Tony Robbins: How To Train Your Brain To Stay Focused (Transcript)

And the second way to change your state at any moment in time as quickly as you can think it is to control and direct the focus of your mind. What do I mean by that? Well, think about this. The only experience that you have of life comes in two forms, what you’re physically feeling because of the condition and use of your body at that moment.

In other words, if you got physical pain, that’s obviously going to affect your state There’s some kind of tension, for example Or if you haven’t had any sleep, that’s certainly going to affect your state as well. Or if you’ve eaten something that’s blown your blood sugar sky-high, then obviously that’s going to affect your emotional states as well. The only other thing that really controls your state is what are you paying attention to right now at this moment? I mean, let’s take an example.

Have you ever had a headache? Maybe even a massive headache that you thought there was no way it would ever go away? You were in really deep pain? Now, what do you do? Well, most people go get an aspirin. What if instead, have you ever had it happen where somebody asked you a question, or something needed to be done, or something required your total focus somewhere else outside of yourself and whammo, immediately, the pain disappeared.

In fact, you forgot about it. And later on when you thought about it, you noticed your headache was gone. Haven’t you had that happen at least once or twice in your life? Now, how did you do that? See, my whole life has been studying what makes people successful? If someone’s able to do something, if they’re able to get rapport with somebody else, if they’re able to create the results they want physically in their life that is, lose weight, feel energized, if they’re able to create the relationships that they really desire, if they’re able to feel as good as they ever wanted to feel, I want to know how did they do that?

And so, I began to study how could somebody get rid of a headache that quickly so we wouldn’t be dependent on some drug like aspirin or Tylenol or anything else? And I began to realize that what it was is we changed our mental focus and that whatever we’re experiencing in our body really comes from what we’re paying attention to.

That’s what really determines how you feel, and of course, how you feel determines usually how you’re going to be behaved. Doesn’t that make sense? And when you’re feeling really lousy, you don’t usually do really well. And I know there are exceptions, but those exceptions are because you control your focus. You don’t focus on feeling lousy. You focus on what’s got to be done.

There is tremendous power in controlling the focus of your mind. Now, what do I mean by this specifically? Well, there are two things we can control in terms of focus. We can control what we’re focusing on, that is, what we’re picturing in our mind, what we’re saying to ourselves, what we’re paying attention to in our physical body, or we can control how we’re focusing. How we’re focusing means let’s say the dimension of the pictures in our mind, the brightness of the colors in our head. The volume of our sounds.

If we change how we’re paying attention to things, not just what, it radically changes our state as well. Let me give you an example. Pretend for a moment that your brain is a camera, and you go to a party. How are you gonna feel at that party? Well, the only thing you’re gonna have feelings about are the things you focus on. I mean, in that room, literally, there are almost unlimited number of activities and probably emotions and conversations and things that are going on.

But, your experience of that party is based on what that camera focuses on. Now, if it focuses on two people that are fighting, and that’s what it focuses on for the entire party, you would leave that party saying “Oh, that party was really intense. I mean, people were really upset with each other.” If your focus was on two people in love who were maybe kissing passionately, and say, “Wow, that party was really moving. I mean, those people were really connected.”

If your focus was on some people that were really boring or bored, you’d say, “Oh, nobody really enjoyed that party.” Here’s the problem. The problem is your camera, that is the focus that you have, does not usually take in everything simultaneously. Your conscious mind can’t. There are only so many things you can consciously focus on.

I mean, think about how many things right now you are not paying attention to that are happening at this moment. There’s the blood pulsating through your right ear. You may not have even paid attention to it. Now that I mention it, you might focus on it. There’s the beat of your heart. Were you even noticing that until I mentioned it?

There’s the feel of maybe some air coming from an air conditioning maybe if you’re nearby, or there’s the heat on your skin. Or there’s the blinking of your eyes. There are unlimited number of things that are happening right now.

But see, here’s the thing about human beings. Since we can’t focus on everything and consciously perceive it all, what most of us do is we become what I call deletion creatures.

What do I mean? I mean that most of the time most of us delete, that is we fail to pay attention to or we ignore most of what’s going on around us at any moment in time. So, what’s the price of all this deletion? Well, the price is we walk around believing or hallucinating might be a better word that our experience with the world is real.

Now, would you think that if you were looking through a camera that was focused on one little portion of the party that that was truly the party? That wouldn’t be very intelligent would it? In fact, you know what else is a problem? That camera may even create closeups where it makes things bigger than they actually are, where they look bigger and brighter or worse than they were. Isn’t that possible too? Do you think your brain does that as well? You better believe it does.

So, the key is if you want your life to be a party that you’re happy with and not a party that you’re upset with, you got to realize that at any moment in time, there’s enough going on in the party of your life that you could find something to be upset about.

All you got to do is focus on it. All you got to do is now look around that party find out the areas that don’t match your expectations, make ’em big and bright and close, and you’ll be upset. And you know what? Most people are good at this. They’ve done it over and over and over again.

