision, increased coordination, better balance, and elevated energy. You can do this on the ground or for better results get a mini trampoline. There are lots of YouTube videos on this if you are keen to know more! Get bouncing!
Where Focus Goes Energy Flows
I had heard this quote before attending UPW and to be honest I didn't really get it. I remember quite recently we were going to use it on social media, and I just didn't know what to say about it! Now I get it. Robbins uses lots of examples to show us how easily we can shift the attention of what we focus on. There are at any one moment hundreds of things that your brain can be focusing on. Through simple techniques you can shift the focus of another person, for example, you can use the word red a lot they will start to see red things. You can use a lot of negative words and they will be more inclined to think negatively about a person or situation after your interaction with them. For me the work on Focus at UPW led me to three key principles about focus:
Focus affects your emotions. What you choose to focus on, impacts your emotional state. Often, we trick ourselves into thinking there is only one interpretation of an event, we say things like 'what else was I supposed to do?' and 'obviously I got mad with them, so would you!' This assumes a lack of responsibility over our emotions - things happen, and we react in the only way we can. But Robbins emphasises that there is always another way to look at something. At any moment you can choose to see the negative or to be grateful for what that moment is teaching you. The saying, nothing has any meaning other than the meaning you attribute to it, is key here.
Focus affects your actions. What you focus on will affect the actions you take, or don't take. Let's say you are a salesperson doing a morning of cold calling. I have found only a few people in my life that really enjoy this activity! So, for most of us we are starting with lots of negative feelings about that task. One negative call, if focused on can derail your whole morning. Your focus switched to the bad call, and you are flooded with self-doubt and fear. Switching your focus can lead to different actions. Instead of focusing on that one call, focus instead on the clients you have gained through cold calling, focus on your mission and why you are doing this in the first place.
Your Focus impacts others. We are all influencing others and spreading positive or negative energy every day. If you are a manager or leader your impact will be greater as others look to you as a guide for how to feel, think and act - if not consciously then subconsciously. Let's say you are a manager, and you continue to focus on what a challenging economy we are facing and how achieving targets will be very, very difficult. This belief spreads to your team, eventually, this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead as a manager, you could choose to focus on all the opportunities the business has, how you have overcome similar situations in the past and what business will look like when you have overcome the downturn. Your shift in focus will lift the team up rather than drain and demotivate them
Appreciation
Appreciation and gratitude are a big part of Tony's philosophy. On day one Tony outlines his three forces for creation. So, the three steps to take to get anything you want. Number One is Focus, Number Two is Massive Action and Number Three is Grace. Grace means to appreciate what you have, be thankful, and drop the ego. This might seem juxtaposed to the other messages from Tony that tell you to raise your standards, never be satisfied with what you have, and seek out more. I do however think that they can sit well together. Tony recommends a daily priming ritual which includes thinking about what you are grateful for and setting goals for the future. Based on my testing with this since the event, I think reminding yourself of what you are grateful for gives me more patience and gratitude each day. I am training my brain to focus on what I am thankful for rather than on what frustrates me. It is not always easy - I guess that's why you need to do it every morning!
90 Seconds to Change your State
Have you ever been at a funeral and felt immense sadness and then someone says something funny and suddenly you are laughing? I am sure we have all experienced something like this. Robbins uses this as an example to highlight that under the right conditions we can change our state immediately. Tony says you can change any unwelcome state in 90 seconds, this is the process:
Identify when stress shows up in your body - learn to notice it as it happens
Ask yourself if the stress is legitimate or not (most stress is a prediction about what might happen in the future - it is not a guarantee). Take a deep breath and visualise the stress and anxiety passing out of you like a wave. This technique is grounded in the principle that your mind is not you. (See part one of this blog) You must recognise that the stress is not your thought, it is your mind that is designed to protect you, it is not really YOU.
Keep Learning
Tony attributes much of his success to his commitment to personal development and learning. He talks about attending a seminar by Jim Rohn which set him off on the self-improvement path. After that seminar he set about learning all he could about self-improvement, reading every book he could get his hands on, and attending every seminar possible. Tony says it is really a waste of your time to learn things by doing and that the quickest way to success is to find someone who has achieved what you want to achieve, figure out how they did it, and do the exact same thing. This flies in the face of a lot of the learning I have done which promotes finding your own route to success and that what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. And of course, the problem in looking to others for advice is that for as many people you ask, you will get that many different opinions.
I cannot argue with the keep learning principle. Tony recommends you read for at least 30 minutes each day. He is also an advocate for speed reading, so you can cover more in a shorter space of time. I am skeptical about speed reading and would rather take my time and fully digest what I am reading.
As for the advice to copy what someone else has done, I think I will take it with a pinch of salt. I think ’it is a clever idea to learn what others have done and then decide if that approach fits with your style, personality, and strengths. There are after all different ways of achieving the same results.
