Transcript of Tony Robbins: The Fastest Way Out of Feeling Stuck! Use THIS 6-Part Decision Making Framework to Take the First Step and Start 2026 With Clarity

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Most people are stressed because stress is usually measured by how much you feel you control events versus events control you. The smartest people usually are terrible investors. The smartest people want to know everything before they decide. Not deciding is the worst decision.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed, where you come to listen, learn, and grow. Today's guest is not only one of your favorites. He's one of I had the fortune of growing up to his tapes and books, playing in my life in my house, thanks to my dad, since I was a young boy, and I truly believe it transformed my mindset from day one. I was fortunate enough to have that for years. And a few years ago, I got to interview the man himself. The interview went viral. It broke so many records across audio and video. And today, I have him back in the studio. I'm speaking about the one, the only, Tony Robbins. Number one, New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, and the nation's leading life and business strategist. Over the last four decades, Tony has empowered more than 100 million people across 195 countries through his books, seminars, and coaching. He's leading the 100 Billion Meals Challenge to help end hunger worldwide. This January, he'll host the Time to Rise Summit, a free virtual event, which I want you to sign up for, bringing together people ready to transform form their lives and businesses.

We're going to put the link all over this. Make sure you go and subscribe and sign up and don't miss out. Please welcome to On Purpose, Tony Robbins. Tony, it's great to be back with you.

It's quite an introduction, Jay. Almost embarrassed, by the way. You had to live it.

You had to live it. So I was just saying-It touches me when I...

How old are you? 38? 38, yeah. Somebody 38 comes in. I've been listening to you for 25 years or 20 years. I'm like, How old are you? I've been around that long. Oh, good. No, it's a pleasure to be with you. And I really love what you do. Your introduction, you didn't mention, but I want to mention, his intention for all of you listening was that his guests, whoever they are, that their message will be received and people go deeper in their understanding of that person and also their care for that person and vice versa. And I think it's a beautiful intent. The whole On Purpose podcast, Bringing Happiness and Joy and Healing, it's my mission as well. So I'm happy to be with you.

Well, thank you so much for leading the way and paving the way for so many of us and continuing to be such a great torchbearer for so many. Tony, I want to start With you, there's so many things we can talk about, and you've been doing this work for decades. I feel like your ability to learn what's at the root of things is second to none. It's so powerful for you to know. And I feel today, since even when you started, people are still stuck. The thing I hear the most is, I'm stuck in a relationship. I'm stuck in a dead-end job. I'm stuck in life, and I feel like I can't move. I don't know what I need to do. What's the first thing people need to do if they feel stuck?

They got to make some decisions, right? And what stops people make decisions? You and I, what is this fear? People are afraid of making the wrong decision, fear of not being perfect, fear of the consequences of their decisions. But let's chunk it up a little bit. What do people really want? We started out, we were all here created by something. I like God as the term. Some people like the universe. I'm not here to argue with that whatsoever, but we have to agree that something created us, and that something gave us choices. And choices are how we create, we co-create, basically, our lives. It's not your conditions, it's your decisions that determine the quality of your life. I had pretty rough conditions growing up, to say the least, but I turned those into good conditions because of a mindset, because of certain psychology, because of certain decisions. And if you think about your life, most people are stressed because stress is usually measured by how much you feel you control events versus events control you. The more you feel events are controlling you, the more overwhelmed you feel, the more stress, the more anxiety, the more fear.

And we live in a culture where mental health is at record lows in terms of quality and happiness and joy and fulfillment and depression and anxiety are through the roof. And it's not because the world is so much more stressful. It's because the way we process the world. We have more information coming at us than any time in history, obviously. We're drowning in information. We're starving for wisdom. But in order to go from being stressed to not, we understand that I think the single most important tool is decision making, because I think that's been the skill that took me from barely surviving in a family that had tremendous pain and tremendous angst, was to be the nicest word to say, and no finances, and four different fathers, and a lot of physical and emotional abuse to being able to serve literally hundreds of millions, billions of people. It's been decisions along the way. So if you look at your own life, yours, mine, anyone's life, anyone listening or watching, you have to be honest and say, I'm a creator. And if I don't like what I have, I've gotten here by the decisions that have created that.

And look, there's lots of little decisions we make all day long. And I know you talk about decisions. I'm writing a whole book on it right now. And most people don't understand that most decisions are easy to change. I think you give an example. I give the example of Bezos as well as Amazon and Type 2 decisions are the ones you can change very easily. Type 1 are significant. They're going to be hard to change. Focusing on those big decisions is really important in life. But I think most people, they're afraid. And then the second thing is they think they don't have enough information, which is really just fear again. Because I wrote an entire book where I interviewed 50 of the most incredible financial people in the world. All people started with nothing, it became billionaires, the best investors in history, the Ray Dahlia, the Carl Icons, the Worm Buffett. And one of the things I learned over and over again from them is the smartest people usually are terrible investors. I just talk about me. He said, How could that be? And he said, Because the smartest people want to know everything before they decide.

And if you wait till you know everything, the opportunity is gone. And that's true, not just in finance. I think that's true in life. We wait till we have absolute certainty. There's no absolute certainty in life. The only absolute certainty is faith. It's like, how do you drive down a street with nothing but a yellow line separating you from crazies, driving at you at 65 miles an hour, and every single day in every country in the world, in every city in the world, someone will cross that line and kill someone because they were drunk, because they fell asleep, because they're texting. And yet, how do you get out there every day without fear and do it? You use a gift that God gave us. It's called faith. It's not what you learned faith. I'm not talking about a religion. I'm talking the capacity to see beyond the present moment and have a sense of certainty, right? And so why do you do it? Because the alternative is to live at home and do nothing, go back to the COVID days and be trapped, right? We know what that did to people psychologically, emotionally, because they felt completely at the effect of things.

So the fastest way to change your life is start making some real decisions. And I know it's hard initially. The other part is it's just that the more you make decisions, the more decision-making muscles you get, you know what I mean? It's like, well, you barely... Some people have weak decision-making muscles. Have you ever been to a dinner with somebody or a group of people, and there's always one person that's hanging on to the last moment, still can't decide. You see the waiter or waitress trying to be nice. You see them losing their patience. It's my wife's nightmare. It's like, just freaking decide. Help this lady out, right? And they finally decide. Well, that's the habit of a lot of people People, and they can't make a decision on what to eat for dinner tonight. How they make a life decision, right? So the first step is to make some. Maybe you make some small ones that you can do and get some momentum. But the more decisions you make, the faster it gets. I think the whole idea that I have to make the right decision is the wrong way to look at it.

My whole view has been not deciding is the worst decision, right? I need to consciously decide. If I don't want to feel like things are affecting me, if I'm going to shape my world, I make a decision. And if I'm wrong, I'll find out quicker. I'll give you a real-life example. I don't know if you remember General Swartzkoff. I got to know him pretty well. Those are younger, probably don't even remember his name. But the first war that was done with Iraq, he ran the Allied Forces. And he was a brilliant guy, and he was very powerful. He could talk to guys that were from the barrio, and he could talk to guys from Princeton incredibly well. A really lovely human being. But I asked him what the most important skill was of a leader, and he said decision making, which I agreed with, obviously. I said, Well, what do you think he's doing making decisions? And he said, I'll tell you a story. So he told me the story. I'll tell you the short version of it briefly. When he was a private, he represented a general. And the Pentagon had worked for almost, I think he said more than a decade and a half analyzing this strategic decision they had to make.

And there were people on both sides, and they argued in both sides fully so strongly that no one made a decision for over 10 years. And they knew they had to make the decision. If they didn't make it now, it could cost the country our securities. Big decision. And so he, being the private, organized the team. They had to read all these volumes of materials so they could summarize it so the general had the information. And he said, then the meeting got pushed up. And even with a group of eight people, they could not gather all the information and fully summarize it. Meanwhile, the general was called overseas during this time when he should have been prepping. It wasn't his fault, but he had a deal with it, flew back. The night before, they're loading up with all this information. He didn't get back until 10: 00 at night. The meeting was 8: 00 in the morning. Most important decision in the Pentagon's history was how it was framed. He said he came in the meeting. He said, Give me your arguments. One person stood up for 20 minutes and gave this full-blown argument, This is the to go.

All right, give me your argument. 20 minutes, full blast, their argument. He said, Okay, do this. Then he all saluted, and he walked out of the room. And he said, Swartzkoff said, he was a private, not a general at that time. He said, I don't know what the hell to do. He couldn't possibly know all this information. He couldn't possibly know what to do in this situation, and he was totally stressed by it. So he worked up enough courage to knock on the general's door and said, General, permission to speak freely. He said, Ease, at ease. He goes, General, I've worked on this for four weeks with eight people. I said, You weren't even here last night. This is one of the most important decisions ever. I know you didn't have all the information. How could you possibly make that decision? He said, Young man, because a decision needs to be made. And he said, And both sides are equally strong. So I picked the one I believe is right. If I'm wrong, we'll find out quicker. It won't take a decade, 10 years to find out. And if I'm right, we'll continue. If I'm wrong, we'll make a shift.