The other thing that’s equally true is that virtually any party at any moment in time, there’s somebody havin’ a good time. And if you were to focus on some area of your life at that moment in time, you can make yourself feel absolutely great. Or you could take some little thing, something that’s just kind of nice but make it bigger and brighter and immediately, you can feel better about it as well.

So here’s my point. My point is if you want to look at the quality of life and know what it is, it’s the quality of the states that you live in day-to-day. I mean, isn’t that really true? Isn’t it how you feel day-to-day that determines how you treat yourself, how you treat other people and how great you feel or how poor you feel about your life?

What determines it? One, how you use your body. So, you want to develop some new habits. And two, what and how you focus on things. Now, that’s the only way we can explain how people have come from unbelievably painful experiences and turned them around.

W Mitchell’s secret is he has controlled his physical body, specifically the way he uses his face. This man has learned with what’s left of his body to smile and move his face in ways that makes him feel incredible. And the second thing is he focuses continuously on what he wants, what he’s got, what he’s grateful for, and as a result, he feels incredible. Now, nobody would blame him for looking around and seeing he has no legs and he has no fingers. He’s got the toes there instead. And he’s in a situation where he’s in physical pain a lot of the time.

Nobody would blame him for feeling sorry for himself. But see, he doesn’t focus on that. He loves life because he focuses on the part of the party that’s the best part for him. Don’t you deserve to give yourself the same gift?

Now, take a look at John Belushi, an example we used earlier also. How could a guy like Belushi, or Presley, or take somebody like Elizabeth Taylor. Here’s a lady that will have everything going for her by most people’s standards. She’s an incredibly intelligent woman. She’s absolutely beautiful. She’s a great actress. She has thousands and thousands, probably millions of fans to be accurate who absolutely love her.

She has as much money as most people could ever imagine needing or wanting. She has a lifestyle that’s absolutely phenomenal. She has family and friends and that care about her and would do anything for her. And yet, what happens with this lady? She has not learned to manage her state and she pays the price, as great as she is Great on the stage, but in her personal life over and over again, she has to turn to food or to drugs to try and take care of the challenges within herself.

See, how could someone have it all and still be unhappy? Because no matter how good it is, you can always focus on something that isn’t perfect or doesn’t match your expectations, and that is called ultimate failure in life. You want to know what I believe success is? Success is creating consistent pleasure in your life and causing yourself to grow. Failure is being able to find pain no matter how good it is. That’s failure. The bottom line is you have that power and you can change it right now by understanding that you make decisions about what to focus on.

Now, maybe it may be true that you’ve got some bad habits. It may be true that right now, you look at what’s worse or you look at what’s wrong or you see what’s not working in your life and it’s habitual, so you don’t think about it consciously. But, you still make the decisions. You can turn off the automatic pilot and take control. And when you do, you can instantly change the quality of your life.

The lady I married, my wife Becky, one of the things I love about her more than anything in the world, the reason I married her probably more than anything else is this woman is so incredible in her ability at any moment in time to focus on what is great in a situation, what is beautiful. The most little things. She and I share that power where we can be in the middle of anything, in the middle of turmoil and upsets and frustrations. And in a heartbeat, we can stop and we say, “Hey, look, notice that flower. Notice that sunset.”

Or look in each other’s eyes and say, “How did I get so lucky to get you?” We have that ability and we share it. We reinforce it in each other and it gives power to our relationship and to our lives. You have that control. All you have to do is exercise it. So, what I want to do is be more specific with you now on how to do it.

Now, first of all, let me demonstrate this is really true to you. I mean, you may say, “Well, yeah, this makes sense.” Well, let’s take a quick example. Now, this may be an unfair situation if you’re in a place that you’re familiar with, but let’s try this right now. And if you’re in a place you’re familiar with, you might want to try it later on in the day when you’re not familiar with something.

But, let’s take an example here. What I want you to do right now is I’d like you, if you would, let’s test the power of something I want you to look around your room, the room you’re in right now, or if you’re in your car. You can look out the windows also, but I want you to notice everything you can see, everything you can see, and I’m only gonna give you a few seconds, that is brown. Quick, look around the room. Everything you can see that’s brown. Look around your car. Look outside, everything you can see that’s brown. Quickly, everything. Make sure you don’t miss anything.

Everything you see that’s brown, quick, quick, quick. Okay, stop, close your eyes. With your eyes closed now, close your eyes. And if you’re driving, this is difficult. Okay, so you might want to try this later as an exercise.

But, what I’d like you to do is close your eyes and what I want you to do with your eyes closed now is tell me, or you know, since I’m not there literally, although I may be. You never know. But, just for now, out loud say everything that’s in this room that is green. Oh, maybe I hooked you a little bit, huh? You were waiting for brown. Tell me out loud, come on, everything that’s green.

Try this, everything in that room that’s blue. Everything in the room that is white. And everything in the room that’s red. And now, open your eyes and look around the room and notice everything you can see in this room that’s green. Come on, take a good look.

