Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

LESSONS IN PAIN
Just as there are emotions we desire to experience because they’re pleasurable, and that’s why we’re
always moving toward them, we also have a list of emotions that we’ll do almost anything to move
away from. Very early in my career, when I was just beginning to build my first company, I experienced
tremendous frustration in being on the road and trying to run my business simultaneously. At one point,
it appeared that a person representing me had not been completely honest. When you deal, as I have,
with hundreds of thousands of people, and literally thousands of business arrangements, the law of
averages says that a few will attempt to take advantage of you. Unfortunately, these are the ones that
tend to stick out in our minds rather than the hundreds or even thousands of business relationships that
have far surpassed our expectations.
As a result of one such painful situation, I sought out a new CEO, a man who I thought could really run my
company. Armed with my new tool of being able to elicit someone’s values, I asked each of the potential
candidates, “What’s most important to you in your life?” Some of them said things like “success” or
“accomplishment” or “being the best.” But one man used the magic word. He said, “Honesty.”
I didn’t just take him at his word; I checked him out with several people he’d worked with. They
confirmed that he was “honest as the day was long” and that, in fact, at times he had set aside his own
needs if there was any question of integrity. I thought, “This is the kind of man I want representing me.”
And he did a fine job. Soon, though, it became clear that we needed an additional associate in order to
really run my rapidly expanding business: someone who had additional skills. My CEO recommended
someone he thought could become his partner, and they could jointly run my organization. This
sounded great to me.
I met this man, whom I’ll call Mr. Smith (names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent), and
he did a fabulous presentation, demonstrating for me how he could use all the skills he’d developed
throughout the years to take my company to the next level. He could free up my time, and allow me to
do even larger seminars and impact even more people without having to live on the road. At the time, I
was spending almost 150 days a year away from home, conducting my seminars. In addition, he didn’t
want to be paid until he’d produced the result! It sounded almost too good to be true. I agreed to the
arrangement. Mr. Smith and my honest CEO would run my company.
A year and a half later, I woke up and discovered that it was too good to be true. Yes, my seminars had
gotten bigger, but now I was on the road almost 270 days a year. My skill and impact had grown, I’d
helped more people than ever before, but suddenly I was informed that I was $758,000 in debt after
I’d given more than I ever had in my entire lifetime. How could this possibly be? Well, management is
everything, both within companies and within ourselves. And I clearly did not have the right managers.
But worse, Mr. Smith had over this eighteen-month period of time misappropriated more than a quarter
of a million dollars from our coffers. He had a new house, a new car— I had assumed he’d gotten
them from his other businesses. Boy, was I in for a surprise! To say that I was angry or devastated by this
experience would certainly be using Transformational Vocabulary to lower the intensity of my feelings.
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