awakening the giant within

AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN (AN INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER)
AUTHOR ANTHONY ROBBINS (published in 1991)



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Robbins is a giant in the self-improvement industry...physically and figuratively speaking. Robbins has studied and mastered profound knowledge of human psychology and personal achievement.
For the past three decades, Anthony Robbins has served as an advisor to leaders around the world. A recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, organizational turnaround, and peak performance, he has been honored consistently for his strategic intellect and humanitarian endeavors. His nonprofit Anthony Robbins Foundation provides assistance to inner-city youth, senior citizens, and the homeless, and feeds more than two million people in 56 countries every year through its international holiday “Basket Brigade.” Robbins has directly impacted the lives of more than 50 million people from over 100 countries with his best-selling
books, multimedia and
Health products, public speaking engagements, and live events.

What began as a young person’s desire to help individuals transform the quality of their lives has grown into Robbins’ lifelong crusade as he is called on by leaders from every walk of life—presidents, political leaders, advocates for humanity, CEOs of multinational corporations, psychologists, peak performance athletes, world-class entertainers, teachers, and parents. Since fathering the life coaching industry, Robbins has produced the #1-selling audio coaching system of all time. He also is a corporate Vice Chairman, and Chairman overseeing five private companies. Robbins has been honored by Accenture as one of the “Top 50 Business Intellectuals in the World”; by Harvard Business Press as one of the “Top 200 Business Gurus”; by American Express as one of the “Top Six Business Leaders in the World” to coach its entrepreneurial clients; by Forbes as a Top 100 Celebrity; by Justice Byron White as one of the world’s “Outstanding Humanitarians”; and by the International Chamber of Commerce as one of the top 10 “Outstanding People of World.”



Mr. Robbins lives in California with his wife and children. He is also the author of one more international best seller UNLIMITED POWER.








SUMMARY



The purpose of the author to write this book is that people are able to take immediate control of their mental, emotional, physical and financial destiny. There a lot of quotes in the book which are source of constant inspiration and self-evaluation? In the first chapter the author starts by giving his own example, recalls the day when he was flying in his helicopter from business building in Los Angeles on the way to one of his seminars. As he flew over he suddenly saw a building where he had worked as caretaker a mere 12 years ago. Back then it seemed to him that his dreams were unrealizable but now it seems to him that all his past failures were laying foundation for understandings that have created a new level of living which is much more satiable and enjoyable. The book emphasizes that one should break the old patterns of limited beliefs that are proving hindrance to progress by utilizing the principles of state management, success conditioning, personal rules, quality questions and emotional management, which form the basis of the basis of lasting change. The power of decisions is given utmost importance. Some thought provoking questions such as how am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to? What am I going to stand for? Form the essence of the book. The author sites the example of reviews given to some great books before they were published. Some of the reviews are “it’s impossible to sell animal stories in U.S.A. ” It is a review that George Orwell got for his book animal farm, which became a best seller after words.

DREAMS OF DESTINY :

Story of Mr. Soichiro Honda ,the founder of the Honda corporation is an awe inspiring one, which gives a message that if one has long term focus and the ability to persevere hard, no matter how many failures he faces ,one will eventually come out on the top. One should be focused on what he/she wants to accomplish not on what one does not wants to do because if we give mixed commands to the brain we get mixed results. The need to be proactive is stressed upon. The author quotes that “know it’s your decisions, not your conditions that determine your destiny”. The human spirit is unconquerable but the will to win ,the will to succeed, to shape one’s life, to take control can only be harnessed when one decides to want and believe that no challenge,no problem, no obstacle can keep one from it.

FORCES THAT SHAPE YOUR LIFE:

The forces that influence ones life are mentioned in a great detail.One acts either to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. So all the human activities are concentrated towards those ends. If we link massive pain to any of the behaviour or emotional pattern ,we will avoid indulging in it at all costs.



Let’s make some changes right now.

First, write down the four actions you need to take that you have been putting off.

Second, under each of these actions, write down the answer to the following questions: why have not I taken action? what pain have I linked to taking this action?

Third, write down all the pleasure you have had in the past by indulging in the negative pattern.