And he said, He said it just was outside of his world. It was so simple. And then he told me one other one that I thought was really good. He said he was leaving one time, and he left him as a private in charge of things. He said, You're in charge. You make these decisions. You do these things. I said, General, I don't How do I know what to do? He said, Rule 13. He goes, Rule 13, sir. He's starting to go out the door. He says, What's Rule 13? He couldn't figure out what Rule 13 was. When put in command, take charge. He goes, Okay. He goes, But how do I make the right It's a decision. It goes, Rule 14. It goes, Rule 14, sir? What's Rule 14? Do what's right. Those simple approaches, I think, can guide us. I really believe decision making is the most important thing. If you don't like your body, change it. If you like your relationship, change it. Maybe change you first. Otherwise, you'll trade people and have the same problems. You don't like your career? Change it. But for things to get better, we got to get better.

For things to change, my teacher, Jim Rohn, said, You got to change. But it all begins with a decision. So maybe start with small decisions or maybe attack a big one, because when you do, you get momentum. And by the way, it's only a decision if you act on it immediately. And so I have a rule. It's like, anytime I set a goal, anytime I make a decision, I make sure that within a few minutes of making it, I do something that commitments me to follow through, because here's the other problem. Have you ever done this? Have you ever made a decision and not followed through? Yeah. Why?

Because I was... Maybe because I made a decision and I was uneasy about it afterwards, or there was some fear that crept in, or I didn't have a plan to execute it on it properly, maybe one of those.

All those are the typical answers, so you're spot on in your experience. But the biggest reason is people think decision is a one-step process, and I found it's three. You can decide in the moment. The reason I make that commitment that when I'm in the moment, I do something that commitments me when I leave that moment, you get in state, you get inspired enough or you get pissed off enough. Something moves you and say, not in the day, not in the hour. I'm changing this, right? But then when you leave that moment and you get caught up with some meeting or something with your family or something in your social media, email, or whatever it is, gradually you're in a different state and then you don't follow through. And what you said is true. Something else comes up that you weren't prepared for. So a real decision, the word decision comes from incision in Latin. It means to cut off from. When you cut off any other possibility except what you committed to, you'll find the way. It's always tell people, if you want to take the island, burn your boats. As long as your brain has a way out, it'll go back.

And it's amazing what you'll do when there's no option to go back. Most of my career has been because I had no net. I'm with Sherina Williams, and I got to turn her around right now. She can't get on. Her sister died. She can't get on the USO, but she can't get on stand up. She can't get up to do anything. Everybody knows I'm working with her. I don't get her up. All thing's over. I get her up. I turn the present around. I do whatever I got to do. No matter who it was, with no net, you find a way. So I think the biggest thing is once you decide, you want to go to the second step is commit. In fact, I hear women say this to me all the I know you have a large female audience. They'll say, Men don't commit. And I said, Has he even decided? Because they're different steps. Women jump to commitment very quickly. Men, not as quickly. And so deciding is like a war sometimes. I got to figure it out. Okay, I've decided. But then commitment, if I ask your audience to ask them, What's the difference?

Let me ask you, what's the difference in deciding committing to you?

I feel like decide is I know which direction I want to go in. Commitment is I want to stay in that direction for a long period of time. Yes.

You just added that with exactly what it is. A commitment takes it into the future. Decision is the moment, and that moment can change, which is why so many people make a decision legitimately and don't follow through. That's why you need to take action immediately They commit you to follow through, meaning book the meeting, enroll in the class, call the person and set it up, organize so you can have that conversation you haven't wanted to have, and put it on the calendar so that there's momentum going out of it. But then committing Deciding is really rough. Committing is not that rough. It's just creating enough compelling reasons to follow through, even though it might be tough right now. But there's a third step. And after you decide and commit, there's resolve. What's the image between decide and commit and resolve for you? What's the emotional difference?

Resolve, to me, at least from the way I'm hearing it, is-Just in your own experience? Yeah, there's a sense of... I feel a sense of confidence that I made the right decision so I can recommit and reconnect, or Or I get a sense of now is the time to pivot. And so there's a resolution of, am I continuing down this road or are we going to pivot? At least how I hear it.

I understand. You're evaluating what something new came. But to me, resolve is whatever you did in that moment, it's done. Right. I know Jim run had told me one time that he was speaking about resolve to this audience of young people. I think it was like a nine-year-old girl. He said, who's got a definition of resolve? And this young girl stood up and she said, I think it's promising yourself you will never give up.

That was a beautiful example.

When you resolve, you're at peace. Deciding is like a war. Committing requires energy. And take into the future, as you describe. And then resolve, it's amazing. It's like it's done. It's done in me. It may not be done in the world, but it's done in me now. I'll find the way or I'll make the way. And there's no uncertainty. There's no fear. There's no anxiety. When you get to that psychological emotional place, that's the place in which you get results. If you look at an athlete, the athlete is a perfect examples of this. I'm sure you've seen a time where you watch an athlete walk up to shoot a free throw or let's say a kicker in football, and you think it's going to miss it. And then they do. How did you know they're going to miss it?

Physiology, where their head was, where their eyes were.

You could see in their state a lack of certainty. When you see something like LeBron take the ball to go straight in and go over the top of somebody's head and put it through, you didn't just decide, he didn't just commit. He has resolved that every ounce of his being will push.

That's where the ball is going.

That's where it's going to go. I think, just to summarize, I think there isn't a more important skill than decision making. If you're not good at it, all you got to do is start making some decisions. My question would be, instead of just listening us today, if nothing else came out of this, what's one little decision you could make that would increase the quality of your life that honestly you know you should make? Maybe you're even putting it off because it's inconvenient. You got lots of other stressful things in your life or you're not really comfortable. But if you're really committed and you follow through, you just decided, committed, and followed through, right? Resolved. Where would you be a year from now? What would your life be like? I would take a little decision, and what action would you take today? Make that decision now. Then if you're bold, What's a big decision? What's a tough decision? What's a decision you've been putting off? Or you know and you got it right. It might be about a relationship. It might be about how you're dealing with your kids. It might be around your career or your business or your finances.

But that's how life gets That's how you start creating life as opposed to being a manager of circumstance. And I think when people are maintaining, when they're managing their circumstances, when they're surviving, they're miserable. We are made to grow and we're made to give. When we grow, we have more to give. And so I think decision making is the pathway, one of them, certainly, to getting there.

Yeah, it's so powerful listening to you talk about it, because I feel a lot of us, the second mistake we make is that after we make a decision, we hope that that decision solved everything. Everything. So it's like you make one decision and then you're like, all right, well, I quit my job, or I left that person, or I got a new job, and that should solve it. And the reality is what you're saying is no, decision making is a continual process. It has to happen time and time again. You don't get to make one decision and your life is solved. That's right. Life is made up of lots of little and big decisions along the way.

You know what the biggest problem is that people have? They think they're not supposed to have them.

Right.

Problems are a sign of life. I I remember I interviewed, who was his name? Norman Vincent Peel, Dr. Peel, who wrote the original Power Puzzle Thinking Book. When I was 32, he was 92, and he invited me because my career was growing, he invited me up to Toronto to meet him at an event he was doing. So I came backstage and we spent about an hour in advance. And I remember asking him, I said, I'm curious. I said, Why is he still doing these events? He goes, Well, Tony, there's still a few negative people around here at 92. I said, What's the most... And think about 92, he's what meant horse and carriage to rockets, right? You know, nothing to computers, right? Just the changes in his lifetime were just unbelievable. I said, What do you think is the most important thing people need to understand? And he said, The power of problems. And I said, What do you mean by that? He goes, Well, the only people without problems are in cemeteries. And I said, I think I heard that somewhere. He said, In 1947, I said that. He said, But they never finished my quote.

I said, The only people without problems are in cemeteries. So if you don't have any, you better go on your knees and pray for some. Because he said, Problems are a sign of life. And what I find is, Problems call us. He said he was sitting one time at this dais. He was at a speaking dais. It was like a luncheon. And beside him was the heavyweight at the end of the world. This was back in the '40s, right? And he said that... He looked at him, his name was Jean Tunny, pretty famous guy. And he said, Jean, how do you get muscles like that? And Jean said, Do you really want to know or are you just asking? And he said, He's open in his head. He goes, I was thinking, I was just asking, but now I really want to know because he was so intense about it. He says, No, I really want to know. He goes, Every day, I push against unbelievable resistance, and that's what sculpts these muscles. That's how you build muscle. And he said, I thought about a long time afterwards, and he said, I think that's how we develop spiritually.

