Awaken the Giant Within - critical summary review

Have you ever felt you were not in control of your life? If yes, then Tony Robbins wrote this book for you. In it, Tony explains how your feelings influence your life and how you can prepare to gain control and excel. You'll learn how to build a new, better, and more powerful identity and thus gain control of your life. Regain control of your future and achieve your goals with this microbook!

Make a Decision And Commit. Focus Is Everything

Many people know what they should do to succeed in life, but few go ahead and do what it takes.

To improve your quality of life, you need to master your emotions, your physical state, your personal and professional relationships, your money, and your time.

To take the reins of your life, you have to work hard. Your goal is to understand how the decisions you make in your day-to-day work and then take control of them.

A decision always precedes an action. Therefore, to achieve the desired results, you need to observe the decisions you have made and continue to make in your life. Incredibly, external conditions have little influence on their accomplishments.

Anyone can achieve just about anything she/he wants. Just decide and commit to your goals. Just awaken your giant within.

It is important for you to know: a decision is not a synonym of hope. It is not something that you decide on and expect to happen. Choosing means focusing; when making a decision, you must get rid of all the other possibilities and focus on just one outcome. Focus on what is important because you will become what you pursue.

Pleasure And Pain Influence Behaviours

Human beings seek to avoid pain and gain pleasure. We act consciously or unconsciously to do what we believe will please us or avoid suffering.

To make winning decisions, you need to amplify pain or pleasure.

You have to condition your mind to exaggerate the pleasure of doing something good and the pain of doing something wrong. You need to create mental associations between your goals and your feelings of pain and pleasure. With these emotional connections, you become capable of changing your behavior.

Associate your bad habits with things that cause you pain and associate healthy habits with things that will please you in the future. By creating this type of association, it is easy for your body to give up addictions and encourage healthy habits.

We act by believing that in the future something will bring us pain or pleasure. We need to understand this association to become winners.

Your Beliefs Influence Your Perception More Than You Imagine

Our understanding of things that happen in our lives has a significant impact on who we are now and who we will be in the future. It is significantly affected by the things we believe in, our thoughts.

Understanding our beliefs is the key to creating different visions of the same event in our lives. Most ideas come from past experiences that have brought us pain or pleasure. They are personal interpretations of the results of any event in our lives and exert significant influence on our future actions.

Our brain is not always able to distinguish between imagination and physical experience because beliefs affect our perception. Therefore, it is necessary to work on the creation of our beliefs. To evolve as people, we need to work on changing our expectations.

The process to change an opinion is simple. First, mentally associate an old idea with pain. Think of a bad habit you have and visualize a mental image of something that causes you pain. Then project a new feeling and associate it with something that pleases you.

Your goal should be a continuous improvement (in Japanese, kaizen). We should always seek to evolve and improve our beliefs.

Constant and endless improvement should be a commitment reinforced by the attitude of continuing to improve gradually. This work will develop your confidence, from a steady and consistent effort, to know that, every day, you become a better person.

Associating Pleasures With Good Habits

Neuro-Associative Conditioning (NAC) is a process that associates intense desires with anything you wish to adopt and associates unbearable pain with anything you want to avoid.

Although most people believe that changing old habits for new ones can take a lot of time, behavior patterns can change quickly and permanently. Conditioning yourself in the right way will enable you to bring about immediate change.

To recondition yourself, you need to follow six simple steps:

1. Analyze what you want out of your life and what has kept you from achieving it. If you continue to focus on what you do not want, you are programming yourself to reach them.

2. Motivate yourself to change right away. Find a way to connect pleasure with change, and pain with any sense of procrastination.

3. Interrupt your typical thinking pattern. Imagine things differently, with humor and exaggeration. This change will help you remember past situations in an entirely different way.

4. Think of a new method to produce the same benefits generated by your old habits.

5. Create a new conditioning system. Visualize alternative attitudes that you may have with emotional intensity. Use repetition and emotion to reinforce the benefits of these alternative behaviors. Develop ways to reward new patterns of behavior. A reinforced behavior pattern becomes a habit.