Now, some you may say, “Well, there’s nothing in this room that’s green.” Look behind you there. There’s something green behind you. That’s right. What’s blue in this room? Now, do you see a lot more green? Do you see a lot more blue now than you did the first time? Unless you’re in a room you already are super familiar with, that is, you’ve already got a picture in your head and you know it, like maybe it’s your bedroom and you know everything.

Even then, you may not have noticed everything. But, if you’re in a strange room, or you’re in a place where you’re not used to, what I find is 99% of the time, people see a lot more blue and green when I ask them about that specifically later on. In other words, when I ask you to focus on brown, that’s what comes up. You notice mostly brown. You tend to delete a lot of the other details.

Isn’t that true? Now, how does that relate to life? See, a lot of people in life stare at and focus on the brown in life, the shall we say, feces of life. And other people, they look for the green. They look for its growing. They look for what’s alive. That’s what you need to do.

See, in life, we get whatever we focus on. Whatever you pay attention to, that’s what you experience in your body instantly.

So, how do we control our focus? Well, that’s a good question. For years, I’ve been looking at it. And you know, I read all the books on positive thinking where they said, “Hey, you want to do good, you got to feel good.” That makes sense. And if you want to feel good, you got to talk to yourself good and picture good. Well, the challenge with that, the challenge of the positive thinking is what we’ve already talked about. The problem with positive thinking is you got to think about it. And it’s a little bit difficult.

We got to get ourselves conditioned to think more positive. Plus, I could ask them a question: How do you think positive? They say, “Be positive” How? Well, they said, “Make good pictures.” Well, how do you get yourself to do that? And so, what I’ve analyzed for years is what determines, since there’s zillions of things you and I could pay attention to at any moment, what determines what we focus on? Well, some of what we focus on, or most of it, is based upon our beliefs of what’s important and our values.

And we’re gonna talk about that in the next tape. But, for right now, the thing that at this specific moment determines what you focus on is how you’re evaluating things. Now, that sounds like a big chunk, but what do I mean by that? Well the way we evaluate things determines how we feel, but what is an evaluation? Evaluations are nothing but questions. The way I found this out is one day I was realizing, well, W Mitchell’s pretty happy because he’s evaluated his life in a way that makes him happy. John Belushi’s not here because of the way he evaluated things.

He made himself actually feel bad when he had plenty he could have felt good on if he just focused on that part of his life’s party, if you will. So I thought, how do I explain what evaluation is? And then I noticed that I had asked a question to try to evaluate how to explain evaluations and I thought, well, is it possible that evaluations are questions? And I thought, well that’s a question too, isn’t it? And that’s a question isn’t it? I thought, is that really what evaluation is, is a question?

And I noticed that was a question and pretty soon, I’ve whipped myself in a frenzy and began to realize evaluations are in fact questions, and I tried to mismatch it as I try to look at the opposite side and I’ve tested it in all kinds of people, maybe you can find the opposite of what I’m saying, but I don’t know I have found that thinking is nothing but the process of evaluating things. You’re always evaluating, “What does this mean to me and what should I do?” Those are two questions your brain is asking on a continuous basis. See, if I take my fist then I go wham, and I bring it within two inches of your face, I guarantee you your brain is gonna make some evaluations.

Question number one, what does this mean? Question number two, what should I do? And your brain’s gonna evaluate, it’s gonna search your brain for your beliefs about, “What does this mean, do I need to move, “is it gonna hit me, what does this mean? “And what should I do? “Do I hit back, do I adjust, what does my body need to do?” We’re always asking those two primary questions, but the questions we ask determine what we focus on.

Here, let me be more specific and I’ll think you’ll have an example of what I mean. I’ve said to you so far in this tape that what you focus on determines how you feel. I’ve also said that the questions you ask yourself determine what you focus on. Think of questions this way:

Imagine your brain is the ultimate computer, and in that computer is the answer to any question you could possibly have. And by the way, I believe that that metaphor is really how your brain works. It can come up with the answer to any question you ask it. Bible says, “Ask and you shall receive.” A very true and real statement, beyond what you might believe religiously, even if you have different religious beliefs. It is reality in my experience of how our brain works.

Now if you have this great computer and in front of you, the only way you get information out of this computer is to ask for it, you tap in to this keyboard and you ask questions and bam, and answer the questions you will get responses on the screen, and your brain works the same way.

You ask questions, you hit the keyboard with questions, and it will fire off the answers in your brain, but here’s what’s different about your brain than most computers. Whatever question you ask, if you ask it with the absolute expectation that you’re gonna get an answer, and if you ask it consistently, and you give that brain time to search for the answers, you will get an answer. By the way, any question you ask, you’ll get an answer to, even one that doesn’t have a basis in reality. In other words, this computer will do anything.