We push against problems, and that's what sculpts our souls. And so I think to think you shouldn't have problems, you can call them challenges, it feels better. But this part of life, it's part of the journey. And solving them makes you bigger and more alive Live, more spiritually developed, more human, more caring. Pain and suffering, you don't have to suffer long, but we're all going to experience some of it. But decision making is how we get out of it.

Yeah. And you're so right, because one of the biggest challenges today is overthinking. We're exposed to more information or so we think. And I was reading a study that was saying we now consume 72 gigabytes of data per day.

I don't know how much we have truly consumed. Absorb is a different one.

Yeah, absorb. But it's faced by it. And you think that's a lot. I remember when you were lucky enough to get one gigabyte on your iPhone, and now we're talking about 72 gigabytes coming at you. So decision making is the arrow that cuts through that. A hundred %. Because that's the only way to get out of overthinking. And so if someone's spiraling, if they actually listen to you and said, Hey, if I just make one decision off of this, that will actually create a shift for them.

I can tell you, it's too long in a conversation like this to describe in detail, but I can give you how I make important decisions. Please. I have a six-step process, and if people want to jot it down, I call it O-O-C-E-M-R. Those are the trigger letters for what I do, O-O-C-E-M-R. And I developed this years ago because I only had one business. Now, I'm fortunate enough, I have 114 companies we do over $10 billion in business. I have no business background, all decision making, learning skills, et cetera. But way back then, when I had a small business, these decisions were just... It was tough. They were important decisions. They felt like it were life and death decisions for the business. And I knew that, Noah, how smart I am, you're better with a group of people around you, because even if you have more information, they have another perspective. And so I was trying to find a decision making model, and I thought, well, all decision making is really value clarification. Like, what's most important to you? Like, what you decide, what someone else decides may be different But maybe you're right because it's about what do you value most, right?

So I thought, I should start with decision making, not by all the emotion that I may have of either anxiety or fear or excitement or passion. Either one can lead you astray. It's like, what do I want? What's the outcome? That's the first O. Outcome. And by the way, I tell people, do not do this in your head. The reason people get overwhelmed is they ask multiple questions too fast to answer them. It's like, What am I going to do? I don't know what to do. What if she says this? What if he did that? But what if it doesn't do that? And you're asking 20 questions, and you don't have the processing power to answer them, so you're just going to overwhelm. Slow it down one thing at a time. But start not with what you're afraid of. Start with what you want, because that's how the human nervous system is designed. It's designed to make things happen, to create. So if you become a creator, you start with the one. So What are your outcomes? And this is the reason it's hard to make decisions for most people is they have multiple outcomes.

They're trying to get from the same decision. They want to make everybody happy, and they want to make a million dollars, and they want to have more free time, all simultaneously. So you have to say, which of those things is most important to you? Is it the free time? Is it the family time? Is it to make more money? What's most important for you? So I have people write down their outcomes, and if they're having a hard time, it's because there's multiple outcomes. And I also say, don't ever do this in your head. Because you can't manage it on your head. A picture is worth a thousand words. So you write down the outcomes, and then you put them in order, and then you put the why, because the why is what matters. What is the reason? What's the emotion behind this? Even though I say this is what I want, what do I want out of this? What's it going to give me? Is it going to give me joy. It's going to give me happiness, fulfillment, spiritual development. What is it? So now when you're crystal clear what you want and the order you want it in, and that's critical, what's number one?

You got to be rigorous. Now you can make decisions by going in the second O, what are your options? And I always tell people one option is no option. Two options is dilemma. You need at least three choices to be a choice. And when you get to three, usually find there's four or five. Now, you may not like them all, but you shouldn't lie to yourself and say, This is the only option that will stress you out. Or these two are the option, you'll get stuck in a dilemma. When I write out all the options, then I go to OOC is Consequences, which is what you're doing the decisions for. What's the upside and the downside of each of these decisions, to the best of my knowledge? The upside It could be this and this, the down could be that and that. I've converted the first half. Now you know what exactly you want, you know what your options are, and you know upsides and downsides of each. Now we're going to go in the last three stages. I'm going to evaluate, mitigate, and resolve. E, evaluate. Now I'm going to evaluate what's the probability of those consequences?

Because you might have something that's like, Oh, my God, if this happens, it's the worst thing on Earth. But the probability is next to zero, and you're all stressed out. Unless you evaluate probability, you're wasting your time. You might have some go, Oh, my God, if this works out, it's going to be the greatest thing in the history of the world. But the likelihood of happening is zero. You can't let those extremes get you. So you start to see by evaluating what's there. And then the last two steps are fast. It's mitigation. Mitigation means, okay, I've seen what I want. I know my options. I know the upside down. I know what's probable. Now, can I take something from this option and mix it with this one? Is there a way to mitigate the downsides? Almost always there are. At this stage, your brain gets really creative because it's not in fear or uncertainty or anxiety because you're not in your head. It's right in front of you. And the last part is resolve. And I gave you a million stories. It was too late to do, but I can just tell you, I've made, personally, $400 million in one decision I made from this, personally.

I'm trying to give you an economic piece. What the spiritual emotional value has been on things is priceless. And I can honestly tell you by using this system, I'm writing this book right now called The Power of Decision, because I want people to have that skill. And I show them every day, Bezos decision making skills. I teach people everybody's format, but this is my format for doing it. And I found it to be incredibly valuable, especially when you add commit resolve to it, not just decide to the process. So I hope that's helpful for people.

That's a great system. That's the best way I've ever had it explained. I really appreciate that model because I think too much of what decision making is based on today is, if you really want something and you go after it and you organize and you have a plan, you'll get there. And it's like, well, you didn't evaluate the probability. You didn't look at it from a systematic point of view. Or the other side of it is like, all right, you made a decision, you get some good insight, get some good advice, get some good mentorship, you pivot, you pivot. But the point is you can save yourself so much time-You got it. By doing what you just shared. Huge amounts of time. Huge amounts of time, money and energy.

On this week's episode of The Next Chapter, I, TD Jake, get to sit down with Oprah Winfrey, a media mogul philanthropists and global trailblazer. My life, although it may look like an anomaly, it has only been possible because I was obedient to the calls. This episode dives deep into how Oprah turned pain into purpose and what it really means to evolve with everybody watching. Every decision I have ever made has come from sitting with the spirit and asking God What would you have me do first? Whether you're rebuilding, reimagining, or just trying to hold it together, this one will speak directly to you. Listen to next chapter on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, episodes drop weekly. Hi, friends.

Sophia Bush here, host of Work in Progress. This week, we had such a special guest on the podcast, my forever flotus, a mentor, a friend, a wife, a mother, an author, attorney, advocate, television producer, and now she adds podcast host to the list herself. Friends, Michelle Obama is here.

Sophia I'm beyond thrilled to be able to sit down and chat with you. We talk about it all. Life, love, motherhood, martinis. Vodka martini, dry, straight up olive. Oh, olive. Very cold. My girl. Bare any vermouth. What's next? What she's watching on TV. I am a white lotusser. I am a real housewives person. I love the dating shows. And tennis. I just find that to be a bit meditative. You do not want to miss this. Listen to Work in Progress on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sit comes of all time? You get Desi, our Arnés, a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband, and maybe, most importantly, the first Latino to break primetime wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderrama, and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story.

From Plinin Canary Cages to this night here in New York.

It's a long ways. On the podcast, Starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life, the moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television, and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like ours on screen. This is the story of how one man's spotlight lit the path for so many others and how we carry his legacy today. Listen to Starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama, That's part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I was going to ask you, Tony, you have such a systematic brain. When I've learned from you, listened to you, everything is so process-oriented, which I love. But at the same time, you have this deep faith, this deep spirituality, and you brought it out there. You said, I made $400 million, and at the same time, the emotional and spiritual benefits are off the charts. Talk to me genuinely, because I think today we all hear about, Oh, you can manifest this, and you can get that, and this. I feel like you have a really pragmatic and process-driven approach to both.

How does faith, how does energy, how does spirituality correlate with a very systematic, process-driven approach?

That's a great question. No one's really asked me that question. That's nice. It's a reflection of your qualities as well, which I think you look at both sides as well as I do. I think there's nothing more important in spirit, soul. There's nothing more important than your spiritual development. Anything else is a joke. And yet, maybe the best way to describe it is think of it as East and West. We both have experiences of both. I go to India at least once a year on average, and I've been going since I was in my 20s because I was fascinated by the cultural differences. And as a gross generalization, the East is more about internal development. If you go to a place like Varanasi, which is one of the oldest cities on the planet, 38, 100 years old, they have fires that have been burning for 38 straight years nonstop. For people who don't know it, in that culture, everyone has different perceptions of God or belief of what God is. But in that particular culture, it doesn't matter what Hindu you are. If there's some believe you should give up all your clothing, everything but your clothes.

