Most of us think we have a problem in our lives unless we have something that's a bigger problem to contrast it with. When you see this story and you walk through their exact life experience over the course of these two years—the year that we work with them is 30 days—but you see the course of what's happened to them by finding out what's happened a year later, you begin to understand that it doesn't matter what happens in your life; you are more than any moment. There's no challenge you can't face and overcome.
The events of our lives don't control our lives; our decisions do. I figured if we could take a couple that has faced a bigger challenge and be able to break through, then you can look at whatever's in your life and make it happen. It's kind of like if I wanted to show you that if you could face your biggest fear, your smaller fears kind of drop aside.
What's your biggest fear today? One of the biggest fears so many people in North America and around the Western world are facing is losing their job. It's a horrific possibility; it has an impact on your family, your psychology, your emotions—so many things, your choices.
But the truth of the matter is, what's a problem? Losing your job is a massive problem until you find yourself in a position where you lose all your savings, which may have taken you 10 years of working to acquire. Then what's a problem?
After losing your savings, that's not a problem anymore. When all of a sudden you lose your leg or an arm, or something horrific happens to one of your children, that's not a problem. When someone tells you all of a sudden that you have terminal cancer—and I've had those moments where somebody says, "You've got that tumor in your brain, and we don't know what it means"—those moments take your other problems and make them disappear.
You know what's interesting? When you ask most people in North America, "What's the greatest thing that could ever happen to you? " give them 10 seconds.
It's been done over and over again; in the first 10 seconds, what comes to your mind? What's the best thing that could ever happen in your life? The majority of people in North America say, can you guess?
Winning the lottery. Many of them say winning a hundred million dollar lottery or a 200 million dollar lottery; that's what's going to make their quality of life extraordinary. But when you do the studies, and there have been many done over the last 15 or 20 years, on people who win these giant lotteries, what are their lives like two years later, three years later, five years later?
Is the quality of their life extraordinary? Rarely, if ever, because what's happened is they haven't grown. Life gives us these events—these quote, "horrific events"—because there's an area of our lives that has to grow.
If you were to ask me, "Tony, out of all the millions of people you've worked with, if someone really wants to feel alive; they want joy, they want happiness, they don’t just want money or things or even respect; they want to feel a sense that life is meaningful and alive—what does it take? " I tell you one word: progress. When you're making progress in your life, it doesn't matter where it is—you’re going to feel more alive.
If you're overweight but you get yourself today and you say, “You know what? I'm stepping into gear. I’m just putting this person to come by and coach me.
I'll get that too, but right now I'm just going for a walk, or I'm gonna go for a jog, or I'm gonna go lift some weights. I'm gonna do something right now,” and you get yourself into gear and you do that for a few days in a row, even if you haven't lost the 10, 20, or 30 pounds yet, you’re going to start feeling better immediately because you have the power of momentum and you’re making progress. Progress equals growth; growth equals feeling alive.
We grow or we die. So, what's the worst thing that could ever happen in your life? Same survey asked the people in North America for 10 seconds to come up with the answer.
The number one answer: to become a quadriplegic. That's why I made the show, because the idea that I could be in a position where I’d be alive but couldn’t physically feed myself or take care of myself—that I’d be completely immobilized—is, for most people, the scariest thought of all. To them, that's the worst possible fear.
So by going through this journey with Frank and Kristen and experiencing their emotions, and seeing and feeling that in 30 days they could go from being trapped in their home—where there was no possibility of a future, no idea of intimacy, no idea of children—to world travelers who are doing things they weren't doing before, when he was quote, “supposedly able-bodied,” happier, stronger, and closer in their love than ever before. And you know it's real. You see the results a year later as we do the follow-ups.
If you haven't seen the follow-ups, be sure to see that and hear about the story—what's happened with them. When you get that experience, it affects you because it isn’t somebody verbally telling you a story; it’s something you kind of went through. So the idea here is, I'm sure you have some other fears outside the one we just came up with.
Whatever you're afraid of—the job loss, the loss of a relationship—trust me, it's small. If you'll face a bigger fear, that little fear will start to be handled pretty easily. That's why when all of us go through.