It’ll search its files and make things up in order to answer your question. What do I mean? Well if you go around ask your brain, “Why do these things always happen to me?” Well guess what, your brain will search all its databases and say, “Why do things always happen to me?” And it’ll take every possible form of input of what people said to you in your life or you’ve ever said to yourself, what you’ve ever read or saw on TV, and I’ll make up an answer for you “It always happens to you “because you’re a turkey, that’s why” Right? And oh, sure enough, now you feel lousy. You say, “Gosh, I’m a turkey?” You feel bad and everything’s not working out.

See, whatever you ask, you’re gonna get an answer to. If you say, “How come I’m so lucky?” You know, “How did I get so lucky?” Your brain will search all kinds of things and show you that you’re lucky. In other words, our questions determine how we feel, and if you’ve got certain emotions, certain feelings that you have on a daily basis that you don’t like, habitual emotions, I’m here to tell you that the feelings you feel are coming from what you focus on. So what you have is habitual focuses, and those focuses come from habitual questions. In other words, if you feel certain ways on an ongoing basis it’s because you’re asking certain questions on an ongoing basis.

It might be useful if we discover what those are. I’ll give you some samples, questions that people ask themselves on a regular basis that make them feel lousy. Question number one is, “Why does this always happen to me?” I want you to notice in that question is something we call a presupposition. A presupposition means you are presupposing in the question that things already happen to you that may not be true, but as long as you ask questions that way, your brain will make up an answer for you. And I’ll give you a good example.

After the 1988 Republican National Convention, when George Bush selected Dan Quayle as his running mate, CNN ran a public opinion poll where you call the 900 number and vote yes or no to the answer to a question. But here is the question, it blew my mind. The question was; Does it bother you that Dan Quayle used his family’s influence to stay out of Vietnam and to get in the National Guard? Now I’m paraphrasing just slightly, but that’s what they said.

Now tell me, what’s wrong with this picture? And challenge is, they presuppose that he actually did it, they said, “Does it bother you?” So your brain stops evaluating whether he actually did it or not, and focuses on whether it bothers you or not Does this happen every day with you? Do you ask questions that presuppose that you’ve got a limited level of intelligence or skill or ability, and therefore, get lousy answers in your brain? Listen, if you ask yourself questions like, “Why am I so fat?” That question guarantees you’re gonna stay fat.

You know why? Because you go, “Why am I so fat?” Your brain will go, “Okay, let me figure out some reasons “Whammo, here’s why you’re fat, “Because you eat continuously and you have no control.” And your brain goes, “Oh God, I don’t have any control”, and you feel useless and you feel like you’re disempowered. What would be a better question to ask yourself than, “Why am I so fat?” How about this one? “How can I become more thin right now?” Or, “What could I do today to start myself on the road to becoming more thin, and what do I need to do, consistently to create the long-term results of health that I want?” If you ask a better quality question, you will get a better quality answer. Or I’ll give you a step beyond that.

If you ask a question like, “How can I become more thin now?” You’ll get an answer. But what if you ask a question like, “How can I become more thin now and enjoy the process?” Ah, magical. When you ask that question, what happens now is you literally come up with not only an answer of how to lose weight, but also how to enjoy it, and since your brain likes pleasure, there’s a much better chance you’re gonna follow through, Am I making any sense to you? I’m here to tell you that the quality of your life comes down to the quality of the questions you ask yourself on a daily basis, So if you’re asking questions like, “Well how come I can’t ever learn anything?” Just listen to that question.

“Well, why can’t I ever learn anything?” That’s even worse, Why questions tend to be what I call endless loop questions, Like, “Why does this happen to me?” See, your brain probably can never come up with a definitive answer. It’ll come up with all kinds of reasons, but you’ll keep going into a loop. Now, I discovered the power of questions in my own life because at one time in my life, I was really, really angry.

And I knew how to change my physiology and my movement to make myself feel better, but I didn’t want to. You ever been in that state? Like somebody said to me, “Well Tony, just change your physiology.” I said, “I don’t want to!” All right, I was upset.

But the reason I was upset is what I was focusing on. I was focusing on somebody who had taken a bunch of money from my company and embezzled it, and I got pretty upset to say the least, and I was walking around in a frenzy going, “How could he do this? How could he have the audacity to do this?” I may have even had an expletive or two.

Who knows? The point is that by asking those questions, I was whipping myself into a frenzy: “How could he possibly do this? Why would he do this situation to me?” Well, guess what? You’re never gonna get an answer to that. All it does is whip you into more and more of a frenzy. Can you hear it? So finally I said, “Okay, doing this is leading to “more and more pain, it isn’t making my life any better “I better ask myself a more empowering question.” So I thought, “What’s something that’s important to me?” My answer is I love to learn, I already shared that with you.

So I said, “Okay, what can I learn from this?” Well, guess what? My brain likes learning So it was willing to focus on that question And you know what? Out of that question of, “What can I learn from this?” Over the next three months, I literally developed a whole new level of understanding about what makes human beings do what they do. I developed literally a whole new technology which I call destiny technologies, and I now do a whole seminar called Your Date With Destiny where we help people literally design their life so they are literally pulled forward in the direction they want their life to be, rather than having all the self-sabotage and challenges that come up for people.

