- First of all, I wanna just thank you all for the privilege to be here, not only hopefully to serve you for a few minutes here, but also to attend. I have some friends that have gone to TED in the past and I been thinking about coming and I was on the edge and then I got invited and I said I wanna come. So I've attended about two-thirds of this and I've gotten an enormous amount, not only from the speakers, but from so many people that I've met.
I don't think in all the places I've spoken or been around, and I've been privileged to be in a lot of great places as I'm sure you have, I've ever seen such a concentration of both talent, brains, but also passion and a common value. There's a community here about contribution and is really beautiful. So I thank you, I'll be back as a participant myself on an ongoing basis and I thank everybody for their participation as well very much.
(clapping) Thank you. I have to tell you I'm both challenged and excited. My excitement is I get a chance to give something back.
My challenge is the shortest seminar I usually do is 50 hours. (audience laughs) I'm not exaggerating, I do weekends, I do more than that obviously, coach people, but I'm into immersion because how'd you learn language? You didn't learn it by just learning principles, you got in it and you did it so often that it became real and my stuff isn't preprogrammed.
Something happens in the room, I ask a question and I play off what's going there. And 17 minutes, that's not gonna happen. I know we're gonna put the principles across and I'm beyond respectful to the format.
I've gotten great value from it, although Lisa Randall, I felt very tough for how to explain Einstein's theories in 18 minutes. To make sure that you're served though, 'cause I really came here to serve, is I put some tapes in your box but I want you know that if you wanna use NET time, I call it, no extra time to learn some of these things and use them on a deeper level. If you call my office and you're from TED, you're on the list, you can get any product I have.
There's no charge for it. If you ever wanna come to a seminar I'd love to have you as my guest as well for something of more depth. So my gift to you.
(clapping) Thank you, thank you. So, the race begins. I've probably put a lot in here 'cause I really wanna try and serve you and I hope it doesn't just sound like philosophy since we can't do the interaction at the same level, although I hope you'll participate with me a bit.
The bottom line of why I'm here is that I'm really in a position, I'm not here to motivate you obviously, you don't need that. A lot of times that's what people think I do and it's the furthest thing from it. What happens though is people say to me, "I don't need any motivation!
" And I say, well that's interesting, that's not what I do. I'm the why guy. I wanna know why you do what you do.
What is your motive for action? What is it that drives you in your life today, not 10 years ago, or you running the same pattern? Because I believe that the invisible force of internal drive, activated, is the most important thing in the world.
I'm here because I believe emotion is the force of life. All of us here have great minds. Most of us here have great minds (chuckles), right?
I don't know if I'm in the category, but we all know how to think and with our minds we can rationalize anything, we can make anything happen. I agree with what was described a few days ago about this idea that people work in their self-interest, but we all know that you don't work in your self-interest all the time. Because when emotion comes into it the wiring changes in the way it functions.
So it's wonderful for us to think intellectually about how the life of the world is, and especially those who are very smart. We can play this game in our head but I really wanna know what's driving you, and what I'd like to maybe invite you to do by the end of this talk is explore where you are today for two reasons. One, so that you can contribute more.
And two, so that hopefully we can not just understand other people more but maybe appreciate them more and create the kinds of connections that can stop some of the challenges that we face in our society today that are only gonna get magnified by the very technology that's connecting us. 'Cause it's making us intersect and that intersection doesn't always create the view of everybody now understands everybody and everybody appreciates everybody. I've had obsession basically for 30 years, and that obsession has been what makes the difference in the quality of people's lives?
What makes the difference in their performance 'cause that's what I got hired to do. I gotta produce the result now, that's what I've done for 30 years. I get the phone call when the athlete is burning down on national television and they were ahead by five strokes and now they can't get back on the course.
And I gotta do somethin' right now to get the result or nothing matters. I get the phone call when the child's gonna commit suicide and I gotta do somethin' right now. And in 29 years, I'm very grateful to tell ya, I've never lost one in 29 years.
Doesn't mean I won't someday, but I haven't done it. And the reason is the understanding of these human needs that I wanna talk to you about. When I get those calls about performance, that's one thing, like how do you make a change?
But also, I'm looking to see what is it that's shaping that person's ability to contribute? To do something beyond themselves. So maybe the real question is, I look at life and say there's two master lessons.
One is, there's the science of achievement which almost everybody in this room has mastered to an amazing extent. That's how do you take the invisible and make it visible. How do you take what you're dreamin' out and make it happen?