. . In our lives, extreme stress— we're all going to go through it.
You're gonna have a home burn down, or something's gonna happen to somebody you love, or someone's going to pass before you're prepared for it, which is almost always the case. Or you're going to find yourself in a financial situation that feels like you can't turn it around. Or you might feel like personal character assassination.
Or maybe you get mugged, or maybe you get a terminal disease. We all will face, multiple times in our lives, extreme stress. The difference in people's lives is not what we face; it's what we do with what we face.
You can take yourself from a place where, in the face of absolute, total tragedy, you triumph. But it requires making some new decisions, taking some new actions, and mastering a part of yourself that can unleash all of your power and abilities. That human spirit, as corny as it sounds, can be channeled in a very specific way, and if you do, the game of life changes.
So I'll give you another example outside of Frank and Kristen: a friend of mine who just passed recently. He's always been a deep inspiration to me. His name is Art Berg, and Art's a guy who was a young man—good-looking, strong, athletic.
He lived in Utah, and he fell in love with his absolute sweetheart. She was, you know, the most popular girl, the most attractive girl; she met all the criteria of a college boy. One day, his buddy was driving across the state to go to where he was going to get married, and he fell asleep in the back seat while his best friend was driving.
His best friend fell asleep in the middle of the night as they were driving. My friend Art Berg woke up rather intensely on the desert floor with a car upside down, his legs trapped beneath it and unable to feel anything. He became a quadriplegic in an instant.
His friend actually was beat up but survived. Now, what do you do in a situation like that? Well, the first thing most people do is they want to curse God, or they want to curse their friend.
It's not their fault. Most of what happens in our lives is not our fault, but what we do with it is going to determine the quality of our lives. Sometimes, it is our fault, let's be honest, but lots of times, events happen—stuff happens, or whatever word you want to use—stuff happens, you know what I'm talking about.
But what's different about this man is he made a different set of decisions on that day. He said to himself, "You know what? I got two choices: I can live here in the dirt and suffer for the rest of my life for what I've lost, or I can figure out how to maximize what I have.
" He developed this mindset. His mindset was, "Before the accident, there were probably ten thousand things I could do. After the accident, I said I could probably do nine thousand things.
Before the accident, I was probably not even doing five hundred of those things. I'm going to do more while I am now," and he did. He became an entrepreneur, started his own bookstore and became very successful.
He married the same childhood sweetheart because this man was so inspirational to be around. It didn't matter that he was in a chair; she loved him. He had two children—one of the greatest gifts of life—and he did all kinds of crazy things.
He'd scuba dive; his friends would put him in a suit and tie a weight to him and drop him to the bottom. They dragged him along the bottom—that was his idea of scuba diving. He was an incredible human being, and he lived an incredibly full life filled with joy.
The worst thing that ever happened to you? Being a quadriplegic. The best thing?
Winning the lottery. I feel like everybody wants something from you and you didn't earn it, and there's no sense of joy. Everything's about trying to hang on to what you've got.
What is the best thing that happened to you? What is the worst? The worst is not to take control of the force that controls your life, and that force is human emotion.
I mean, I want you to think about this and answer a question for me, if you would: What really changed Frank and Kristen's quality of life? What changed them? You can see the change; you can see it even more a year later, and it's continued to happen.
What made the change possible? Did you get it? Did you see it?
The answer is simple: we changed the emotional pattern that was controlling their life, and you and I have emotional patterns that are controlling us right now—whether we're aware of it consciously or not. It doesn't matter; it's the force that is shaping you. It's shaping your relationships, it's shaping your finances, it's shaping your career, and it's shaping the amount of joy or unhappiness or suffering or excitement you have right now in this moment.
But it's an invisible force; most of us never take a look at it. You might want to take a look at it right now through the eyes of what we did with Frank and Kristen. Now, what was the emotional pattern that was dominating them at the beginning of the show?
You could feel it, couldn't you? There was this feeling of death—that there was no future. Probably the most common belief system of people in North America—and now in Europe—is that 60 percent of Americans now believe that the future is going to be worse than the past for themselves and for their kids.