6. Visualize a situation that has caused you frustration in the past. If you have followed these steps correctly, you will feel differently about the situation. If not, return to steps 1 through 5.

Changing Your Emotional State

There is a direct connection between what a person wants to achieve in life and what they want to feel. Material possessions and personal relationships are simplya mean to an end; they are a way to achieve desired emotional states.

Your behavior is the direct result of your current emotional state. Therefore, by changing your current emotional state, you can change your behavioral patterns and thus achieve the desired goals.

There are two ways to change your emotional state.

The first one says that impulse creates emotion. If you want to feel a particular emotion, start acting as if you already felt that way. The second one says that your focus becomes your perception of reality. So if your focus is on things that have not yet happened and you already feel good about them, you create a conducive environment for them to happen.

Make a list of the activities you want to reinforce and create methods to focus on these activities most of the time.

Words Have Power

Words can create the emotions that shape our destiny. Beliefs are shaped and changed by the words we speak. Therefore, the words you use in your daily life affect not only how you communicate, but also how you perceive the world and how you behave.

By changing your vocabulary, you change your thoughts and habits. Consciously choose the words you use in your day-to-day life, and you can change your life and your destiny. Use words that empower and scratch those which are counterproductive. Check out some tips:

• Write down the words you frequently use to describe your negative emotions. For example: nervous, confused or depressed.

• Create a list of creative alternatives to these words. For example: disenchanted, intrigued, curious. New words should help you feel better.

• Decide that from now on you will use the new words whenever you face a negative situation. You will quickly begin to feel and act differently, and your thoughts will start to follow the new pattern of the new words. The important thing is always to choose new words that are constructive and that are not negative.

Another important point is that the metaphors you use can stimulate or limit your life. When you use a metaphor constantly, you automatically begin to assimilate its advantages and limitations. Choose your metaphors carefully.

You use a metaphor whenever you explain a principle in comparison to something else. Metaphors are a way of learning. They provide a way to visualize unfamiliar concepts in familiar terms. By consciously using them, you can influence and shape your life experiences.

Controlling Your Emotions

To transform your life, you have to understand that each person creates their feelings, which are valuable resources.

The most powerful emotions you can create are love, gratitude, curiosity, enthusiasm, determination, flexibility, confidence and joy.

To master your emotions and transform yourself, you need to be able to create these positive feelings. Some tips to create this type of emotion are:

• Recognize that your emotions are useful signs. So, feel grateful that your signal system works regularly.

• Try to find out why you feel this way. Are the motives for these emotions rational or unrealistic? Look for the reasons you feel that way.

• Whenever you feel strong emotions, take a step back and ask yourself what you are feeling. Simply clarifying your feelings will decrease the emotional intensity of negative emotions.

• Develop self-confidence so that you can deal with your emotions today and in the future.

• Visualize a particular time from the past in which you felt the same way and managed to use that passion to achieve some accomplishment.

• Be enthusiastic and take a firm stance. Do something that proves that you are moving forward.

Have Objectives And Control Your Thoughts

Every person has the power to create their promising future. However, it is necessary to be clear about the goals and purposes sought. To reach this bright future, therefore, one must know how to define their targets and objectives. To create a goal, follow this plan:

First, your goal should be clear, straightforward, and generous in detail. Second, every goal must have a clear plan associated with it. This plan should have activities, dates, and everything that needs to happen for you to get there. Finally, you need to visualize this goal. Twice a day at least, stop and think about your goal, your plan, and get ideas on how to reach it faster.

It is also important to focus on the journey and not just the goal. Achieving your goals is important, but enjoying the ride is much more, and it's what keeps you moving in the right direction.

Take control of your thoughts and refuse to fight any bad emotion. Create a 10-day positivity plan and transform your life.

You need to know that your current operating system, your way of thinking, has led you to your present accomplishments. To move to new levels, you need to change the operating system. Follow the following method for this:

1. For ten consecutive days, refuse to have any useless thoughts or feelings.

2. When you start to feel negative about anything, ask yourself: Is there anything positive about this? How can I make this into something perfect?