Whether it be your business, your contribution to society, money, whatever it is for you. Your body, your family. But the other lesson of life that is rarely mastered is the art of fulfillment.
'Cause science is easy, right? We know the rules, you write the code, you fold the, and you get the result. Once you know the game, you just, you up the ante, don't you?
But when it comes to fulfillment, that's an art, and the reason is it's about appreciation and it's about contribution. You can only feel so much by yourself. I've had an interesting laboratory to try to answer the question of the real question which is what's the difference in somebody's life if you look at somebody like those people that you've given everything to.
Like all the resources they say they need. You gave them not a hundred-dollar computer, you gave them the best computer. You gave them love, you gave 'em joy, you were there to comfort them.
And those people very often, and you know some of them I'm sure, end up the rest of their life with all this love, education, money, and background, spending their life going in and out of rehab. And then you meet people that've been through ultimate pain. Psychologically, sexually, spiritually, emotionally abused, and not always, but often they become some of the people that contribute the most to society.
So the question we gotta ask ourselves really is, what is it? What is it that shapes us? We live in a therapy culture, most of us don't do that, but the culture's a therapy culture and what I mean by that is the mindset that we are our past.
Everybody in this room, you wouldn't be in this room if you bought that theory, but the most of society thinks biography is destiny. The past equals the future. Of course it does if you live there.
But what people in this room know and what we have to remind ourselves though, 'cause you can know something intellectually. You can know what to do and then not use it, not apply it. So really we're gonna remind ourselves is decision is the ultimate power.
That's what it really is. Now when you ask people, have you failed to achieve something? How many have ever failed to achieve something significant in your life, say aye.
- [Audience] Aye. - Thanks for the interaction on a high level there. (audience laughs) But if you ask people why didn't you achieve something?
Somebody who's working for you, or a partner, or even yourself, and you failed to achieve a goal, what's the reason people say they failed to achieve? What do they tell ya? Tell me, come on, out loud.
Didn't know enough. Didn't have the knowledge. Didn't have the, money.
Didn't have the, time. Didn't have the, technology. I didn't have the right manager.
- [Voiceover] Supreme Court. - Didn't have the Supreme Court. (laughing loudly) (clapping and cheering) And, what do all those, including the Supreme Court, have in common?
They are a claim to you missing resources, and they may be accurate. You may not have the money, you may not have the Supreme Court, but that is not the defining factor. (audience laughs) And you correct me if I'm wrong.
The defining factor is never resources, it's resourcefulness. And what I mean specifically rather than just some phrase, is if you have emotion, human emotion, something that I experienced from you day before yesterday at a level that is as profound as I've ever experienced, and if you'd communicated with that emotion I believe you would've won. (audience cheers) But, how easy for me to tell him what he should do.
(audience laughs) Idiot, Robbins. But I know, when we watch the debates, when we watched the debate at that time, there were emotions that blocked people's ability to get this man's intellect and capacity and the way they came across to some people on that day. 'Cause I know people that wanted to vote in your direction and didn't, and I was upset.
But there was emotion that was there. How many know what I'm talkin' about here, say aye. - [Audience] Aye.
- So emotion is it, if we get the right emotion we can get ourselves to do anything. We can get through it. If you're creative enough, playful enough, fun enough, can you get through to anybody, yes or no?
- [Audience] Yes. If you don't have the money but you're creative or determined enough you find the way. So this is the ultimate resource but this is not the story that people tell us.
The story people tell us is a bunch of different stories. They tell us we don't have the resources but ultimately, if you take a look here, flip it up if you would. They say what are all the reasons they have in common, we've said that, next one please.
He's broken my pattern (chuckles). (audience laughs) But I appreciated the energy, I'll tell ya that. What determines your resources, we said decisions shape destiny, which is my focus here.
If decisions shape destiny, what determines it is three decisions. What are you gonna focus on? Right now, you have to decide what you're gonna focus on.
In this second, consciously or unconsciously. The minute you decide to focus on something you gotta give it a meaning. And whatever that meaning is, produces emotion.
Is this the end or the beginning? Is God punishing me or rewarding me or is this the roll of the dice? An emotion then creates what we're gonna do, or the action.
So think about your own life, the decisions that have shaped your destiny. That sounds really heavy but in the last five or 10 years, 15 years, haven't there been some decisions you've made that if you made a different decision your life would be completely different? How many can think of one, honestly?