Fourth, write down what will it cost if you do not change now.

The final step is to write down all the pleasure you will receive by taking each of these actions right now.

BELIEF SYSTEM:THE POWER TO CREATE AND THE POWER TO DESTROY:


So often we believe that events control our lives and the environment has shaped us the way we are but here is a story contradicting the above mentioned belief. A man was cruel, an alcoholic and a drug addict. He almost killed himself several times. Today he serves a life sentence for murder of a liquor store cashier who got “in his way”. He has 2 sons born 11 months apart, one of whom grew up and became like his father , he too is serving a sentence for attempted murder. His brother , however is a different story: a man who is raising three kids, enjoys his marriage , and appears to be truly happy. As a regional manager in a firm of national concern, he finds his work both challenging and rewarding. Both of them were asked a question in private unknown to each other, “why has your life turned out this way?” surprisingly both of them gave the same answer: “what else could have become, having grown up with a father like that?”

One more story, two women turn seventy years old , yet each takes a different meaning from an event. One assumes that her life is coming to an end .The other women decides that mountain climbing might be a good sport at her age. For the next twenty five years she devotes herself to this new adventure , scaling some of the highest peaks of the world. In her nineties Hulda Crooks becomes the oldest women to ascend Mount Fuji .
Most of our beliefs are generalizations about our past , based on our interpretations of painful and pleasurable experiences. The challenge is three fold:1)most of us do not consciously decide what we are going to believe; 2)often our beliefs are based on misinterpretations of past experiences;3)once we adopt a belief, we forget that it is merely an interpretation. We begin to treat our beliefs as if they are realities; a gospel.

Once Norman Cousins shared an experience, in a foot ball game in Monterey park , a Los Angeles suburb, several people experienced the symptoms of food poisoning. A doctor warned that no body should consume soft drinks from the dispensing machine. A few more people who had consumed drink from that machine fell ill but on subsequent examination of the drinks it was found that drinks were perfectly fit for human consumption. Every one who had gone ill miraculously recovered. So this story tells us about the ability of beliefs to influence us ,even if they are false.

A simple way of understand a belief is to think of them as a basic building block: an idea. How do we turn an idea into a belief? One must have some references to support the idea. One must have the most empowering beliefs. We can pull from our personal experiences or from the information we gather from other people or books etc. sometimes we form beliefs solely from our imaginations. The strongest beliefs are formed by our personal experiences that have a lot of emotions attached to them.


“I AM NOT DISCOURAGED,BECAUSE EVERY WRONG STEP DISCARDED IS ANOTHER STEP FORWARD”
-THOMAS EDISON


SOME SUCCESS STORIES:

The downside to this is that no matter from where our beliefs come from we take them to be true. This can have a very powerful negative consequence. It is on us how to form powerful, positive beliefs. Every great achiever has the ability to get themselves to feel certain they could succeed even th ough no one before them had ever accomplished it. They are able to create references where none existed before. Till 1954 people held the belief that it was impossible to run one mile in under four minutes but the belief changed when Roger Bannister broke this impossible belief barrier. He did it by creating his own belief. Along with physical regimen, he used to rehearse the event in his mind using full emotional intensity. Then within one year of Roger breaking this mark 34 runners also broke this mark. A year after that another 300 people broke that mark.
People so often develop limiting beliefs about who they are and what they are capable of because they have not succeeded in past, they believe they would not be able to succeed in future. As a result of their fear of pain they become realistic. Most of people who say let’s be realistic are just living in fear. Great people are rarely realistic. They are intelligent, and they are accurate, but they are not realistic by other people’s standard. Mahatma Gandhi believed he could gain autonomy for India without violently opposing Great Britain , something which had never been done before. He was not being unrealistic but he certainly proved to be accurate.

By the same token it was not possible for a man to give happiness to people by building a theme park in middle of the orange grove and charging not only for rides but also to get in. At that time there was no such park in the world yet WALT DISNEY had a sense of certainty which not many people possess. If you are going to make an error in your life let it be in on the side of overestimating your capabilities. That is hard to do as human capacity to do things is unbelievable. Remember, THE PAST DOES NOT EQUAL FUTURE.

“Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable
Existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art, as of life”
-JOSEPH CONARD



HOW TO GET WHAT YOU REALLY WANT


One of the biggest challenges in anyone’s life is how to interpret failures. We need to remember that how we deal with adversity and challenges will shape our lives more than almost anything else.
In psychology there is a term ‘learned helplessness’. When people experience enough failure at something, they perceive their efforts to be futile and develop terminal discouragement of learned helplessness. One should see failure as a challenge to modify our approach not as a problem with ourselves. It is the mind that make the good of ill ,that make wretch or happy, rich or poor. The core belief should be to give your best every day and try to better it the next day, constant and never ending improvement. True security comes from knowing that every single day you are empowering yourself in some way. At the end of the day ask yourself three questions: what have I learned today? What did I contribute or improve? What did I enjoy today? If every day you constantly improve yourself then you will experience level of richness that many people never even dream of.
Change can happen only in an instant. As soon as you learn anything, apply it immediately. If one is passionate enough then change can happen in this very instant as all the changes happen only in an instant. In neuro linguistic programming people are assisted in eliminating lifetime phobias in under one hour. Will power alone, by itself, is not enough if we want a lasting change. Neuro associative conditioning is a process that can condition the nervous system to associate pleasure to those things you want to continuously move toward and pain to those things you need to avoid in order to succeed consistently in your life without constant effort or will power. One more aspect to a lasting belief is that one adopts a proactive attitude and be responsible for our own actions. Things do not change but we do. If you stop indulging in a particular behavior or emotion long enough, if you interrupt your pattern of using the old pathway for a long enough period of time, the neural connection will weaken and atrophy. Thus disempowering emotional pattern or behavior disappears with it. Give your brain precise signals to change; your behavior pattern will began to change.

If you face some problem then ask yourself some problem solving questions e.g. what is great about this problem? What is not perfect yet? What am I willing to do to make it the way I want? What am I willing to no longer do in order to make it the way I want it? How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want?
Be willing to take control and learn to say no to certain things. Every morning when you wake up ask yourself certain questions that are mentioned below, because they are created to cause you to experience more happiness, excitement, pride, gratitude, joy, commitment and love everyday of your life. Remember quality questions create quality life.


1. What am I happy about in my life now?

2. What am I excited about in my life?

3. What am I proud about in my life?

4. What am I grateful about in my life now?

5. What am I enjoying the most in my life now?

6. What am I committed to in my life right now?

7. Who do I love? Who loves me?

THE EVENING POWER QUESTIONS

1. What have I given today?

2. What did I learn today?

3. How has today added to the quality of my life or how can I use today as an investment in my future?

Repeat the morning questions

Take some time to feel how fortunate you are. Take a moment to deeply experience the feeling of each one. If you really want to create a shift in your life then make this part of your everyday routine. By constantly asking yourself these questions you will find yourself more empowered. These questions are incredibly powerful questions but do not wait to get perfect answers, answer the question with the first emotional response, the gut-feeling but do not just ask questions, at some point stop evaluating and start doing.

“WE WILL EITHER FIND A WAY OR MAKE ONE”
- HANNIBAL

THE VOCABULARY OF ULTIMATE SUCEESS

Words make us laugh or cry…heal or wound. They can offer us hope or devastation. With words we can make our noblest intentions felt, our deepest intentions known. Words not only create emotions but they create action. Through the history the greatest leaders and thinkers have used the power of words to transfer our emotions, list their causes, change our destiny. When PATRICK HENRY stood before his delegates and proclaimed, “I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY TAKE, BUT AS FOR ME, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH” his words ignited a firestorm that unleashed our forefathers unbridled commitment to extinguish the tyranny that had suppressed them for long. With the words we choose, we determine the action of the generations to come.

WHEN IN COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS,IT BECOMES NECESSARY FOR PEOPLE TO DISSOLVE THE POLITICAL BANDS WHICH HAVE CONNECTED THEM WITH ANOTHER…

This simple declaration of independence, this assemblage of words became the vessel of change for a nation.