It’s the most incredible program. I do. It all came out of me taking a horrible situation and asking a better question “What can I learn from this? What can I get out of this that would enhance my life and other people’s as well? How can I use this situation to create much more power in my ability to help people and help myself?” Asking these questions allowed me to search my brain’s data banks and create tremendous power out of that situation. After I was in that situation, I had other times when I get upset Invariably when I get upset, it’s because I was asking a why question.

“Why did this person do this? I don’t understand” Or, “How could they possibly have done it because I would never do that? How could they do that?” Well, I’ll never get the answer based on that, so I learned to ask the question, “What can I learn from this?”

Now for you, that might not be the right question. Maybe learning’s not important enough for your brain to go, “Well I’m willing to focus on that now instead of the problem” But my brain, I pick learning or I pick something like, well, if I’m angry at somebody, I might say, “Well, what do I respect about this person?” Now I remember one particular guy, I said, “What do I respect about him?” It was this guy who had stolen a bunch of my stuff.

And I thought, “Well, at least he’s using my stuff.” I do respect him, he’s at least using it, he isn’t just sitting back there, right? Sitting on his haunches here and stuff, he’s at least using it, I respect that. What else do I respect about him? Well, he’s at least going for it. And even though I don’t think he’s doing it for the right reasons, he’s probably helping a few people. Who knows, you know? And I began to literally feel better.

Then I began ask myself this question; “What’s actually funny about this that I hadn’t noticed?” Great question to ask yourself “What’s actually funny about this that I hadn’t noticed?” Now again, when you ask a question, you got to be willing to really search for the answer If you go, “Well, what’s great about this that I hadn’t noticed”, or what’s humorous about this that I didn’t notice, “what’s humorous about this I didn’t notice?” Then guess what? There’s no way, your brain’s not gonna go for it. But if you ask with a sincere interest and desire for an answer, you will get one if you keep asking. And so all of a sudden, I start noticing things about it that are humorous, I started laughing.

Hey listen, we’ve all heard the phrase, “Some day, we’ll look back and laugh on this situation.” Well if that’s really true, why wait? Why not look back and laugh on it now? Why wait for years before you can feel good about something again? And the way to do it is change your focus. The way to change your focus is use questions. They’re much more powerful than any other tool. I’ve noticed I’ll tell you why.

Questions basically do three things, when you ask a question. Number one, when you ask somebody a question, it instantly changes what they focus on, and therefore, it changes the way you feel, instantly. See, if you’re feeling lousy and I come along and I get you to answer a question like, “Well, let me ask you a question. What is great in your life right now?”

You go, “Well, nothing.”

I go, “Well I know nothing is but if there was something that was great, what could be great in your life?” If I get you to really think about it, what it makes your brain do is search your files, and you know what? No matter how bad your life may seem, there’s something great going on.

There’s no doubt about it. Here you are and all your friends this weekend are skiing, but you’re home studying for a big test and you feel cheated, and you feel left out, and you feel hurt, hey listen, all you need is a little contrast for yourself. What’s great? Right now, this weekend, you’re studying things that can make a huge difference in the quality of your life forever. These people are gonna work their muscles and come back and probably forget about that situation, right? Or you’re not in a Nazi concentration camp. There’s a little contrast for you.

You get to be learning because you choose to, not because you’re forced to. You’re studying something that you chose to study. You’re actually creating a future for yourself, you’re getting to use your brain, there’s so many things you could focus on. You’re in a free country, you’re alive, you’ve got friends, you have people that care about you, there are millions of things you can feel good about. All you have to do is change your focus.

And if you don’t, you end up like the John Belushis of the world. Think about it. See, the choice is yours. So if I ask you a question like, “What could be great in your life, or what’s great right now?” If you really think about it, you can come up with something. Think about it right now.

What’s really great in your life right now? What’s something that you feel really great about? Think about it. Or, what could you feel great about if you wanted to? As you think about things that make you feel great, notice how it makes you feel when you think about that. What about that, why does that make you feel great? How does that make you feel inside when you feel those feelings? And you know what? You can change your state instantly, just by focusing on that at any moment in time.

So the first thing questions do is they change our focus, and therefore, our state immediately. The second thing that questions do is they change what we’re deleting.

Now remember, in order to feel unhappy, you have to focus on the things that would make you unhappy and you have to delete all the great things that are happening in your life, isn’t that true? In other words, every one of us right now could get depressed, piece of cake. All we have to do is focus on all the tragedy that’s happening in the world right now, even little pieces of it. Children that are dying right now of starvation, we can make pictures in our head of those bloated stomachs, hearing the cries of babies just as they pass off into death seeing flies eating their flesh. How’s that for graphic? At the same time, every one of us could be in absolute total pleasure. Interrupt that pattern of a picture you’re looking at, and think of something that can create total pleasure.