Better or worse, say aye. - [Audience] Aye. - So the bottom line is maybe it was where to go to work and you met the love of your life there.
Maybe it was a career decision. I know the Google geniuses I saw here. I understand that their decision was to sell their technology at first.
What if they made that decision versus to build their own culture? How would the world be different? How would their lives be different, their impact?
The history of our world is these decisions. When the woman stands up and says, no, I won't go to the back of the bus. She didn't just affect her life, that decision shaped our culture.
Or someone standing in front of a tank. Or being in a position like Lance Armstrong and someone says to you, you got testicular cancer. That's pretty tough for any male, especially if you ride a bike (chuckles).
(audience laughs) You got it in your brain, you got it in your lungs. But what was his decision of what to focus on? Different than most people.
What did it mean? It wasn't the end, it was the beginning. What am I gonna do?
He goes off and wins seven championships he never won once before the cancer because he got emotional fitness. Psychological strength. That's the difference in human beings that I've seen of the three million I've been around, 'cause that's about my lab.
I've had three million people from 80 different countries that I had a chance to interact with over the last 29 years. And after a while patterns become obvious. You see that South America and Africa may be connected in a certain way, right?
Other people say, oh, that sounds ridiculous. It's simple. So, what shaped Lance, what shapes you?
Two invisible forces, very quickly. One, state. We all have had times, have you had a time you did something and after you did it, you thought to yourself I can't believe I said that, I can't believe I did that, that was so stupid.
Who's been there, say aye. - [Audience] Aye. - Have you ever somethin', after you do it you go, (clears throat confidently) that was me.
(audience laughs) It wasn't your ability, it was your state. I show people how to change that quickly but what I wanna finish with, quickly here, is your model of the world is what shapes you long term. Your model of the world is the filter.
That's what's shaping us. That's what makes people make decisions. When we wanna influence somebody, we gotta know what already influences them.
And it's made up of three parts, I believe. First, what's your target, what are you after? Which I believe it's not your desires.
You can get your desires or goals. How many ever got a got goal or desire and thought, is this all there is? How many been there, say aye.
- [Audience] Aye. - So it's needs we have. I believe there are six human needs.
Second, once you know what the target that's driving you is and you uncover for the truth, you don't form it, you uncover it, then you find out what's your map. What's the belief systems that are telling ya how to get those needs? Some people think the way to get those needs is destroy the world, some people is to build something.
Create something, love someone. And then there's the fuel you pick. So very quickly, six needs, lemme tell you what they are.
First one, certainty. Now these are not goals or desires, these are universal. Everyone needs certainty that they can avoid pain, at least be comfortable.
Now how do you get it? Control everybody, develop a skill, give up, smoke a cigarette? If you got totally certain ironically, even though we all need that, like if you're not certain about your health or your children or money, you don't think about much more.
You're not sure the ceiling's gonna hold up, you're not gonna listen to any speaker. But, while we go for certainty differently, if we get total certainty, we get what? What do you feel if you're certain?
You know what's gonna happen, when it's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen, what would you feel? Bored outta your minds, so God in Her infinite wisdom (audience chuckles) gave us a second human need which is uncertainty. We need variety, we need surprise.
How many of you here love surprises, say aye. - [Audience] Aye. - You like the surprises you want.
(audience laughs) The ones you don't want you call problems but you need them. Variety's important. Have you ever rented video or a film that you've already seen, who's done this?
Why are you doing it? You're certain it's good 'cause you read it before, saw it before, but you're hoping it's been long enough you've forgotten that there's variety. Third human need, critical, significance.
We all need to feel important, special, unique. You can get it by makin' more money, you can do it by being more spiritual, you can do it by getting yourself in a situation where you put more tattoos and earrings in places humans don't wanna know. Whatever it takes.
The fastest way to do this if you have no background, no culture, and no belief in resources or resourcefulness is violence. If I put a gun to your head and I live in the hood, instantly I'm significant. Zero to 10, how high?
10. How certain am I you're gonna respond to me? 10.
How much uncertainty? Who knows what's gonna happen next? Kind of exciting, like climbin' up into a cave and doin' that stuff all the way down there.
Total variety and uncertainty, and it's significant, isn't it? So you're willing to risk your life for it. That's why violence has always been around, will be around unless we have a consciousness change as a species.
