Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

“Yeah, but you’re just lowering your standards.” Nothing could be further from the truth! To adopt this
rule is to raise your standards. It means you’ll hold yourself to a higher standard of enjoying yourself
despite the conditions of the moment. It means you’ve committed to being intelligent enough, flexible
enough, and creative enough to direct your focus and evaluations in a way that allows you to experience
the true richness of life—maybe that’s the ultimate rule.
In the last chapter, you began to design for yourself a hierarchy of values to refine and define the direction
of your life. You need to understand that whether or not you feel like you’re achieving your values is
totally dependent upon your rules—your beliefs about what has to happen for you to feel successful or
happy or experiencing love. You can decide to make happiness a priority, but if your rule for happiness
is that everything must go just as you planned, I guarantee you’re not going to experience this value on
a consistent basis. Life is a variable event, so our rules must be organized in ways that allow us to adapt,
grow, and enjoy. It’s critical for us to understand these unconscious beliefs that control when we give
ourselves pain and when we give ourselves pleasure.
JUDGE AND JURY
We all have different rules and standards that govern not only the way we feel about the things that
happen in our lives, but how we’ll behave and respond to a given situation. Ultimately what we do and
who we become is dependent upon the direction that our values have taken us. But equally, or possibly
even more importantly, what will determine our emotions and behaviors is our beliefs about what is
good and what is bad, what we should do and what we must do. These precise standards and criteria
are what I’ve labeled rules.
Rules are the trigger for any pain or pleasure you feel in your nervous system at any moment. It’s as if we
have a miniature court system set up within our brains. Our personal rules are the ultimate judge and
jury. They determine whether or not a certain value is met, whether we’ll feel good or bad, whether we’ll
give ourselves pain or pleasure. If I were to ask you, for example, “Do you have a great body?,” how
would you respond? It would depend on whether you think you meet a certain set of criteria that you
believe constitutes having a great body.
Here’s another question: “Are you a great lover?” Your answer will be based upon your rules of what’s
required to be a great lover, the standards to which you hold yourself. If you told me, “Yes, I’m a great
lover,” I’d discover your rules by asking the key question, “How do you know you’re a great lover? What
has to happen in order for you to feel you’re a great lover?”
You might say something like, “I know I’m a great lover because when I make love with a person, they
usually say that it feels great.” Others might say, “I know I’m a great lover because my lover tells me so.”
Or “I know I’m a great lover because of the responses I get from my partner.” Others might say, “I know
I’m a great lover because I feel good when I’m making love.” (Doesn’t their partner’s response matter at
all? Hmmm.) Or your answer might just be, “Ask around!”
©2013 Robbins Research International. www.tonyrobbins.com 61