And you know what? There are a zillion things. But to do that, you have to stop focusing, you have to delete all the negativity in the world and focus on things that make you feel great. So you could focus on a relationship you have, you could focus on how much you’ve already learned in the last six or seven or eight days, you could focus on the people that love you, you could focus on your ability as a human being to change your life at any moment in time, you could focus on what learning means to you, you could focus on the sun, you could focus on breathing fresh air, you could focus on the fact you live in a free country, you could focus on the fact that you have a connection with your creator, you could focus on anything and feel incredible. You could focus on new babies being born this moment. They have a greater opportunity in life than any time in our history.

There is so much we could focus on and feel good about. The challenge is this. You must control it through questions. Questions change what we delete. We’re always deleting, human beings, we’re not gonna stop deleting things. As long as we’re gonna delete things, why not delete things that disempower you and focus on the things that empower you? Does that make sense?

The third thing that questions do is they help you to get access to resources within yourself. I’m a big believer that anything you’ve ever wanted to accomplish, you’ve already got the resources inside of you to make it happen. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go out and learn from somebody else, or model the success of others, I’m just saying the things you need to succeed are already in your core, the resources are there, you just need to get access to them by asking better questions.

I’ll give you an example. If I ask myself questions like, “Gosh, can I really do this?” That creates a feeling of doubt. Do you hear how that does that? And that feeling of doubt will keep me in a state where I’m not gonna get the most out of myself, but if instead I ask myself a question like, “How can I make this thing happen right now, more powerfully than I ever dreamed of and have fun doing it?” If I keep asking that question, my brain will get access to more of my ability, because whatever I ask for, my brain will give me.

But if you ask your brain, “Can I really do this?” And you do it with a tone of voice of doubt, you are gonna get access to the resources called doubt. Does that make sense? If you think about it, the greatest communicators, the greatest teachers of all time were not people that so much taught us as they did ask us. They shared things with us, but they got us to use our own resources, they ask questions. All the great speakers have done this. Hey, Martin Luther King asked questions about a dream.

John F Kennedy asked, “Don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” He wanted you to take the resources out of yourself and contribute and expand our country. You must learn to ask habitual questions that empower you. I want you to know that I believe the success in my life has all come down to one basic skill, state management.

On a consistent basis, I’ve learned how to manage my state, and therefore, I’ve been able to get myself to breakthrough and take action when very few people around me were able to do the same. They were able to, that’s probably not the best description. They weren’t using their power, because they didn’t have access to all of it. And I’ve done that by everyday doing things that would increase my physical ability, flexibility, power, energy, by the way I’m move and the way I breathe, and also by consistently and daily conditioning myself to ask the kinds of questions, to create the kinds of focus that moves me towards larger levels of contribution and joy and fun and success and passion instead of the things that would pull me down, that would pull me to areas of frustration and anger and giving up. Listen, there is no capability difference between you and someone you consider to be an ultimate role model of success.

The only difference is they learn to use their mind and body with more power on a consistent basis. They’ve learned to manage their state, they’ve learned to use their body effectively, whether they know it or not consciously doesn’t matter, a lot of people do things without being aware of how they do it. And they’ve learned to control their mental focus. Remember, whatever we concentrate our focus on consistently and strive to learn from and make new distinctions about, we will get great at. I don’t care what it is, if you focus on it daily and you strive to be better, you’re gonna make little distinctions that’ll make you more and more effective every single day.

So you better decide what you want to focus on in your life and what you want to experience on a daily basis because that’s where your power is gonna come from, that’s where your power is gonna emit from, that’s the genesis of your power. I want you to know that many things that you think are impossible or difficult are only difficult or impossible because of the way you’re focusing on things. You’re focusing on how it can’t be done, and you got to remember, whatever you focus on is what you get. So if you focus on how it can’t be done, you are absolutely right, and no one’s gonna prove you wrong. So why not focus on what’s possible and create that? I mean that’s how I created things like the fire walk seminar.

All I did was hold a new level of possibility. Instead of focusing on how it couldn’t be done, on how it was a terrible thing, or something like that I focused on, “Hey, this is an incredible example of possibility.” And if other people can do it, my focus and my question is, “If they can do it, then how can we do it? How can I share it with other people? How could it be used as an empowering experience that’s a lot of fun?” I did the same thing with teaching people wood breaking. I teach people how to break wood karate-style, not in two years, but in about 20 minutes. Again, not to make them this powerful person, but to show them that by simply changing their mental focus, by controlling their physical emotional state, and by modeling someone’s success, that they can get results in 30 minutes that takes most people two years.

And they have what we call a breakthrough, literally. I want you to know that you have every right at any moment of time to feel lousy, to feel bad, to feel sorry, to feel hurt. I am not saying by this tape program that you should never be disappointed or frustrated or angry or anything else, because all of those emotions have their place in their proper proportion. Hey, some of my greatest frustrations or angers or upsets are what have driven some of my greatest successes because it’s made me search for more. But see, what’s interesting is the pain drove me, but what changed me from other people who just gave up is I ask better questions.