Seventy percent of Germans and Europeans—I think it's 80 percent, according to a Pew study. Recently, in France and around the world, we're starting to believe that circumstances control who we are. Don't get me wrong; circumstances play a huge impact.
Events play a huge impact on your life, but they're not the ultimate determining factor. The force of human spirit or emotion is. With the right emotion, you can unleash things you could never dream of.
I know you know this is true. So take a look; let's analyze: where do these two live after the accident? Well, where would you live if you were Christian?
I mean, you've lost your future. Supposedly, there's no intimacy, there's no chance of children. You've become the full-time nurse to your husband, who you love, but now you're changing his catheter every few hours.
You're afraid to leave the house because you're afraid: what if he falls over? He may stop breathing. I mean, there's no life.
So she goes through the emotions of feeling depressed for the life she's lost, to feeling angry. I call it a crazy eight; we get tired of feeling sad, and then we get angry for a while, and then we beat ourselves up for being angry at ourselves, or God, or our partner, and then we get all depressed again. It's a common pattern; you don’t have to have something like their event happen in your life to get stuck in a crazy eight.
But interestingly enough, she's living in that place. And now what? What's Frank doing?
Frank wants to help his wife, but he's got a limitation we've got to break through. He's got a belief: all breakthroughs start with a change in your beliefs, because once you believe how something is, that means you're certain that's how it is. If you're certain it can't change, you're right; it can't.
I can't convince you; no one else can convince you. And Frank's thinking, "I'm helpless, and I've harmed my wife," and he's living with the emotions of guilt, sadness, and depression. And when he's tired of that, he gets completely overwhelmed because he says, "If I just would have not jumped in or if I would have jumped in a different spot," or a million other things that could have been different, "then I wouldn't have destroyed my wife's life.
" Instead of saying, "My wife needs me right now, and I don't give a damn if I'm trapped physically in this chair; my soul, my spirit is going to reach her. " That's my assignment: to get him to remember that power, to not just remember it but to get him to use it and shift his wife. And that's what we did through this process.
How? Well, the process really was giving him a series of experiences that would change his entire belief about who he is. I could try to tell him, "Oh, here's what you can do.
" Yeah, I'm six foot seven, and I obviously have the use of all my appendages; easy for me, right? But if I get him to have some experiences—like I bring him to Fiji, and I show him he can get out of the house more than the house, become a world traveler, and go through all the challenges that are part of that—but if you watch our little section of the story behind the story, you'll hear some things that weren't in the show about that, by the way. But I gave him a traveler in Fiji, and the first thing I got to do with him is get him to experience—not just intellectually, but to experience—he can make a difference for his wife.
He is not helpless; she needs him, and he can transform her from crying, sad, out-of-control, angry to laughing, giggling, and feeling loved that fast. It's a beautiful moment in the show if you watched. And all it is is something called presence.
If you're not clear about that, do some homework, follow up with us or someone else, and figure out how to create that because that's what changes relationships. Presence works. And Frank starts to understand—not verbally but by his own experience—"Hey, you know, I don't have to live in that sadness or that feeling of being unworthy or that feeling of being overwhelmed.
I can matter. I can matter to her. I don't have to be the person she just takes care of.
" It was a huge shift in the experience, and I'm giving you Frank's example because it relates to yours. Maybe you have different emotions, but don't we all get to points where we feel like we don't matter, where we can't change something, where we're stuck, and it's our belief? A great way to break that belief is to get yourself another experience.
That's what I do with people in seminars; that's what they do in any coaching process: change it. What do we do after that? We take him through the experience of facing his fears, and we get him to do the skydive together with his lady, and he feels total freedom for the first time since the accident.
You get freedom when you face your fear—not just face it, but push through it. Again, face separation from his lady for ten days; get him to be in a room with Olympic athletes who couldn't move across the room. He couldn't move across the room, but now they're incredible, and he feels like he's not enough, and he has to push through that.