Some people believe it's studying the Vedas. Some people believe it's through yoga. Different ways to get to God, a million different ways. And there's more than 300 million different God, your own personal God in that culture. It's very different. But They have a belief there that if you die in Varanasi, it's the only thing you have unified, then you don't come back because the belief is reincarnation. So they want to not come back, which would be nirvana, right? And they burn these fires. And when someone dies, they try to get to Varanasi no matter what they do because they believe that if they die there, they won't come back. And the city is filled. You've been there, haven't you? Yes. Yeah. Filled with people that are dying and joyous. I remember we went to Mother Teresa's facility, and there was a woman there that was a tiny little lady, and she was in her 90s, and I was talking with her, she had broken English with her, and she was mad as hell. She was dying, and she was mad. They scooped her off the streets, and they're helping her. She came here to die because this was her...

I mean, They're really pissed off, right? Then most Americans have said, they burn the bodies. I watch them burn the bodies on this boat, and I'll never forget the first time I did this. I watched this little boy who's slipping this, looked like stick or twig, and it was his grandfather's leg. No one is crying. No one is sad. They believe that the body is the T-shirt. You burn it and it goes away. So the spiritual side of life is all that is seen there, but yet people live in squalar. You come to America and people get stressed about they didn't get the special burger on the on their burger, right? And you see people that live with tremendous economic opportunity who spoil it and don't take advantage of it. And people have tremendous economic opportunity when they're not fulfilled in their relationships. Who's to say they're not, who's to say, not spiritually developed, but looks on the outside by the way they treat people, they're not spiritually developed. And so I don't believe you have to pick one or the other. I believe that they go together. I've always believed when I originally was learning, constantly listening to albums that's Hold I Am and cassette tapes and reel to That's how old I am, and cassette tapes, and reel-to-reels, that's how old I am, eight tracks of various professors, speakers.

I was just immersing myself in things. I noticed almost everybody specialized in either how I look at as philosophy or strategy. Philosophy is critical. It determines the quality of your life. It determines whether you're happy or not happy, fulfilled or not fulfilled. Strategy is how. How do you get it done? And strategy is critical because you could save a decade with the right strategy in business, in your personal life, with your body. The wrong strategy, and you're going to be ill. And so early on, I decided, you need both. So I teach both. I don't think that's anything but intelligent to do both. So that's how I look at it. But if you think, what creates... I try to look at what does everybody want? And we're all different. I think the best example I can give is that people want an extraordinary quality of life. But that definition is different for everybody. Some people's idea of an extraordinary life is three beautiful children and a husband or wife that they adore. Some people's is to write poetry or write music or to build a farm or garden. Some people's is to grow a business.

Everyone has completely different eyes on what that is. I don't pretend that my life should be your life, or I'm an example for you, but I'm an example of how you can take what you believe you want to create and make it real by a combination and enjoy it. Because how many of you know have achieved everything you want and then said, Is this all there is? Because they didn't have the right philosophy or they were trying to achieve something they thought would meet a need for significance, and they missed love, the more important pieces of life. So I believe that there's two primary skills to have an extraordinary quality life, which I would define as life on your terms. So the first one is the science of achievement. That's a skill. So when I wrote my financial books, and I ended up writing three of them. I never intended that. But after 2008, I was so angry because I worked with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the top 10 traders in the history of the world, and I knew this was coming. I tried to warn people, and only a few number of people almost destroyed the world economy.

And then we punish them by giving them more of our money. That's the most crazy thing. So I don't have a lot of power, but I have the power to convene. And so I brought together 50 of the best financial people in the world and dug into their brains and figured out what's the common pattern. They're all different. That have made them go from nothing financially to financially free. And I want to show people that's still doable because I think most, especially young people, they don't think that's possible. And they're wrong. The system's rigged is what everybody It is rigged to some extent, but it's still totally winnable. Life isn't always fair, but it's still magnificent. You can still make it magnificent. The skill sets, it's like it's a science. If you do certain things, you're going to have too much month at the end of the money. You're going to have stress. If you use certain other things financially, you're going to be free. That's a science. Your body is a science. Every one of us is slightly different. But there's certain patterns that if you violate them, you're going to have illness, you're going to have disease.

That's what it is. If If you surround yourself or apply them, you're going to have a high level of energy, high level of health. That skill is the one that most human beings in the Western world are pursuing. They want to achieve more, and the whole focus is, let's get more. We're a consumer culture culture. And so as a result, a lot of people do that, and they're still unhappy. That's because the second skill is more important and is not promoted in our Western culture very much, and that is the art of fulfillment. And notice I said art, not science, because what fulfills you, and I consider you a dear friend, and what fulfills your best friend and what fulfills your kids may be really different, even though you love each other and you're all part of the same family, so to speak. We're all very unique in that way. It's like, what does God love? Go to a forest and take a look around. Everything's different. It's ultimate levels of variety of shapes and directions. It's not supposed to be one thing. I think that's the biggest challenge in our culture. We've experienced all this pain and these shootings and so forth about people who want to shoot other people because they believe something different than them.

Man, we've really lost it when we can't have a conversation anymore or we can't learn to agree to disagree. You can love somebody and still disagree with them. I know in Congress, I have friends who worked at vice president level and worked at the presidential level and worked in Congress and Senate, and they would fight like hell three or four decades ago, and they'd go have a beer together. Now, they don't even talk to each other. It's a crazy thing. But my point is, fulfillment is an art, and fulfillment is as different as you and I are. There are no laws to fulfillment, but there are some principles, and one is growth. If you're going to be fulfilled, you got to grow. In fact, the whole self-care mentality we have, which I think was important, it was like the antidote to the, what they call it, the hustle culture.

A little butt out coaching.

People always stress. You know why they're stressed? They're hustling just to make money. There's no meaning. You're going to work your ass off and be so fulfilled if it's meaningful to you, if you're doing it for a higher purpose than just money. I'm not saying you shouldn't have money. You should. It's part of a master's skill of being alive and take care of your family. But if that's the only thing you're doing it for, you're going to stress out and burn out. Stress comes to making things more important than they really are. Failure comes from making things less important than they really are. It's an art, right? But the fulfillment side is finding what it is that allows you to grow, because when you grow, you feel alive. I always tell people, people ask me all the time, they say, What is it that makes people happy? You travel the world, you meet millions of people. What's the common key to happiness? And I say, Progress. Progress equals happiness. When you're making progress, you're happy, even when you achieve it. Can you think of a goal you've achieved that you're really proud of? And then afterwards thought, Is this all there is?

No.

Oh, good. I'm so happy. You're more purposeful. Yeah. Of course, The Purpose podcast.

No, and you too. But as in, I think that's because you know it's about progress. Yes. No, I'm agreeing with you. Yeah.

Have you ever had a goal where you achieved it and you're out of your mind? Out of your mind in good, like you're celebratory?

Probably not either.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Well, most people have had some celebration. Yes, yes, I've both. When they celebrate that, what I always ask people is, You're really celebratory. It was great, you achieved it. You're proud of yourself. Great. I say, How long did that feeling last? Not long.

I say, Did it last six years?

No. Six months, six weeks, six days, six hours. Most people somewhere between six hours and six weeks max. Because why does it go away? Because we're not made just to achieve goals. We're made to grow. We're made to become more. Because when we grow, we make progress, we have something to give. We have more to give. So it's like everything in the world either grows or it dies. If your relationship is not growing, don't BS yourself, it's dying. If your business is not growing, it's dying. If you're not growing, some part of you is dying inside. But I found that when people really grow, they're happy, and then they want to share, and they have something worth sharing. So if you look at somebody like Robin Williams. Robin Williams, I think, was one of the gifts of our country to the world. He He made people laugh all over the Earth. He came here to Hollywood, where we are right now. He had almost no resources except creativity. He said, I'm going to star on my own TV show. Everybody says that. Nobody does it. He did it. Then he said, Okay, I don't want to not only star on my own TV show, I want to make it the number one show in at least five countries.

He did it in nine. Then he said, I don't want to do TV anymore. I want to make movies. That's more dramatic. And he did. Then he said, I want to win an academy award for not being A dramatic Academy Award, and he won. He said, I want to have a family that totally loves me and I love me. He did it. He said, I want to have more money than I could ever spend. And he did it. And he hung himself in his own home. How do you explain that? Now, people say he had Lewy bodies in his brain, but he abused alcohol and cocaine and drugs his entire life, staying hyped up. He worked to make everybody as happy except himself. So I really believe that success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And you do not have to separate them because if what you're doing is designed to try and serve something more than yourself, you're not going to be stressed. When you're trying to serve your kids or you're trying to serve your community or your country, when there's something you care about more than yourself, there's an energy that you have.