I found a way to say, “What can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? How can I expand from this? What can I take from this experience that will empower me? What can I learn from this so I never have to experience it again?”And by asking empowering questions, “how can I take advantage of this? What’s the actual benefit in this situation that I probably hadn’t noticed?” I began to find benefits, whereas other people said, “Why did this happen to me? Why does this always happen to me? Why did you do this to me, Lord? How come I’m not smart enough to pull this off? Why do I keep self-sabotaging?”

See, that’s the difference between success and failure. So I want you to know, I’m not saying you can’t feel bad, I’m just saying that when you’re done feeling bad, here’s how to change. And you may not want to spend quite so much time feeling bad in the future, because feeling bad is based on focus. If you change your focus, you can feel good instantly, right now at this moment now. So let me ask you a few questions, and what I’d like you to do for your homework is design some questions.

Every morning in my life, I wake up and I ask myself questions. Now, the truth is, you already do this too. The only problem is you’re not doing it consciously. Think about it, when you’re shaving, are you thinking and talking to yourself? Know that the process of thinking is nothing but asking and answering questions. You’re doing it constantly.

That’s where your thoughts come from. Think about it. Now you might say, “Well, no that’s not true”, or, “Yes it is true”, if you said no, it’s true or yes it is, it’s because you asked yourself the question, “Is that true?” Or something like it. See, some of the questions you ask are subconscious. Your brain is deciding all the time.

“If I get in this car, if I turn here, what’s gonna happen? Is that car coming too close or too far?” You’re asking questions constantly, subconsciously, but you’re also doing it consciously. When you’re shaving or putting on your makeup or shampooing, you’re asking questions, but it might be questions like, “God, why do I always have to do this? Why do I have to go to work today?” Think about the kind of states that those questions create.

And what would be some more empowering questions like, “What could I do today that would make today more fun than ever before? What can I do today that would create a breakthrough in my business? What could I do today to connect more with my family members? I wonder what’s going to happen today that’ll make me feel total pleasure for no reason? I wonder what I’ll see today that I haven’t seen before?”

See, those kinds of questions will empower you. If you’re bored, it’s because you ask lousy questions. Probably ask questions like, “Why do I have to do this? Why do we do this all the time? Why do we always do these things?” Versus looking around saying, “God, what can I notice today that I haven’t noticed before? Say, “What can I see today that I haven’t seen before? What can I smell today I haven’t smelled before?” See, it’s called directing your computer.

So here’s some questions you might want to answer right now in your own mind and notice how they make you feel. Question one: What are you really most happy about in your life right now? What’s one of the things you’re most happy about in your life right now? And answer that question in your own head. What are you most happy about in your life right now? Or, if your brain goes, “Nothing”, what could you be happy about if you wanted to be? Have you ever asked question yourself and somebody said, “Well I don’t feel that way”, or, “I don’t think that way.” See, I know you don’t, but if you did, or if you could, what could you feel happy about right now? Think about it. Have you thought of something? Well, good.

Let me ask you a question, what about that makes you happy? Third question, how does that make you feel? Really allow yourself to feel, don’t just go, “Well it makes me feel happy.” Feel the feelings. What else are you really happy about in your life right now?

Think of a second thing. What else are you really happy about in your life right now? What about that makes you feel happy? How does that make you feel?

Here’s the second question for you, what are you really excited about in your life right now? What are you really excited about in your life right now? Answer the question in your mind. Think about it. Or what could you be excited about if you wanted to be excited about something? Think about it.

Oh come on, you got more things to be excited about. Think. What about that makes you excited? Why does that make you excited? How does that make you feel? What else you excited about in your life right now? Come on, what else? What else are you really excited about in your life right now, or could you be excited about if you wanted to? How does that make you feel?

Here’s a third question for you, what are you really grateful for in your life right now? What are you really grateful for in your life right now? What are some of the things you’re grateful for or what could you be grateful for if you wanted to be? Answer the question honestly. How does that make you feel? And I want you to notice, do you feel a state change as you answer these questions from where you were a few moments before? That’s it. See, you can change your state instantly and you can make yourself feel great.

There’s so much to feel grateful for. And if you want my formula for wealth, it’s real simple. Live everyday in an attitude of gratitude. See, the more you feel like you have, the more you’ll experience in your life and the more you’ll be willing to give. See, make sure that you’re always trying to give more than you take back, and feel grateful for everything you have, and you will be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, but you got to control your focus.

Let me ask you another one, what are you really proud of in your life right now? What are you really proud about in your life right now, or what could you be proud about in your life so far? What are some of the things? What about those things makes you feel proud? How does that make you feel? What else are you really proud of in your life right now? How does that make you feel?