3. When you face a challenge, focus on the possible solutions instead of focusing on the problem. Think about how to turn that mishap into something positive.

4. If you are still having negative thoughts for an extended period, wait until the next day and begin again. The important thing is that you can spend ten days in a row having positive thoughts and emotions.

Your Feelings Influence Your Attitudes

If you want to modify anything in your life, you must change the way you act. Changing how you feel about the things that happen in your life is much more powerful because it will automatically change your way of acting. So you have to understand the five elements that affect your feelings:

1. The mental state in which you find yourself whenever you evaluate your inner feelings.

2. The questions you ask as part of the thought process can influence the responses your brain gives you.

3. Your values affect how you feel. You will always feel good when you are moving towards something that you value.

4. Your beliefs determine expectations and provide a basis for you to evaluate your thoughts.

5. Your experiences serve to refine your values and beliefs and encourage you to move in new directions.

Changing these five elements, or even just one of them, completely changes your way of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Your Values Guide Your Decisions

Your values guide all your decisions and are responsible for your future achievements. You must create a system of positive values to achieve lasting happiness.

One mistake many people make is to spend a lot of time worrying about what they want to have in the future when, in fact, they should focus on how they are spending their lives now. Values can be both negative and positive. They may be things you want to foster or things you want to avoid.

However, it is important to be careful. Many people create limiting rules for their lives and end up delaying achievements.

It is important to build positive rules, focusing on the things you can control, not the random events of life. This discernment ensures that you control your destiny.

Creating a New And Improved Identity

A person's beliefs and values are selected through references, which are the personal experiences or experiences of others that one hears or sees in the media. The greater the number and quality of referrals a person has, the more he or she can make meaningful decisions in his or her life.

To expand the quality of your life, make consistent and conscious efforts to develop the references that impact you. Reading, for example, is an excellent way to expand your references.

Be it in right or wrong situations, your feelings about it is based on the references used. You need to be able to learn from the past, but you can not live in it. No one drives a car constantly looking in the rearview mirror, which should only be used in some maneuvers.

Grow your references circle, and you will create a new identity. New ideas and influences will not come out of anywhere. It takes a true effort to expand the limits of your mind.

Your identity comes from the beliefs you use to define your individuality. You are what you believe makes you unique.

Many people believe that their identities were shaped exclusively by their experiences. Even so, two people can go through the same experience and have entirely different memories and attitudes. More than a person's skills, their interpretation, through a system of beliefs and values, is far more influential in the formation of an identity than the experience itself.

So before you start shaping an identity, take time to think about where you are now. The steps to creating a powerful new character are:

• Make a list of all the elements of an identity that you would like to have. Let your imagination run wild and develop a rough draft of your ideal identity - just out of your perspective.

• Look at your list and add excitement to it. Insert the characteristics of the people you admire. Think of some dynamic ideas for your list of qualities and write.

• Develop a plan of action. How does a person with this type of identity live? With whom should they associate with, and how do their friends reinforce their identity? How would this person dress, act, and live? Be thorough, precise and write your thoughts regarding it.

• Commit yourself to living your new and improved identity, projecting your new personality onto everybody. Read your description regularly.

Forget about the past and worry about the quality of your life in the present. Work to have an even better life in the future by accepting rather than avoiding change. Make conscious and rational efforts to develop a robust and dynamic identity.

Final Notes:

Make sure you live your life to the fullest. Try everything and have fun. Enjoy the process as well as the destination. Combine the spontaneity of youth with the wisdom of experience, and keep growing and learning. Live each day as if it were the most important day of your life because it is.

Each small decisions you make, define your destiny. Therefore, if a person controls how he or she feels, thinks and acts, they control their destiny, regardless of the external conditions that exist.

Finally, it is essential that you seek a balanced life instead of pursuing perfection. Life is a balance between giving and receiving, caring for one's interests and contributing to the well-being of others.

12min tip: If you liked this microbook, we think you will also like ‘Unlimited Power,' by the same author. In this book, he talks a little about how you can improve your quality of life and your performance in several areas.