All suffering comes focused on the self. And ironically, again, I started to mention self-care. I'm not being derogatory towards self-care because I think it's important to take care of yourself so you can take care of others and take care of yourself. But it's become It's the new hustle culture. Self care means you're doing something, directing your mind, soul, and spirit to become more, not just checking out. And so many people are doing it now, and I think that's a huge reason why. I don't know if you saw, I looked it up the other day. I actually brought it on I wanted to make sure I had the right numbers. It blew my mind. Yeah, 61% of Gen Z has been diagnosed with anxiety disorder. 61% of a generation. 54% of Gen Z women report diagnosed mental health conditions by American Psychological Association. 34% of Gen Z are currently taking prescription medication, and there's been 129% increase in the trajectory use of antidepressants among teenage girls since the pandemic. I mean, it's like, there's something wrong here. This mental health crisis is because we think we should do less and we're going to be happier. There was a study done right in the middle of COVID by a woman who wrote an article in the New York Times, and she took people who were miserable and angry and sad and said, We're going to do a time management course for you for nine weeks.

I'm going to ask that you do more during these nine weeks. At the end of nine weeks, just by feeling control of their lives, 20% increase in life satisfaction, 18% increase in productivity, by doing five times more than what they were doing when they kept... Because the problem was pulling back and taking care of yourself when it's the extreme side, not what you or I would do. I know you have the meds thing you talk about, in terms of meditating and eating well and diet and sleep. Is that the one Couldn't agree more with you on that. But when people make it like just letting go and doing nothing, I don't value that. But the weaker we get, the harder it gets. You don't hit a bottom and now you're okay. You just get weaker and weaker. Now, little things are stressful. It's just like the decision making. The more you don't make decisions, the more anxiety you have. The more you start making decisions, the stronger you feel. You feel like you're in control of your life. All it takes is a few good ones for you to start getting momentum. So I think those two skills are the key to a great life.

Master the science of achievements. You can study how people did it. Get the same thing with your body or your emotions or your relationships or your finances. But then when it comes to fulfillment, you have to discover what will help you to grow and what will help you to give more and what taps you. I'll give one final example because it's humorous to me. Steve Wend is a good friend of mine who built most of Las Vegas, about half of Las Vegas. Beautiful man. My favorite hotels. Yes, beautiful, beautiful old man. And Steve is quite a philanthropist, great human being, a good friend of mine. So We both have vacation homes in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the snow. I arrived one morning, or one night, the night before, and I got there 2: 00 or 3: 00 in the morning, and the phone rings at 8: 00 AM. I'm in a 4: 00 or 5: 00 sleep. Who could possibly call me in this home? It's Steve. Tony, it's my birthday. Why don't you come over today? I said, Steve, I know, but it's 8: 15, 8: 30 in the morning. I just got here.

He goes, Listen, I got this new piece of art. He said, It's unbelievable. I've covered this piece of for the last 13 years. He said, I outbid everybody's anosophobies, and literally they delivered it late last night for my birthday. You must come and see this painting. I said, All right, Steve, I have one question. How much should it set you back? Eighty-six point nine million dollars, 87 million dollars. So I said, Steve, screw lunch. I'm coming for breakfast. I got to see what an $87 million dollar painting looks like. And I'm picturing God crashing through the cloud, some Renaissance image and everything else. I get there and he takes me there and he goes, See? And I look at it and I understand what it is. It's a Rothko, but it's an orange square. If you've ever seen a Rothko, it's literally an orange and red square. And I said, Steve, they missed a few spots because it isn't filled in right He got a little… And I said, This is a rough go. I said, I know what it is. He goes, Yeah, but I said, Steve, I said, Give me $100 with the red paint.

Give me a piece of paper. Give me 20 minutes. I think I can do this again. It stirred him up a little bit. He knew as I was teasing him. He goes, Tony, you don't understand. He committed suicide. Start telling me the whole story of the guy. I said, Well, for suicide, it should be his blood for $87 million. I mean, come on, right? But the reason I tell this story is he can barely see, but he got almost an orgasm looking at that. Because He finds meaning in everything. He knows what every stroke means. I'm going to look at Icy and Orange Square, I'm unsophisticated. So what makes you feel fulfilled depends on what you focus on. People say, Why did he do that? He should have given that money away. He's given him millions and millions of millions of hundreds of millions of dollars away. That's just everybody's judgment. I think you should figure out what it is that fulfills you, because if you don't find fulfill, you're going to be miserable. More stress comes because you're not fulfilled. It's not because you're not achieving. It's because you're not making progress on what matters to you.

It's because you feel at the effective events versus your affecting events.

So many breakthroughs there that I just want to flag for people that I think are huge. The first point being this breakdown of the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. It's so important because I think today what people are confused is that they think if they're more fulfilled, they'll be better at the science. No. And that doesn't work that way.

And you won't stay fulfilled either because their idea of fulfill is what feels good in the moment. But what feels good in the moment is what feels good long term. What feels good long term is when you grow and when you give, the two things that make us feel alive is growing and giving. And you grow so you have something to give.

Yes. And then same back the other way, the science of achievement won't make you more fulfilled, which you made. One big breakthrough. Second one is what you just said now, this idea that That self-care is promoting this idea that we all want more comfort, that we should all have more comfort in life. And if we have more comfort in life, then we'll be happier. And you're completely uprooting that and going, well, actually, the discomfort makes you experience Progress, which equals happiness. That's correct. Because that's the algorithm that we want to be a part of. And that's the hard choice, because that hard choice is choosing the discomfort, choosing the discipline, choosing the decision that may feel hard but is right.

But But the one that's the hardest one is regret. Not making the decision almost always leads to regret. If you make a decision that's wrong, you can change it, make another one. Even those type one decisions that Jeff Bezos talks about, most of them are still possible to change. This just takes a lot. So it's always possible to shift. What will screw your life up is not deciding, is living on the fence because the brain does not do well with uncertainty. That's one of the human needs is the need for certainty. And the fastest way to certainty is just make some decisions and act on them and discover what's real. So I appreciate your meta comments about that because I think it's really important to master both skills. I know so many people that achieve so much, and they're so unfulfilled. There are so many people that are trying for fulfillment, and they never last. It's because you got to think about it. Everything in life is calling us to grow. And if you want to know what doesn't work, the pop psychology of self-care is not working any more than the hustle culture did.

They're both extremes. Life's a balance, right? And if you want to see what the results are, look at the medication. And millennials are known as the Rx, not the X generation, the Rx generation, right? So it's like that is not solving it to feel good. Not feeling good is part of what gives you drive. It either destroys you or drives you. You have to make those choices. And most of us will not let it destroy us if we don't medicate ourselves. We find a way to push through. But if you don't have to, people go for comfort. And comfort will never make you proud. Comfort will make you strong. Comfort will not allow you to inspire your kids or your community or your friends. But there's a greater thing than comfort that comes from fulfillment by pushing through. Here's the other part. I hear the word the other pop culture element drives me crazy. Self esteem. Oh, I don't have any self esteem because when I was a child, people said these horrible things to me. How convenient you only remember the horrible things they said to you, right? They said lots of things. But the truth of the matter is what people said to you means whatsoever as to whether you feel like you have high self esteem or not.

Self esteem is earned by yourself, with yourself. Someone can say your whole life, you're beautiful, you're gorgeous, you're so smart, and you can fear you're not, right? People like that all the time, right? Absolutely. They have all this anxiety because they thought they were the best in the world, and they find out they're not. The parents overblew who they were at that stage. They didn't teach them to develop it or to push through or develop the muscle that would make them the best in the world of what they do. On the other hand, you can be told by people, you're a piece of worthless, piece of junk, you'll never be this, you're a piece of that. And that person can say, screw you, I'll show you who I am. So what people have said has zero impact on your self-esteem. Telling people they're great or not great does not change it. Teaching them to have grit, teaching them to push through. The way you develop esteem for yourself is by doing difficult things that you know are right. When you do something that you know is right, even though it's difficult, your esteem for yourself grows, and no one can take that.

You didn't take away money or material things. No one could take away who I've become as a man and my path, or you as a man, or anyone else as a woman. I I think it's really important to know if you want to feel good about yourself, it's not by relaxing. Don't get me wrong, I know how to relax, I know how to take time, and I have a beautiful family, I have five kids and five grandkids, so I certainly have to be able to do that. One of my kids is, thanks to COVID, I have a 51-year-old daughter, and I have a four-year-old daughter, so I have quite a spread at 60 when I'm going to be 66 pretty soon, so to give you a sense. So my life is full, but it still has to have growth in it. It still has to have progress, and that's what makes it fulfilling.

What's the difference between growth and hustle? Meaning?