And here’s a final question for you, who do you really love most in your life and who loves you? Think about it, and don’t just go, “Oh, my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister.” Get some feeling. Step into those experiences and feel what it feels like, think about who loves you and how that makes you feel. Who do you love and how does that make you feel to love that person so much?

I got a question for you, what if every morning, you started out asking yourself a series of questions that put you in this kind of state? There’s some real power, because see, the state you’re in affects the way you look at your whole world, doesn’t it? Affects the way you breathe, the way you feel, the way you treat other people, and your level of success. See, a lot of people teach in life do a bunch of affirmations go, “I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy”, and then your brain goes, “BS”, right?

Now, if you do affirmations long enough, they may work because your brain may get bored and say, “Well, why am I happy?” At which time, it will search your brain for an answer and then all of a sudden, you’ll feel happy.  That’s what happens when you do affirmations.

Or, if you go, “I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy”, and you really create the physiology of happiness, you know what I mean by that, by using your voice that way? Then what you’ve done is the affirmation didn’t do it so much, that’s putting your body in that state. So affirmations are great, but what you really know is questions are even more powerful because now you have a reason to be happy, you’re not just jumping yourself up and running around with what I call a perma-grin where people go, “Why are you happy?” And you go, “I don’t know, but it feels good.”

It’s better to have all these reasons, so every morning, you stack more reasons to be happy, you come up with more reasons that you’re proud, more reasons to be grateful, more reasons to feel excited about life, more feelings of love. If you stack those every day, you literally anchor them in your nervous system. This is part of what I call destiny technologies, controlling your state through asking yourself effective questions.

This is the power of focus, and here’s your exercise. Pull out your success journal and, right now, I want you to write down five questions. After you’ve designed these five questions, what I’d like you to ask yourself to do is this. First of all, let me ask you this. If every single morning you got up and asked yourself five custom-designed questions that put you in peak states, and they gave you lots of reasons to feel phenomenal, so you weren’t just some guy out there again just babbling about how excited you are without any reasons for it, I’m not talking about being somebody just all pumped up for no reason.

But if every day you came up with lots of reasons and felt these powerful emotions, what would that do to the quality of your life? What would that do to your days? Would it be worth developing some new habits? If your answer to these questions is yes, then I’d like to challenge you to do something. I’d like you to develop a new habit, one that will literally condition your nervous system to associate powerful emotions with waking up in the morning, wouldn’t that be nice?

Here’s what I want you to do if you’re willing to take on the challenge. For the rest of this program, approximately what, 22 more days, each morning, I want you to answer those five questions, and every time you answer them, you’ve got to create some feelings.

So if one of your questions was, “What am I most excited about in my life?” You got to come up with at least two different answers and you got to think about why you’re excited and how great that makes you feel. You got to actually feel the answer to the question. Two answers to each of your five questions, each morning. Again, this is not added work, you’re already asking questions, you just may be asking questions like, “Oh gosh, why do I have to get up at this hour?” That may not be the best question to ask when the alarm goes off. Maybe you want to install a new one that empowers you.

Would you be willing to do that for the rest of this 30-day program? Now, I don’t want you to do this for the rest of your life because you might get addicted of feeling excellent for the rest of your life, and gosh only knows what would happen to you then, so don’t go any longer than these 30 days for sure, but at least for the 30 days, would you be willing to try it?

Okay, then go for it. So you know your assignment, design five questions that we’ll get resources out of you to make you feel phenomenal each day, that will make you get access to your real powered ability every single day. Also I want to say to you, please use your success journal to write down each day a little bit about what’s happening to you. What are you noticing? Have you already begun to notice that your attitude has changed, obviously, but also have you noticed that maybe you’re willing to take some chances, you’re being more decisive, you’re taking some actions, you’ve been maybe more powerful in some of your communication?

Have you decided maybe to take some actions like lose weight or stop smoking and you’re in day three or four of that? Or are you just feeling better about the possibilities of your future? In other words, each day, you might want to just keep a journal, jot down a couple of key ideas about what you learned that day or what you’re experiencing in your daily life besides this program. I’ve kept journals for years because I believe that if my life is worth living, it’s worth recording.

And for me what journals are is a way to go back and notice my growth, see because otherwise what happens for a lot of us is we get caught up, but if you have a journal, you can look and see how you’ve grown in your development and your ability and where you are in your life. In addition, your journals are things that you can give later on to your children. Someday they can look back and learn from the lessons you’ve learned in your life. So they’re invaluable. I hope you’ll decide to keep a success journal on an ongoing basis after this program, but see if you get yourself in the habit right now for the next 30 days, or the for next 30 days.

Resources for Further Reading:

Focus – The Secret to High Performance and Fulfilment: Daniel Goleman (Transcript)

How to Get Your Brain to Focus: Chris Bailey (Full Transcript)

Think Faster, Focus Better and Remember More: Dr. Michael Merzenich (Transcript)

Focus is a Muscle by Connor O’Leary at TEDxUIUC (Full Transcript)

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