Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

the ends you’re after—are love, security, and happiness. Similarly, with money, I could ask you, “What
does money really mean to you? What does it give you?” You might say, “Freedom, impact, the ability to
contribute, a sense of security.” Again, you see, money is merely a means to achieving a much deeper
set of values, a set of emotions that you desire to experience on a consistent basis in your life.
The challenge in life is that most people are not clear on the difference between means and ends values,
and therefore, they experience a lot of pain. So often people are too busy pursuing means values that
they don’t achieve their true desire: their ends values. The ends values are those that will fulfill you,
make your life rich and rewarding. One of the biggest challenges I see is that people keep setting goals
without knowing what they truly value in life, and therefore they end up achieving their goals and
saying, “Is this all there is?”
For example, let’s say a woman’s highest values are caring and contribution, and she chooses to
become an attorney because she once met a lawyer who really impressed her as being able to make a
difference and help people through his work. As time goes by, she gets caught up in the whirlwind of
practicing law, and aspires to become a partner in her firm. As she pursues this position, her work takes
on an entirely different focus. She begins to dominate and run the firm, and becomes one of the most
successful women she knows, yet she feels unhappy because she no longer has any contact with clients.
Her position has created a different relationship with her peers, and she spends all her time in meetings
ironing out protocol and procedure. She achieved her goal, but missed out on her life’s desire. Have
you ever fallen into this trap of pursuing the means as if they were the end you were after? In order to be
truly happy, we must know the difference, and be sure to pursue the end itself.
MOVING-TOWARD VALUES
While it’s absolutely true that you and I are constantly motivated to move toward pleasurable emotional
states, it’s also true that we value some emotions more than others. For example, what are the emotional
states that you value most in life? What are the emotions that you think will give you the most pleasure?
Love or success? Freedom or intimacy? Adventure or security?
I call these pleasurable states that we value most moving-toward values because these are the emotional
states we’ll do the most to attain. What are some of the feelings that are most important for you to
experience in your life on a consistent basis? When asked this question at seminars, my audiences
invariably respond with words like: love, success, freedom, intimacy, security, adventure, power,
passion, comfort, health. It’s certainly true that you probably value all of these emotions, and that
they’re all important for you to feel. But wouldn’t it be fair to say that you don’t value them all equally?
Obviously there are some emotional states that you’ll do more to achieve than others. In truth, we
all have a hierarchy of values. Each person who looks at this list will see some emotional states as
being more important to them than others. The hierarchy of your values is controlling the way you
make decisions in each moment. Some people value comfort over passion, or freedom over security, or
intimacy over success.
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