Now you can get significance a million ways, but to be significant you gotta be unique and different. Here's what we really need, connection and love, fourth thing. We all want it, most people settle for connection 'cause love's too scary.
Don't wanna get hurt. Who here's ever been hurt in an intimate relationship, say aye. (audience chuckles) And you're gonna get hurt again, aren't you glad you came to this positive visit?
But here's what's true, we need it. We can do it through intimacy, through friendship, through prayer, through walking in nature. If nothing else works for you, get a dog.
Don't get a cat, get a dog 'cause if you leave for two minutes it's like you've been for six months when you show back up again five minutes later, right? Now these first four needs every human finds a way to meet. Even if you lie to yourself, even if you have split personalities.
The first four needs are called the needs of the personality, is what I call it. The last two are the needs of the spirit, and this is where fulfillment comes. You won't get fulfillment from the first four.
You'll figure a way, smoke, drink, do whatever, meet the first four, but the last two, number five, you must grow. We all know the answer here. If you don't grow you what?
If a relationship's not growing, if a business is not growing, if you're not growing, it doesn't matter how much money you have, how many friends you have, how many people love you, you feel like hell. And the reason we grow, I believe, is so we have something to give of value, 'cause the sixth need is to contribute beyond ourselves. 'Cause we all know, corny as it sounds, the secret to living's giving.
We all know life's not about me, it's about we. This culture knows that, this room knows that, and it's exciting. When you see Nicholas up here talking about his hundred-dollar computer, the most passionate, exciting is here's a genius, but he's got a calling now.
You can feel the difference in him and it's beautiful. And that calling can touch other people. In my own life, my life was touched because when I was 11 years old, Thanksgiving, no money, no food, and we're not gonna starve but my father was totally messed up, my mom was letting him know how bad he messed up, and somebody came to the door and delivered food.
My father made three decisions. I know what they were, briefly. His focus was, this is charity, what does it mean, I'm worthless, what do I gotta do?
Leave my family, which he did. The time one of the most painful experiences of life. My three decisions gave me a different path.
I said focus on, there's food, what a concept (chuckles). Second, but this is what changed my life, this is what shaped me as a human being. Somebody's gift, I don't even know who it is.
They're not asking for it, there's just giving our family food, looking out for us. It made me believe this, what does it mean? That strangers care.
And what that made me decide is, if strangers care about me and my family, I care about them. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna do somethin', make a difference.
So when I was 17 I went out one day on Thanksgiving, it was my target for years, have enough money, feed two families. Most fun thing I ever did in my life, most moving. Then next year I did four.
And I didn't tell anybody what I was doing. Next year, eight. I wasn't doin' it for brownie points, but after eight I thought I could use some help.
So sure enough, I went out and what did I do? I got my friends involved and I grew companies and then I got 11 companies, then I built the foundation. Now 18 years later, I'm proud to tell ya, last year we fed two million people in 35 countries through our foundation all during the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, in all the different countries around the world.
It's been fantastic. Thank you. (clapping) I don't tell ya to brag, I tell ya 'cause I'm proud of human beings because they get excited to contribute once they've had to chance to experience it, not talk about it.
So finally, I'm 'bout outta time, the target that shapes you, here's what's different about people. We have the same needs but are you a certainty freak? Is that what you value most?
Or uncertainty? This man here couldn't be a certainty freak if he climbed through those caves. Are you driven by significance or love?
We all need all six but whatever your lead system is tilts you in a different direction, and as you move in a direction you have a destination or destiny. The second piece is the map. Think of that as the operating system tells you how to get there, and some people's map is I'm gonna save lives even if I die for other people, and they're firemen.
Somebody else is I'm gonna kill people to do it. They're tryin' to meet the same needs of significance. They wanna honor God or honor their family, but they have a different map.
And there are seven different beliefs, can't go through them 'cause I'm done. The last piece is emotion. I'd say one of the parts of the map is like time.
Some people's idea of a long time is a hundred years. Somebody else's is three seconds which is what I have. (audience chuckles) and the last one I've already mentioned it, fills you.
If you got target and you got a map, and let's say, I can't use Google 'cause I love Macs and they haven't made it good for Macs yet. So if you use Mapquest, how many have made this fatal mistake of using Mapquest at sometime? (audience chuckles) You use this thing and don't get there.
Well imagine if your beliefs guarantee you can never get to where you wanna go. Last thing is emotion. Now here's what I'll tell ya about emotion.
