Interrupt Your Patterns
I am currently reading Tony Robbins’ 1991 classic Awaken the Giant Within. If you are curious about what made this man so famous as documented in the Netflix special “I Am Not Your Guru”, this book and the one before it Unlimited Power help document his own brand of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which he had practiced with clients either one-on-one or in larger workshops.
Now if you’re immediately turned off by a motivational speaker with infinite energy like Tony and you want to delete this email, I ask you to notice that critical side of your mind activating and just stick with the email that I wrote for you below.
One thing that I would like to highlight today is that according to Tony’s method, change can happen a lot faster than you think. He calls this principle Change in An Instant.
The change is created by interrupting the patterns that you keep returning to. Sometimes they are simple dialogues and messages that you feed yourself about how you’re not good enough. Or if you keep returning to a painful memory when you know you’d rather return to your Most Creative Work.
That’s why Tony’s workshops often look like an evangelical Christian service where the minister is in the audience saving people. Because he did in fact come up with ways of getting people to break addictions and negative thought patterns. He admits the people that he worked with didn’t always change for life, but he gave them the tools to initiate the change.
The Pain and Pleasure Principle
At the core of this method is the idea that pain and pleasure govern all our decision making.
When we perceive a task such as practicing guitar to inflict pain on us, we will put off doing it. We will instead eat cheese puffs, which actually does bring us immediate pleasure.
Yet if you can visualize the pain of NOT doing the thing you’re looking to accomplish, then you are able to start to tap into what is possible when you stop trying to use your mind to figure everything out.
Because pain and pleasure happen on the cellular level, or in the nervous system. All change happens in the body. When you see book titles such as “Think and Grow Rich” or “As a Man Thinketh”, you might be misled if you take these phrases for face value.
Thinking is only the start of the process, such as when you decide that you no longer tolerate settling for scraps. Thinking is taking stock of what needs to get done and putting items on the to-do list. Yet implementing that change is not a thought-based process.
Where Does Change Happen?
Implementing the change happens in the body. It’s tapping into the feeling of wanting to get this work done, the unfinished album, the manuscript, the app concept.
Feeling the frustration of it just sitting inside of you like constipation. And getting fed up with this stagnant energy and deciding that you have a higher standard for yourself. You will tap into the feeling that doing your Most Creative Work will have not just on yourself, but on the world.
The irony of all this is that you’re reading and thinking right now, so I will stop writing so that you can take some time to consider how are the different ways that you try to think through problems, and how is that different from the times when you are engaged in your Most Creative Work and actually taking massive action?
Live Session: Tuesday, November 7th
@ 7 pm EST (New York/Havana)
Let’s get together and do our Most Creative Work together on Tuesday evening at 7pm EST. We will start with a bit of a prompt to get the juices flowing and then we’ll jump into a 55 minute work session.
It will all get followed up with some discussion about what’s coming up in our projects lately and see if we have ideas for each other to keep the momentum going.
The introductory pricing costs $18 USD, which is a price that I’m trying to keep close to what people pay to attend a fitness class.
Thanks for reading today!
Elliott
Inspiration On-Demand
Confident Enough on Camera (Course)
Keeping Your Projects Moving (Course)
This Book Will be a Failure (My first ebook)
The Most Creative Instagram (Prompts and Ideas in your feed)
Try Focusmate to actually get things done (referral link)