Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Walter was part of our family. We trusted him implicitly.
At the beginning of the Vietnam War, he reported on it in the standard way, with an objective view of
our involvement, but after visiting Vietnam his view of the war changed, and his values of integrity and
honesty required that, rightly or wrongly, he communicate his disillusionment. Regardless of whether
you agreed with him or not, the impact he had may have been one of the final straws that caused
many in Middle America to begin to question the war for the first time. Now it wasn’t just a few radical
students protesting Vietnam, but “Uncle Walt.”
The conflict in Vietnam was truly a values conflict within our culture. People’s perception of what was
right and wrong, what could make a difference, was the battle fought at home while the boys overseas put
their blood and guts on the line, some not knowing why. An inconsistency of values among our leaders
has been one of the greatest sources of pain in our culture. Watergate certainly wounded many Americans.
Yet, through it all, our country has continued to grow and expand because there are individuals who
continually come forth to demonstrate what’s possible and hold us to a higher standard— whether it’s Bob
Geldof focusing the attention of the world on the famine in Africa or the late Ed Roberts mobilizing the
political forces necessary to change the quality of life for the physically challenged.
We need to realize that the direction of our lives is controlled by the magnetic pull of our values. They
are the force in front of us, consistently leading us to make decisions that create the direction and
ultimate destination of our lives. This is true, not only for us as individuals, but also for the companies,
organizations, and the nation of which we’re a part. Clearly, the values that our Founding Fathers
held most dear have shaped our nation’s destiny: The values of freedom, choice, equality, a sense of
community, hard work, individuality, challenge, competition, prosperity, and respect for those who have
the strength to overcome great adversity have consistently sculpted the experience of American life and
thus our joint destinies. These values have caused us to be an ever-expanding country that innovates and
continually provides a vision of possibility for people the world over.
Would a different set of national and cultural values have shaped our country differently? You bet! What
if the value held most important by our forefathers was stability? Or conformity? How would that have
changed the face of our great land? In China, for example, one of the highest values in the culture is the
value of the group versus that of the individual, the idea that an individual’s needs must be subservient
to the group’s. How has this shaped Chinese life differently than American life? The fact is, within our
own nation there are constant shifts going on within the values of the culture as a whole. While there are
certain foundational values, significant emotional events can create shifts in individuals and therefore
in the companies, organizations, and countries that they make up. Remember the changes in Eastern
Europe? They are clearly among the most profound value shifts that have occurred in the world
community in our lifetimes.
What happens with countries and individuals also happens with companies. IBM is an example of
a corporation whose direction and destiny was set up by its founder, Tom Watson. How? He clearly
defined what the company stood for, what would be most important for all people to experience
regardless of what products, services, or financial climates they would enter in the future. He guided
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