Well, yes, exactly. Hustle, I'm just doing it to try to make money. If I'm busting my tail, but man, I know what I'm doing on... The end of the day is I measure people's lives. I have to give a zero to 10 score on their body, not compared to someone else. Like your idea of a 10. When I was 20, I thought, washboard abs was a 10, and they had them and my back hurt. I was out of balance, right? Everything else is screwed up, big biceps and weak in other areas. So I asked people, Where are Where are you zero to 10 in your life today based on what you want for your life? Is it energy? Where are you zero to 10 in the level of meaning and emotion? Because if you don't measure something, you can't manage it. Give it zero to 10, a little description. Give me zero to 10 where you are in your relationships. And the most important one, your intimate relationships, because friendships are easy. Where's that? And if you don't have one, that's zero. And you want to see that, so it pushes you. Where are you in your, and this is the one that led me to it, is your work, or is it for a career, or is it a calling or a mission?

And I already know who people are based on which word they pick. If it's work, it's work. If it's career, they work at it, and they're pretty fulfilled at it. But if it's mission, I know you and I are both called. I don't have to do this the other day of my life. I do it because it's my mission. It's my purpose. I believe it's what I'm made for. There is no amount of work that can wear you down when it's mission. Zero. And if you haven't found that, I would caution against one other thing, if I may. You've stirred me up with some different questions. It's good. I think it's important to understand a lot of people are trying to find their purpose. What's my purpose? What's this big purpose? Who said you had one? Who I said, you had one for a lifetime? If you write down a purpose statement, it's long mission statement, it sounds real good and you read it, it's never going to cover all of who you are, what you're for. I have a different purpose when I'm sitting down with my daughter, my youngest daughter, than I am with my oldest.

I have a different sense of purpose in what I'm doing in this business This is for that. I have a different purpose in our conversation today. Purpose is what gives life meaning. But you don't have to have one giant purpose that you're struggling to find. Life will evolve. And if you just keep moving forward in a purposeful manner, like Whatever you do, there's some meaning to it. Then I think you're going to find you are much more fulfilled. And those measurements, by the way, I would do them on your finances, and I do them on the spiritual side of life. Not religious, but like, religio means celebration. Most people in religion don't have a lot of celebration anymore. Just a bunch of rules. So it's like, okay, I divide it as between, how much are you celebrating your life? Because isn't this an unbelievable gift that we're sitting here breathing this heart's beating? We don't have to work at it. That the skin's working, that we can have a conversation, that we can feel, that we can live, that we can have our children. That's a miracle. We forget what a miracle does just to be alive.

So are you celebrating? And then are you contributing? Because celebration without contribution doesn't last. So I say measure those things. But to answer your question specifically, I think it's critical that you understand stress comes from having activity without purpose is the drain on your emotional well-being.

Yeah, and that's what we're struggling with. That makes sense.

I'm Ibalungoria. And I'm Maite Gomez-Juan. And on our podcast, Hungary for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenian Americans used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these oster con to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the oster con. Because we've got a very mi casa es su casa vibe on our show, friends always stop by.

Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the El Golfo de México, not de América.

Not de América. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife.

Listen to Hungary for History as part of the My Cultura podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes. I'm Dr. Priyanka Walee, a double board certified physician. And I'm Harikundabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled, Do I have scurvy? At 3: 00 AM. On For the health stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health. But also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are prediabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world. Your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but you don't even know. You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride, so tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Us. It's Anna Ortiz.

And I'm Mark Indelicato.

You might know us as Hilda. And Justin. From Ogly Betty. We played Mother and Son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends.

And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty. Yay.

Can you believe it has been almost 20 years? That's not even possible. You're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. We're rewatching the series from start to finish and getting into all the fashions, the drama, and the behind-the-scenes moments that you've never heard before. You're going to hear from guests like America Ferrera, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton, Tony Plana, and so many more. Icons, each and every one.

All of a sudden, someone comes running up to me, and it's Salma Hayek, and she's like, You are my ugly Betty.

And I was like, What is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the My Cultura podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

You just mentioned that you have a child who's 51 years old, a one that's four and a half.

I wouldn't call her a child now. She wouldn't appreciate that. I have a daughter who's 51.

You have a daughter. Sorry. You said you have a daughter who's 51 years old. You probably still see her as a child in some ways, I assume. I don't know. My mom can't stop seeing me as a child. But yes, you have a daughter who's 51 years old. You have a daughter who's four and a half years old. Talk to me about what being a dad at that age was like in your 20s to what being a dad in your 60s looks like. What's different? What are the different challenges? What are the different lessons?

My favorite stage of life is this stage of life. I would say that first. For everyone listening, I look at life in seasons. It's like, I'm a big believer that the three skills we need to teach our kids or ourselves, especially in a world that in the next 5 to 10 years, we'll have more change than any time in human history, between nanotechnology and AI and, robotics and everything else. The world is going to change like never before. So how do you have an advantage there? You have to master three skills. You have to pattern, pattern, recognition so that you're not fearful. A lot of fear is because you think this is the only time this happened, politically, it will never have been this way. It's bullshit. I can show you stuff that makes Republicans and Democrats look nice to each other from the past. When you recognize a pattern, you go, Okay, this has happened before. And seasons are one of those patterns, right? And then you're not fearful. And then the second part, it's not random. The second skill is mastering really pattern utilization. That's what gives you power in your life. Because now a baby can't get out of this room until they recognize almost all rooms have an exit.

And if I look It's around there, it's shaped a certain way, and there's a handle that if I push, pull, I can get out of here. If you don't, you're trapped. So pattern recognition is power. At a little level, get out of the room. At a big level, if you look at somebody that's great in business, how do I have all these companies? I couldn't I run one company with five employees. I was trying to do a million dollars in business. I wasn't hitting it. And I was stressed out of my mind to now have 114 companies doing 10 billion. The difference is pattern recognition. It's like understanding and then learning how to use those patterns in those situations. If you're good in business, there's certain patterns. If you're good in investing, there's certain patterns. If you got good mental health, there's certain patterns. If you're physically well, there's certain patterns. If you know somebody's a good dancer, they recognize how to use patterns to produce a specific result. Spielberg has made movies for 40 years. He knows if I move in slowly like this, he knows if I go fast, what will happen? If I pull back, if I bring the music up here.

Anyone you know that you probably respect and like, does this recognize patterns. They got great at using them. But The third level for me is pattern, a creation. It's like if you played music, you did it usually by playing someone else's music. Begit Tovenbach, whoever you did, you lit someone else's patterns. You did that long enough, you could use it. And then one day, you start to come through. You start to become a creator. We stand on the shoulders of the people before us. And so those three skills are how you can compete or do well. I want that for my 51-year-old, and I want my four-year-old. Having said that, you don't recognize as many patterns when you're 25, to answer your question. I'm proud of the father I was. I got married in my first marriage to a woman that was 12 years my senior, and she'd been married twice before me. She had kids from both husbands, and she moved in with me, and she was so unhappy, and I was like, Bring them here. I adopted all those kids. If you can imagine, I was just turning 25 years old. I had a 17-year-old son, an 11-year-old daughter, a five-year-old, and then shortly after, a blood I felt of my own coming on board.

I was out to change the world. I had to learn how to manage my life and who I was. These kids, I fell totally in love with them and the joy of my life today. That marriage lasted 14 years. When I grew up, I was there for the kids, honestly. More than anything else. We weren't the right match for each other. We were still good friends. I'm here with my wife now. We've been together 25 years. It's the greatest gift of my life. But my wife didn't think we could have kids. The doctor told her point blank we couldn't. So we ended up doing it with a surrogate, and it was COVID, and I'm normally going on road 225 days in a year, 200 days in a year with COVID. They shut down every arena in the world. I went from doing 15,000 people to them saying I could put 100 people in the arena. So we pivoted, and I started doing digital seminars. We did the biggest ones in the world, 1. 3 million people. A huge screen, yeah. Three days, and really made it an experience that was amazing. So there was time.

So we got our daughter. But the answer to your question, specifically, I think in my 20s and 30s, I was still trying to figure out who I was. All I knew is I want these kids to be loved. I want them to know that they're not here to demand from life. Life is expecting something from you. And that if you're here to be a contributor, you'll always be happy. I really accomplish that. I'm proud of all my kids. They're all contributors. They all contribute time, energy, money, resources to help people who are not as well off as they are. They're all great parents, and they're all just good people. But with my daughter today, I had her at 61, so certainly not what I planned for. It brought more joy to me than anything else because you know so much more. You have so much more wisdom to share. You have more time to just experience things versus when you're running, trying to make it all happen. And I think someone like yourself at 30, we talked off the air here that at some point you'll probably have children. I think in that 38, 39, 40, you have more wisdom because you know who you are now to a great extent.

