Anthony Robbins AWAKEN THE GIANT... - Lemma Coaching

With faith, you can cling to your vision in the face of seeming failure. What if Thomas Edison had given
up after his first failed attempt to make the electric light bulb? Or even after his hundredth attempt?
Luckily for all of us, he persisted beyond thousands of attempts. He could have taken each instance as
a reference to back up a belief that his invention was not feasible. Instead, he chose to use each failed
attempt as a reference for the belief that he was getting closer to the solution. Remember, don't drive
into the past using your rear-view mirror as a guide. You want to learn from your past, not live in it—
focus on the things that empower you.
READING IS FEEDING YOUR MIND
You are not even limited to your own personal experiences as references. You can borrow the
references of other people. Early in my life, I chose to focus on those who had made it, those who had
succeeded and contributed and were impacting people's lives in a major way. I did so by reading
biographies of successful people and learned that regardless of their background or conditions, when
they held on to their sense of certainty, and consistently contributed, success eventually came. I used
their references as my own, forming the core belief that I could truly shape my own destiny.
Do you remember my friend Captain Gerald Coffee who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for over
seven years? A good deal of that time was spent in solitary confinement. One of the things that
enabled him to preserve his sanity when the outside world gave him no references for joy was to turn
to his own rich internal world. As a child he had memorized various poems and stories, which he
repeated to himself to create a different "environment" from the one he had to endure day after day.
You don't have to go into solitary confinement to discover the beauty and power of cultivating a
bountiful treasure chest of memories and imagined references. How can you fill that chest? Explore the
wealth of literature, stories, myths, poetry, and music. Read books, view movies and videotapes, listen
to audiotapes, go to seminars, talk with people, and get new ideas. All references have power, and you
never know which one could change your entire life.
The power of reading a great book is that you start thinking like the author. For those magical
moments while you are immersed in the forests of Arden, you are William Shakespeare; while you are
shipwrecked on Treasure Island, you are Robert Louis Stevenson; while you are communing with
nature at Walden, you are Henry David Thoreau. You start to think like they think, feel like they feel,
and use imagination as they would. Their references become your own, and you carry these with you
long after you've turned the last page. That is the power of literature, of a good play, of music; that is
why we constantly want to expand our references.
I used to believe that going to see a play was a waste of time. Why? Because the only plays I had ever
attended were poorly acted, and their pace was painfully slow. But one day Becky and I decided to see
the musical Les Miserables. I have never seen, read, or heard anything that moved me so deeply.
Since then, I've become addicted to great theater, and each time we go to New York City, it's a
priority for us to catch a show.