How to Succeed in Life: Lessons From Tony Robbins Book Unlimited Power

Throughout his life, Tony Robbins has taught people how to succeed in life. He has coached the most influential people we know – Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Oprah, Serena Williams, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa.

He has trained Olympic athletes, CEOs and heads of States to perform at peak levels and he has saved people from committing suicide. Behind his great feats lie a deep understanding of what makes people tick.

He is truly a force of nature.

In Unlimited Power, he shows us how to succeed in life and career by mastering our own mind.

Here are the most important lessons from the book on how to succeed in life:

1. Communication is Power

Robbins says that communication is power. It determines how we experience the world and how the world experiences us. With great communication skills comes the power to influence others.

All great people including Martin Luther King, John. F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, and Mahatma Gandhi used their words to influence millions of people.

According to Robbins, communication is of two forms – external and internal.

External Communication

How we communicate with others determines our success in society. Think about it. From cracking job interviews to negotiating business deals, communication is an integral part of achieving success in life. Mutual trust and respect is the foundation of growth in all kinds of work.

Internal Communication

This one is generally overlooked. According to Robbins, how you feel – happy or sad, is because of how you communicate with yourself. If you master internal communication, you can change how you feel, act and live.

2. Ultimate Success Formula

Everyone wants to know how to succeed in life. The formula consists of four simple steps:

1. Define exactly what you want to achieve.
2. Create a strategy and take action.
3. Measure how successful your strategy was.
4. Tweak your strategy until you achieve your goal.

Life is like a river. It’s moving, and you can be at the mercy of the river if you don’t take deliberate, conscious action to steer yourself in a direction you have predetermined.”

3. Use Modelling to Succeed at Anything

Robbins gives us a smart answer to how to succeed in life. According to him, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we just need to model the behaviors and strategy of those who have already succeeded.

But how?

Use this to achieve anything

If you want to achieve any goal, there’s a simple process you can use to achieve the results they did.

The five-step modeling process that shows how to succeed in life:

1. Find a top performer and study their strategy and actions
2. Implement the same strategy and actions
3. Visualize the top performer at their peak performance producing outstanding work
4. Visualize again, making yourself as the top performer, doing the same things
5. Go get it. Take action.

To meet your needs on every level, first identify your values. Make a list of everything that matters to you, such as love, honesty, freedom, beauty and creativity.

4. Rule Your Mind To Nuke Negativity

To succeed in life, you need to rule your mind. If your mind rules you, you can never commit to action and achieve your goals.

Here’s where you learn how to master internal communication.

There are many ways you can do this:

A. Reframe Negative Events And Feel Positive Instantly

Did you ever fail at a game and felt really bad, I-want-to-die bad? It happens with everyone. But the truth is that any situation is as bad as you make it. If you lose a game, you can tell yourself, “Doesn’t matter. I had fun.”

The point is:

“You can choose what an event means to you, instead of accepting by default that it’s bad for you .”

So when you face a negative situation, reframe it as a positive one. Ask yourself, “What’s great about it?” or “If I go through this, I will become stronger.” Always remember, reality is what you perceive it is.

B. Use Anchoring to Feel Happy and Get Things Done

Anchoring refers to creating a desirable response by using a particular stimulus. We always feel sad while listening to a sad song. And we always feel happy when we meet a beloved friend. In these examples, friend and song are stimuli, and how we feel is our response.  

Meaning?

When we experience a certain stimulus, we create a certain response in our mind. And we can use this simple anchoring mechanism to our advantage.

How to use this:

Suppose you love working out and it makes you feel strong and unstoppable. So, whenever you feel low, or too tired to do important work, you can do a quick ten-minute workout to make yourself feel strong and unstoppable.

C. Use Swish Pattern to Break Bad Habits

You can use the same anchoring mechanism to quit a bad habit. A swish pattern helps you build positive habits by changing the mental image you hold of your bad habits.  

To use a swish pattern:

1. First, visualize the habit you want to change. Make an internal representation. If it is smoking, visualize yourself smoking.
2. Now imagine how you will look and feel once you make that change. In the case of smoking, you may feel yourself feeling more energetic, your face glowing, etc.
3. Swish the two images, swapping the images mentally, making a “whoosh” sound loudly with excitement
4. Repeat the process many times.

We know this is crazy.

Here’s EXACTLY how to do the swish, as explained by Tony Robbins:

“Start by making a big bright picture of the behavior you want to change. Then, in the bottom right-hand corner of that picture, make a small dark picture of the way you want to be. Now take that small picture, and in less than one second, have it grow in size and brightness and literally burst through the picture of the behavior you no longer desire. As you do this process, say the sound “whoosh” with all the excitement and enthusiasm you can.”

How does this work?

Your brain forms a new neural pattern: See the old -> Whoosh -> Do the new

And as a result, you associate pleasure with the new habit instead of the old habit. You become stronger, smarter, and happier. As you build positive habits, you learn how to succeed in life and achieve your goals with full confidence.

5. Use Physiology to Feel Happy and Strong

Physiology is another way to get into a great mental state. Physiology here refers to your posture, your facial expressions, and how you use your physical body.

For example, in a depressed state, a person would be looking down, shoulders dropped, breathing shallow and voice weak.

The best part:

You can create ecstasy at will by changing your physiology.

To create ecstasy, simply laugh, sing, or dance. You need to act as if you were ecstatic and you will be ecstatic.

We’ve actually shown how Tony Robbins uses this tactic to overcome negativity.

Physiology is very important because it leads to a strong or weak mental state which further leads to strong or weak results. Your task is to make your physiology work for you, not against you. Go for a run, workout, take a cold shower – and quickly change your state from sad to happy and energetic.

So now that you know how to succeed in life, implement the lessons and see your life change – one goal at a time.