You'll continue to evolve. I'll continue. Especially you, right? I'm continuing to evolve, right? But I think there's just more to give at that stage. But I also would tell anybody that I wouldn't... If someone would have told me, if you think of zero to 21 as being a pattern of seasons, like when I say pattern recognition, the pattern that has changed humanity the most, the first recognized pattern that we changed and started to use with seasons. Until then, we were hunter-gatherers and starving to death unless we could find the right food. It's total stress. Way more stress than we have today. But then what happened? We realized, wow, there are these seasons, and if I plant in the spring, I protect it during the summer, I get to reap in the fall, have enough for winter, I can do the whole thing again. Well, if you do the right thing at the wrong time, you get nothing. It doesn't matter how hard you work. So I'm a big believer in looking at what season you are in your life, what season you are in history, what season I'm in with my family. And so I think a 021 is springtime.

Everything grows in springtime. It's easy to grow in springtime. If you start a business in springtime, you think you're a genius, you're not a genius, you're just in the right season. But then summer comes and things are tested. And God or the universe, whatever you want to call it, has made it so we have an easy time, and then we have a tough time to test this, to make us grow. An easy time rewards and a tough time. So summer, think of it as like 22 to 42, roughly. Zero to 21, you're taking care of. I had a childhood that was a little tough, but I was 13 or 14. I had to work to support the family. But I still, I didn't have to make all the money for the food. Someone else was housing me. Someone else was taking care of me. At that stage of life, you're taking in information. 22 to 42, now you go test it. Now you go say, Well, I was taught all this stuff, what do I believe? In the early stages of that season, you think you're invincible. You think you're going to be a multibillionaire, President of the United States We're going to have 100 relationships simultaneously, and everyone will be happy.

And by the time you're 32 or three or something like that, you start going, I'm not a billionaire. I'm not the President of the United States, and I can't even one person happy in a relationship. What the hell is going on here? And that's usually when people start to look for people like you and I who are looking for some wisdom about how to live life in a way that's happy and fulfilling and growing and expanding because they know they're not invincible. That stage, if you're listening, if you're in that 22 to 42, it is the most painful stage across all studies, most It's the most unhappy stage. If you're happy right now, that is awesome. Anyone can be, but most aren't fully happy at that stage. It's the most trying stage. It's the testing time. If you didn't grow during spring and take care of yourself summer, then you won't reap in the fall. You're going to weep. But if you grew in both those stages, is now you go to the third stage. That's basically 43 to 63. These numbers are round, right? Some people are early, some people are late. But in that stage of life, you've accumulated enough skill and knowledge.

If you've grown, you know the people. I'm sure you're already experiencing it now. I was in Greece and I got stuck. I'm fortunate enough to have a private plane and I'm supposed to fly to Germany and I want to drop my family in Italy, so I can have a good time. We had it two weeks in advance. They told us what the times would be, and then they changed the times and said, I I didn't get out until after my seminar started with 13,000 people in 54 countries, right? And I'm like, and they were immovable. And so like, okay, my only option is find some other way to get to Athens and fly somewhere else. And it's like, no, at this stage of my life, there aren't very many people on the planet. Who do I know that knows the Prime Minister of Greece? So I asked ChatGPT. Tony Robbins. Who does he know? It gave me a list. It's like Mark Benioff of Salesforce, one of my dearest friends, a human of mine. Peter Diamont is one of my partners in business. He's from Greece, and he knows them. And it went through the whole list.

There was nine of them. So I called three of them. And the poor Prime Minister got about nine calls. And next thing I know, no problem. They moved the time and everything else. There's a stage of life that if you've done your job and to contribute enough to society that you know most of the players or you know most of the people in the industry, and you've got relationships that are 20 years long or maybe 30 years long. And the talent pool is not elastic. There's only so many people that keep growing. And so you usually know those people have a role in that. So that stage is where most people have that stage that we can think of as autumn, as the fall, as the reward stage. That's when most people earn the most. That's when most people tend to grow the most. That's when you start to really become a leader in that stage. Now, obviously, it can happen earlier. And then 64 to 84 to 104 to 124, which is the oldest living humans, is the winter stage, which is there's a gradual decline in the body no matter what you do at some stage, and you have make sure you keep your mental facilities up.

But it's also the most magnificent stage because you can make not only a phone call to get your plane out, but you are able... You have 30, I have 40-year relationships now. I've got five kids and five grandkids It's like, I've got people that I love with my soul, that I would do anything for or do anything for me. I don't know many things in life. I feel closer to God in the universe than I've ever felt in my life. I feel like my life is such a blessing. If my life ended tomorrow, I'll be the most blessed man on Earth. I I like to continue contributing, but that's not in my hands.

Yeah, we need you around.

But that's not in my hands. Whenever I go, it'll be the right time. So it's like, I want people to know, and all the studies, by the way, show if you stay healthy, this stage I'm talking about is the most fulfilling stage. And it's a stage where you get to become an elder statesman, and you're not trying to prove to somebody who the hell you are. You don't play the social media game. You know who the hell you are. If people know you like people, know you're a good person. But if they don't, you don't really care, right? You just go deliver what you're here to deliver and do what you're going to do. Those stages of life, I think, are useful because we're all different, but there's a racetrack to life. And you're not there yet, but there's a stage in your life when your brain will go. There may be more days behind me than ahead of me. That's usually midlife, whatever age that is in people's heads. It's different for everybody. And there's a beauty. There's a massive increase of the beauty of life when you begin to realize it's a limited racetrack.

It's You value every moment, every relationship, every experience you have, even more. I'm at a stage of life where I have so many friends that are 20 years my senior. I have a lot of friends in their 80s and my age that have passed away just in recent years. And it It's just to remind you that it's a limited racetrack, but I think that's valuable. I remember I read a... Ray Kerswell sent me one time. Ray Kurzwell is a brilliant futurist, one of the smartest in the world. One day, he sent me this little story. He goes, Tony, I think you'd appreciate this. It was a write-up about a story from a TV show that was done years ago. And in the TV show, which has a little twist, it's about a man who is a gambler, and he goes to heaven in his diet day. If heaven is staying at the WEN Hotel in the presidential suite, or the Encore, the presidential suite. And he wakes up in heaven. He wakes up at the top of the Encore, and he opens his closet. There's all these suits and outfits, and he opens the drawers, and there's cash, and there's jewelry, and watches and all these things.

And he goes downstairs and every woman notices him. He goes and he's, Black Jack, you win. 21, you win, you win. And all of a sudden, he's playing craps, you win, you win, you win. And he's lit up like a Christmas tree. And he goes home that night with more than one person, and he thinks it's the greatest experience of his life. And he wakes up the next day and does the whole thing again. And the next day, and does the whole thing again. The next day, he does the whole thing again. The next day, he does the whole thing again. After three weeks of this, he's sitting at the table, he's playing blackjack, and goes, 21, you win. He goes, Of course I win. I always win. He's getting angry because there's something wrong here. He goes, I want to speak to the head angel. There's something wrong here. And so the head angel comes over. He looks like Guy Lombardi in this tuxedo and says, Can I help you, sir? He says, Yes. He goes, I win every single time. He goes, There's a mistake here. I don't belong in heaven. I'm not the guy that should be in heaven.

And the angel looks at him and said, Who said you're in heaven? If we always got everything we wanted, if time was unlimited, would you value life as much? So I'm here to make sure we make every moment matter with meaning and with love.

It's beautiful. I love that story. I love that story. And I mean, you've dedicated so much to this and you keep doing it. Time to Rise Summit. Time to Rise is coming up at the end of this month. Yes. And it's another opportunity for people to get better at making decisions, to decide, to commit, to act, to resolve, to have that energy. Everything we've been talking about Today.

Plus, there's something about the calendar that's so funny. It's totally arbitrary. But a new year is like a new life. It's like a fresh start, and we all need a fresh start. But the problem is most people set a bunch of New Year's resolutions, and 98 %, they don't follow through on them. So this is about, hey, let's figure out what you really want. What's getting in the way? What's the plan? It's only three hours a day. So think of it like a great movie, only you're in it and you're actually changing your life three days in a row. So it's January 29th through the 31st, and you can attend from anywhere on Earth. We had 1. 3 million people last year attend from 193 countries, every country on Earth that exists, at least that the UN recognizes. And it's an experience I probably should never forget. Plus, there's a community of people, and there's zero charge. It's not like partial pay. There's zero charge. Once a year, I do this just to give back to people all over the Earth. And it's really, really dynamic. And people create incredible changes, and they share them with the community on Facebook.