Show him how to get back his dream—drive his truck, get in that thing, and drive 100 miles an hour, even though all you've got is your elbows to drive the darn thing, and I'm in the other seat. Pretty cool thing! So it was a stacking of these experiences that got Frank to own himself in a new way, to build a new identity—a new set of emotional.
Patterns. So here are the steps, and this is what you want to do: What I did with him, I did four things. That's all I really did at its core.
Number one: For both of them, for Frank and Kristen to transform, I identified where they live emotionally. That's what you've got to do—where do they live emotionally? We just described where they live: depression, anger on one side; feeling guilty, feeling overwhelmed, feeling sad on the other.
There's no way they can change their life with that as the emotional fuel to get them to take action. You're not going to take action if there's not enough intensity to get you through the obstacles or the tragedies or the challenges. Once you see what the pattern is and you tell yourself the truth, this is where I'm living.
Step two: I identified what's the antidote. So if fear is what's controlling things right now, then the antidote is called courage. Now, courage doesn’t mean that you're not scared; courage simply means that you're scared to death but you do it anyway.
It's an emotional muscle. It doesn’t feel good; you just exercise it. That's what courage is.
I mean, everybody has different emotional patterns, and it may be hard to see in yourself, but I bet you know it in other people. I mean, come on, don't you know somebody who lives every day angry all the time or pissed off or frustrated or worried? Haven't you met people at different times?
Don't you know somebody that's always kind of playful or crazy or cracking jokes? Better yet, do you know somebody who's not really funny, but they think they are? They tell a stupid joke that's not even funny, but they crack themselves up so much that you find yourself cracking up, right?
I mean, people have patterns. The question is, what's yours? See if you can identify the patterns in other people; you can start to see them in yourself as well.
And you know what we all do? We all find a way to try to get what I call "home. " I noticed this after 9/11.
I was with 2,000-plus people from, I think, 45 countries. I was in Hawaii when the accidents happened, when the tragedy occurred. You know, the attacks happened, and we got the information at three o'clock in the morning in Hawaii.
We had 100-plus people, 200 people, that were from New York, many of whom worked and had offices and friends in the towers, and all their friends died. Their whole company disappeared. I had to bring these people in from all these countries with different religions, different backgrounds, different belief systems.
Some people were celebrating; other people were crying and saying it was the end times. It was unbelievable. I noticed all this emotion around me, and the biggest thing to put them all together was I had to say, "What's really going on here?
" And I noticed angry people got angry, sad people got sad, and guilty people, a nurse, she felt guilty because she wasn’t there helping people but she was always guilty. The angry lady was always angry. We all have a "home.
" Many of the people didn’t live in the United States and didn’t know anyone in New York City, yet they were again angry, guilty, or sad. Why? They weren’t angry, guilty, or sad about the 3,000 people a day that die of cancer and heart disease—they're all mothers, fathers, and children.
I pointed out that day, "You can't be convenient with your compassion," and yet most of us are. We're unaware that we use events as a trigger to get back "home" to the patterns we know, even if it's uncomfortable. So if you identify where you live emotionally, the patterns are limiting you.
The second piece is to find the antidote; courage can replace fear. If you're feeling this unbelievable feeling of overwhelm, you need love or support. And not just go get it—go give it.
Finding that antidote starts to change the game. Then, after you identify it and find the antidote, number three is you’ve got to practice that emotion. I know that sounds weird; I'll explain what I mean in a moment.
But you've got to do that emotion enough consciously that you can shift from frustrated or depressed to determined. You know how to shift that gear, and it's not fake; it’s not some pump-up—it's real, and it changes your life when you can do that like that. It's a biochemical change; it's not some "I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy" positive thinking BS.
That's not what I teach. I'm not here to tell you to go to your garden and chant, "There's no weeds. " I'm going to say, "There’s the weed, go pull it out!
" But you're not going to pull it out without determination, without passion, without commitment. Am I making sense? So if you know the pattern, if you find the antidote, if you practice it enough, then the final step is to condition it.