Certainly, the impact of words is not limited to the United States of America . During world war 2, when the very survival of Great Britain was in question, one man’s words helped to mobilize the will of English people. It was once said that Winston Churchill, had a unique ability to inspire his people, who in his famous call to all Britons to make this their “finest hour” resulted in courage beyond compare and crushed Hitler’s delusion about the invincibility of his war machine.


REALISE THE POWER THAT YOUR WORDS COMMAND IF YOU CHOOSE THEM WISELY.THE WORDS YOU HABITUALLY CHOOSE ALSO AFFECT HOW YOU COMMUNICATE WITH YOURSELF AND THEREFORE WHAT YOU EXPERIENCE.
















IDEAS


1. UNLIMITED POWER LIES ASLEEP WITHIN YOU.LET IT SLUMBER NO MORE:

Deep within man dwell slumbering powers; powers that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life, if aroused and put in action.

2. POWER OF CONCENTRATION:

The power of concentration is like a laser beam that can cut through anything that stands as an obstacle in your way.

3. DECISION MAKING:

The way to make good decisions is to make more of them and then evaluate as repetition is mother of all skill. Change strategy where ever change can yield better results. It is in the moments of your decisions that your destiny is shaped.


4. NO FAILURES IN LIFE:

There are no failures in life because in the ultimate reckoning no effort is ever wasted. Nobody succeeds every time. Abraham Lincoln met many setbacks but he ultimately rose to become the president of United States of America .

5. SECRET OF SUCCESS:

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of pain and pleasure use you .If you do that you are in control of your life, otherwise the life controls you.

6. BELIEFS:

The belief that becomes truth for me is that which allows me the best use of my strength, the best means of putting my virtues into my actions. All personal breakthroughs begin with change in beliefs.

7. CHANGE IS CREATED IN ONE MOMENT:

One creates problem in a moment , the solution is also created in a moment.We have to trust our ability to change dis empowering thoughts. One has to be the source of change.

8. POWER OF BRAIN:

Brain is capable of processing up to 30 billion bits of information per second .all it requires to work is a small amount of oxygen in blood and a little glucose.

9. HABITS:

The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread but every time we repeat the act, we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably through the act.

10. ASK YOURSELF THE RIGHT QUESTIONS:

Questions determine our thoughts and they have tremendous influence on us. When we evaluate it is just that we are just asking questions from ourselves.


INCIDENTS

1. Till 1954 people held the belief that it was impossible to run one mile in under four minutes but the belief changed when Roger Bannister broke this impossible belief barrier. He did it by creating his own belief.

2. Mahatma Gandhi believed he could gain autonomy for India without violently opposing Great Britain , something which had never been done before. He was not being unrealistic but he certainly proved to be accurate.

3. two women turn seventy years old , yet each takes a different meaning from an event. One assumes that her life is coming to an end .The other women decides that mountain climbing might be a good sport at her age. For the next twenty five years she devotes herself to this new adventure , scaling some of the highest peaks of the world. In her nineties Hulda Crooks becomes the oldest women to ascend Mount Fuji .

4. PATRICK HENRY stood before his delegates and proclaimed, “I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY TAKE, BUT AS FOR ME, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH” his words ignited a firestorm

5. Once Norman Cousins shared an experience, in a foot ball game in Monterey park , a Los Angeles suburb, several people experienced the symptoms of food poisoning. A doctor warned that no body should consume soft drinks from the dispensing machine. A few more people who had consumed drink from that machine fell ill but on subsequent examination of the drinks it was found that drinks were perfectly fit for human consumption. Every one who had gone ill miraculously recovered. So this story tells us about the ability of beliefs to influence us ,even if they are false.


COMMENT

Awaken the giant within is one of the most comprehensive book of knowing how the human mind works and what we can do to make positive changes in our life by simply understanding our thoughts and emotions. It is a manual that can use to figure out our life.
It is an eye opener into a different world,our inner world,which so seldom gets discovered. After reading this book one of the most important thing that we come to know is “WHY PEOPLE DO THE THINGS THEY DO”.
This book tells us about few principles which are not only simple but also effective in leaving a mark if applied skillfully.
1. Raise your standards
2. Change your limiting beliefs
3. Change your strategy