I look forward to it every year. So I hope people will join us. And then the other thing, I hope you'll join me for that because it's an emersion, and it's the beginning of the year, and you set yourself up to win and meet some great people. But then also I've actually now created a partnership with Paramount, where I'm doing the Tony Robbins Network, which we've just launched, and it'll be all over the world. They're going to actually translate it in every language. A lot of you use AI, so I'll be speaking with my own voice in there. It's amazing technology we have today. But it's literally 24/7 channel of nothing but we've got dozens of programs we've developed on how to improve your body, your emotions, your relationships, your finances, and there's no charge for it at all. So anybody can in and have an experience there as well.

Wow, that's fantastic. I mean, what I love about Time to Rise is that that few days, those 2-3 days that people spend with you, it will create a shift. There's no question. Because we all need those moments where we just immerse, we get absorbed, we get focused, because some of us maybe will do 10 minutes of thinking about our life here and 30 minutes over there, and maybe you'll spend an hour if you're lucky. But to have three days of three hours each, it's colossal what could happen in your life.

And I really believe in The reason I do live events, and they're usually 12 hours a day, to give you an idea, and people who won't sit for a three-hour movie, we'll go 12 hours and say, This is the greatest experience of my life, is immersion is the way to learn. If you're going to learn a language and you learn a little bit at a time, most people learned in high school and college, they don't speak the language years later. But if I dropped you in Rome for 90 days with no teacher, I pick you up, you're going to be speaking because you're seeing it, feeling it, experiencing it. So three hours isn't quite that level of emersion, but it's enough to really create momentum, make some real choices, and really change your life for the better. And it'd be my privilege to serve anyone who wants to join And again, there's no charge for it.

Last question, Tony, before we end. You mentioned there that, and you've talked about it in your seminar, as I've seen you talk about it, your relationship with God, the universe. Yes. And I wanted to ask you about that because I think we often refer to a relationship with God, a relationship with the universe. What does a relationship with God and the universe look like? How does one nurture that? What does that mean?

It's more of what it feels like to me than what it looks like. I feel like I've been guided in my life because I've asked for guidance, and I believe I've been created. I think we're all created for different purposes. My own personal belief, which may be wrong, is that I'm here to make things better. I wear these silly baseball caps all the time just for fun. But if you read them on the side, it says, Be a blessing, and you'll be blessed, is what it says underneath. That's my whole philosophy of life, be a blessing. I know one of my sons, Josh, I remember when he became a Christian, I'm of a Christian faith personally, but I'm quite broad in my approach. I'm not restrictive in my thinking, and I don't believe everyone should be what I believe to believe. In other words, if you have a spiritual belief, I hope you follow it, because whatever it is, if you don't follow it, you're probably not going to be happy. I'm not a proselytator of people to have to be or think a certain way. But I remember my son, he became Christian. When people find God in whatever way they find it, they often think no one else has that.

It's only their way. He became very, very rules-driven about this is how it is and that's how it is. I was quite concerned. But rather than trying to push him to be a certain way, I told my wife, saying, I said, Honey, we were in Fiji, and I said, I've got a few days. I said, I'm going to go on a fast for the next four days, maybe five, four or five days, just drink juice, and I'm going to read the whole Bible from cover to cover. And I said, Because I've never read it that way. I've never done total emersion like I talked about. I read the whole Bible, and literally about 18 hours a day, and I was struck at the end by an overall pattern. So I went to my son. He was being very devout and very right, wrong, good, bad, and And anytime you make things extreme, I think it creates problems. And I didn't try to make him wrong in any way. I said, God's this and God means this, and this is what Christ did, and this is how it is. And I said, Okay, Josh. I said, I have one question for you.

I said, I just read the entire Bible from cover to cover, and his jaw dropped open. I said, I'm dead serious. And sage of the major goes, he did it. I said, one thing that comes out of it, I read the Old Testament and God seems like a selfish bastard who's mean and vindictive. And I read the New Testament and God seems incredibly loving and supportive of all. So I said, If that's true, does God grow? And there's this long pause. He felt like he was being trapped. You're trying to trap me. I said, I'm not trying to trap you. I'm asking an honest question. I mean, everything universe either grows or dies. So does God grow? If the Bible is a real reflection of God, and there are many other books that are a reflection of being inspired by the divine, but let's say that's the book, does God grow? Because it sure looks like it in the book. And if that's true, the only reason I'm bringing that up is I know what you're fearing is that you can't have absolute certainty about how things are, which is what everybody wants. But you could have faith.

And I said, he goes, well, God knows everything. God knows what you're going to do before you're going to do how it's going to be. And he gave me this rattle and I said, okay, I believe all that. But the question is, does God grow? And he couldn't give me an answer either way because he felt like he was being trapped in it. But eventually he loosened up. And I could say today, he's much more balanced in that area. He's not trying to make everybody else believe what he believes. But I think the universe grows. I think God grows, and I think it's our job to grow. And I think that when I look at the spiritual side of life, the relationship I have is one that's more emotional than visual. I feel like when I get up to serve, God comes through me. When someone stands up and let's say it's a date with Destiny, you've been on a date with Destiny, you never know who's going to stand up. They could say, I'm suicidal, or they could say, I'm considered killing myself and my five kids. I mean, I've had that come up.

Or they could say, I made $400 million and I'm depressed and people want to slap them. You never know what somebody's going to say. But the minute they stand up inside me, it's already done. Not because I'm so smart, because I know they stood up in this moment, I believe, because this is all by design and the right answers will come through me, and they do. I mean, I've never lost the suicide knock on wood, in 48 years. I'm sure people have seen, some people may I'm not your guru on Netflix. It's a piece, but you see- That's fantastic. You see people six years later, like the woman that was there that was suicidal, that was in that cult where they made you have sex with the adults. And she's got out. She's now a psychologist. She's rescued all these other kids. She doesn't have an ounce of depression or suicidal thoughts. Stanford did a study that shows that. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the spiritual side of life is critical. But what I said to my son is this. I said, I want everyone's relationship to be God if I had a choice, which I don't.

But if I had a choice, it should be as unique as your signature. Why should everybody be copying everybody else? You should have an individual relationship with God. So I said, I really appreciate if you read the Bible or you read any great spiritual book, a personal Christian, but read any of them and let God speak to you. Don't just take it from another man or a woman standing on a stage telling you what to believe. I was hoping in my events. I'm not here to tell you how to be. Who the hell would I be to do that? I'm just sharing with you insights and tools and strategies that can help you guide yourself to who you want to be, and hopefully to ask you, who do you want to be in this lifetime? Because in the end, what you get is not going to make you happy. Who are you going to become? That's going to make you happy or sad. So I think it's an individual decision, and I think it evolves for people over time. But I think it's one of the most important things, because for those who believe that there's nothing nihilistic but this moment or this body, I think that's a big mistake.

It's like saying, Whipster's dictionary as a result of an explosion in a print factory. It all came together perfectly in balance. I just don't that, even logically. And I think you're missing out on life if you don't think there's something more than you and also something more to serve than you. And that gives me personally a great sense of meaning.

Yeah. Tony, thank you for your work, your tools, your insights, your life, your service. Thank you for your time and energy today.

Thank you for all that you do. I appreciate it so much.

I'm so grateful for our friendship, honestly. It's been a real gift. And I want to push people to timetorisev summit. Com. It's timetorisev summit. Com. That's where you can subscribe. Remember, you can sign up for absolutely free to join the Time to Rise Summit. You can be a part of it with all of the seminars, the insights, three hours a day. It's very rare that we get to do a podcast and I get to direct you to something which will exactly solve what we've been talking about. Today, we get to do that. I get to give you this summit as a gift. It's absolutely free that Tony is doing with him and his friends, timetorisesummit. Com. Please go do yourself a favor. It's a gift. It's free. Start your year off right. Get into that great season in the first quarter of this year. And remember, I'm forever in your corner and always rooting for you. Tony, thank you so much. Thank you, brother. Really. Thank you. I appreciate. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the The Key to growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential.

If you know you want to be more and achieve more this year, go check it out right now.

You set a goal today, you achieve it in six months, and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief. There's no sense of meaning and purpose. You expected it, and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Rufus Wainwright, Mavis Staples, really too many to name. And there's still so much more to come in this new season. Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Radhi DiVlucia, and I am the host of a Really Good Cry podcast.

This week, I am joined by Anna Runkel, also known as the Crappy Childhood Faerie, a creator, teacher, and guide helping people heal from the lasting emotional wounds of unsafe or chaotic childhoods. That talking about trauma isn't always great for people. It's not always the best thing. About a third of people who are traumatized as kids feel worse when they talk about it, get very dysregulated.

Listen to a really good cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What are the cycles fathers pass down that sons are left to heal?

What if being a man wasn't about holding it all together, but learning how to let go?

This is a space where men speak truth and find the power to heal and transform. I'm Mike Della Rocha. Welcome to Sacred Lessons.

Listen to Sacred Lessons on podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.