You practice enough that you can just automatically go into it—that's when your life changes. So what are you going to do as your assignment for this week to take this little 10-minute rant I'm giving you and convert it into a massive, measurable increase in the quality of your life? I can't do that for you; you can do it for yourself.
If you do what I tell you, here’s what you’re going to do. Step one (and it'll be on the web as well): you’ve got to identify where you live. So, where do you live?
Where do you live emotionally? You personally, just like we. .
. Do, with Frank and Kristen, there are thousands of emotions. There are 4,000 words in the human, in the English language, I should say, for different individual emotions.
I did the research on it years ago. I'm happy to take out a piece of paper, a pen, take out your, you know, your notebook computer, get a page on one side, one column. Write all the emotions that you experience at least once a week that empower you in some way—love, passion, excitement, creativity, whatever it is; peace, determination.
I don't know what yours are. I want you to write the emotions, though—don't experience them once in a while—the ones you experience at least once a week in a powerful way, and really feel it. Not the emotions you feel once every blue moon.
On the other side of that page, or if you do it on our little application or wherever we put it here, on the other side, I want you to write all the negative emotions, or to be more fair, all emotions can be positive; you use them all—the disempowering emotions, the ones that tend to put you in a state where you don’t follow through. I want you on that side to write all of them and do it simultaneously. Just keep making your list.
What are the emotions that go into that mess me up—like feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, lost, alone, depressed, or pissed off and rageful—whatever it is? You go, and again, not emotions you experience once in a while—the ones you experience at least once a week. So make a list of all the emotions experienced at least once a week—the ones that empower you and the ones that disempower you.
On the list, that's step one. That's identifying where you live, and then call out the top two out of the whole list that you experience most often that are empowering, and the top two that you experience most often that are disempowering. That'll be step one.
Now, if I'm trying to explain it to you here, it'll be right in front of you as well, so if you forget what I'm saying, it’s going to be on a little checklist, but I want you to know what I mean. Step two: let's identify the solution. So you look at your list and you see on the disempowering list, "I got sadness and depression," or "I got feeling lonely," or "I've got feeling rage and anger," or "I got feeling fear.
" What emotional state would you like to feel in that situation that would change your life? If it's fear, maybe it's courage. Again, courage doesn't mean it's easy; it doesn't mean you feel, you know, confident.
It just means you're going to do it anyway. Maybe it's determination. Maybe instead of feeling alone, you feel loving, and you go give to somebody else.
What's the answer to it? What's an emotional pattern that, if you lived that, it would change the game? Is it faith?
Is it passion? Is it courage? Is it playfulness?
You're taking things just too damn seriously; you've forgotten perspective. Go watch the show again—see if you really have a problem; see if your problems are as challenging as the people you just saw who transformed their tragedy into something tremendous, something beautiful, something magnificent, something meaningful; something that can even help other people that are watching. That's the beauty.
So that's the second step: what's the antidote? Come up with your answer to an emotion. Step three is you've got to practice that emotion.
I know that sounds silly, stupid, kind of weird, but if you came to a seminar with me, you'd see, you know, three thousand, ten thousand people, and we do this, and we condition that new emotion until you can shift gears. Have you ever heard about the firewalk? It's not about the firewalk or your skydiving—it's all kinds of crazy stuff.
It's a metaphor for how do I go from afraid? Fire's a metaphor for whatever you don't follow through on in your life, whatever holds you back to snapping and going to a state of mind where I just move through. It's not this big mind-over-matter thing; it's mind over emotion.
It's shifting. When you learn how to go from scared to determined and in action, what can't you do in your life? So we show you how to do that, but for right now, I'll give you just a quick example.
Understand that emotion is really created by motion, by the way. Use your body. So, a quick example: real quick, imagine a time when you know someone who's depressed, or you were depressed.
You ever felt that way? I'm sure you have at some time. Think about what you do with your body when somebody's depressed.
They get all excited, talk faster; just know everything kind of slows down, doesn't it? What happens to your shoulders? They drop.
Where's your head when you're depressed? It drops. But your breathing—full or shallow?
You know it becomes shallow. You talk loud and fast or slow and quiet—slow and quiet, more hesitant. Now, emotion is created by motion.