There are 6,000 emotions that we all have words for in the English language which just is a linguistic representation, right? It changes by language. But, if your dominant emotions, if I had more time, I have 20,000 people or a thousand, and I have 'em write down all the emotions that they experience in a average week, and I give 'em as long as they need.
And on one side the write empowering emotions, the other's disempowering. Guess how many emotions people experience, less than 12. And half of those make them feel like.
So they got five or six good frickin' feelings. It's like they feel happy, happy, excited, oh, frustrated, frustrated, overwhelmed, depressed. How many of you know somebody who no matter what happens finds a way to get pissed off?
How many know somebody like this? (audience laughs) Or no matter what happens they find a way to be happy or excited. How many know somebody like this, come on.
When 9/11 happened, and I'll finish with this, I was in Hawaii. I was with 2,000 people from 45 countries, we were translating four languages simultaneously for a program that I was conducting for a week. The night before was called Emotional Mastery.
I got up, had no plan for this, and I said, we all this fireworks, I do crazy, fun stuff. And then at the end I stopped, I had this plan I was gonna say but I never do what I'm gonna say, and all of a sudden I said, when do people really start to live? When they face death.
Then I went through this whole thing about if you weren't gonna get off this island, if nine days from now you were gonna die, who would you call, what would you say, what would ya do? Well that night is when 9/11 happened. One woman had come to the seminar and when she came there, her previous boyfriend had been kidnapped and murdered.
Her friend, her new boyfriend, wanted to marry her and she said no. He said, "If you leave and go to that Hawaii thing "it's over with us. " She said it's over.
When I finished that night, she called him and left a message, true story, at the top of the World Trade Center where he worked, saying, "Honey, I love you. "I just want ya to know I wanna marry you, "it was stupid of me. " She was asleep 'cause it was 3am for us when he called her back from the top and said, "Honey, I can't tell you what this means.
" He said, "I don't know how to tell you this "but you gave me the greatest gift 'cause I'm gonna die. " And she played the recording for us in the room. She was on Larry King Live.
And he said you're probably wondering how on Earth this could happen to you twice, and he said all I can say to you is, this must be God's message to you, honey, from now on, every day, give your all, love your all. Don't let anything ever stop you. She finishes and a man stands up and he says, "I'm from Pakistan, I'm a muslim.
"I'd love to hold your hand and say I'm sorry "but frankly this is retribution. " I can't tell ya the rest 'cause I'm outta time. (audience exclaiming and laughing) Really, are you sure?
- [Voiceover] Finish the story. - Ten seconds! Ten seconds, so I wanna be respectful.
Ten seconds, all I can tell ya is I brought this man on stage with a man from New York who worked in the World Trade Center, 'cause I had about 200 New Yorkers there. More than 50 had lost their entire companies, their friends, marking off their Palm Pilots. One financial trader, this woman made of steel, bawling, 30 friends crossing off that all died.
What I did to people is said, what are we gonna focus on? What does this mean and what are we gonna do? I took the group and got people to focus on if you didn't lose somebody today, your focus is gonna be how to serve somebody else.
One woman got up and she was so angry and screaming and yelling and then I found out she wasn't from New York, she's not an American, she doesn't know anybody here. I said do you always get angry? She said yes.
Guilty people got guilty, sad people got sad. And I took these two men and did what I call an indirect negotiation. Jewish man with family in the occupied territories, some New York who would've died if he was at work that day, and this man who wanted to be a terrorist and made it very clear.
And the integration that happened is on a film which I'll be happy to send you so you can really see what actual happened instead of my verbalization of it. But the two of them not only came together and changed their beliefs and models of the world, but they worked together to bring, for almost four years now, to various mosques and synagogues, the idea of how to create peace. And he wrote a book which is called My Jihad, My Way of Peace.
So transformation can happen. So my invitation to you is this, explore your web, the web in here. The needs, the beliefs, the emotions that are controlling you, for two reasons.
So there's more of you to give, and achieve too, we all wanna do it, but I mean give, 'cause that's what's gonna fill you up. And secondly, so you can appreciate, not just understand, that's intellectual, that's the mind, but appreciate what's driving other people. It's the only way our world's gonna change.
God bless you, thank you, I hope this was served. - [Voiceover] Tony Robbins. (clapping) Tony, come back up here.
You gotta just recognize it (chuckles). - Thank you very much, thank you.