We can try and think ourselves, “I'm happy, I’m happy,” but if you go, “I’m happy, I’m happy,” and your body's like this, nothing's going to change. We can change our biochemistry by eating, by taking a drug, by smoking a cigarette, because then you take a different breath; you eat food you like, you fill up your tummy, and you start to breathe nice. Your whole mental, emotional state changes, doesn't it?
So what I'm saying is you don't need the cigarette; you don't actually need the food. You can just physically learn to say, “This is what I do when I'm depressed; this is what I do when I'm most determined. ” There’s this gesture I made.
I remember one time when I was a. . .
Kid, or one time I got pissed off, and I just—what did I do? I made a gesture. I stood taller.
I looked the person in the eye. I spoke with more authority. Now, my idea of passion and determination may be a little off the top for you.
When I get it, I'm a crazy mofo, and I'm a passionate human being. But you can do your version. What do you do when you're really feeling something, like determination?
What do you do when you are passionate—with your face, with your voice, with your body? Just practice and make a contrast. Here's what I do when I'm sad; here's what I do when I feel loved; here's what I do when I'm worried; here's what I do when I'm determined.
That's what I mean by practice, and I'd love to have you at an event, but I'm trying to give this to you so you can do it right now. And you can! Maybe this would be helpful to do with friends, so they can give you feedback and say, "Here's what you do.
I see you do this when you're really strong; I see you do that when you're kind of weak. " That's the third step: practice. Now, what's the assignment?
Figure out your emotions. Where do you live—positive, negative? What are the big primary one-antidotes?
What emotions do you need? Practice the emotions you need so you can go into them a few times. Sounds a little weird, but if you do it, you'll see it's actually quite fun.
It feels powerful! Maybe do it with a friend; that's the easy way to do it and condition it. And that means take the next three days, do this three times, figure out the difference, and shift from not sure and worried to determined.
From overwhelmed and not knowing what to do to focused. You just deliberately, physically make the change from one to the other, three times through three days. If you're bold, do it for seven.
But if you do this three or four times a day for three to seven days, you start to get a pattern in your body. And a new pattern means a new life. Our lives are a reflection of our emotional patterns.
If you live in sadness and depression, you can have a billion dollars, and your life is still called sad and depressed. If you're living, feeling grateful, feeling alive, feeling passionate, your life is filled with gratitude and passion. It doesn't matter what's happening anywhere else, and you can face any challenge from those emotions and you can overcome.
Does this make sense? This is how you can take what you watched in that show and convert it into some actions that'll change you. A very simple approach.
Or come see me or get some coaching. I've got all kinds of resources, but this is something you can do right now. You don't need somebody else to make it happen; you just need a little ability to take action.
Makes sense? And if you haven't seen the show, for God’s sakes, go on Hulu and watch it, or all this will just sound like a bunch of words. If you've had the experience, you know what I'm talking about.
You've witnessed it; it'll be real in you right now, and you'll get a sense of what you can do to move forward. And if you can’t find it on Hulu, once again, send us a little email, and we'll make sure we find a way for you to observe or experience the show directly. And the last thing I say to you is: the best way to keep something in your body is to share it with somebody else.
The whole philosophy of my life has been, if your life's going to be meaningful, you can't just be about "me. " You've got to be about "we. " So, if you can, if you feel like it, if your spirit's touched by this, help us pay it forward.
Share this with your friends. You can share a clip of our show; you can share this little section—there are all kinds of ways. Just take the clip and send it.
Leave every way you can push a button once again and send it virally to everybody—everyone who's on your email list. We’d love it if that works for you. If you don’t, we’re totally respectful of that.
But in the end, I can promise you one thing: if you will do this—if you'll discover your current emotional pattern, and you'll change it through a little bit of practice over and over again—you will change the quality of your life, no matter what you're facing. Make sense? Thanks for taking the time.
I hope this was close to ten minutes. I went a little crazy, but it's really just designed to try to serve you. So, until I see you again, hopefully next week: live strong and live with passion.
God bless!
