Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

found herself unable to stay attracted to any man for more than a month because no man was able to
anticipate her complex timetable.
What rules do you have that are equally unwinnable? For some people, in order to feel like they’re in
control in any context, they have to know what’s going to happen in advance of its occurrence. For
others, in order to feel like they’re confident in some area, they have to have experience in doing it. If
this were my rule for confidence, I couldn’t accomplish most of what I’ve done in my life! Most of my
success has come from my ability to get myself to feel certain I could achieve something, even though
I had no references for it. My rule for confidence is, “If I decide to be confident, then I’ll feel that way
toward anything, and my confidence will help me succeed.”
Competence is another interesting rule. Some people’s rule for competence is, “If I’ve done something
perfectly over a period of years, then I’m competent.” Other people’s rule is, “If I’ve done it effectively
once, then I’m competent.” And for others, competence is, “If I’ve done anything like it, then I know I
can master this as well, and therefore I’m competent.”
Do you see the impact these kinds of rules would have on your confidence, your happiness, your sense
of control, the quality of your actions, and your life?
SET UP THE GAME SO YOU CAN WIN
In the last chapter, we devoted a great deal of time to setting up values. But as I’ve already stated, if you
don’t make the rules achievable, you’ll never feel like those values are being met. When I first started
to develop my ideas on designing destiny, I had only the concept of values and not rules, so whether or
not a person felt like they were on track was completely arbitrary. The day I discovered rules, I began to
understand the source of pain and pleasure in our experience. I understood that rules are the triggering
device of human emotion, and began to evaluate how I could use rules more effectively.
As I’ve mentioned before, it quickly became clear to me that the majority of people are wired for pain.
Their rules make it very, very difficult to feel good, and very easy to feel bad. Let me give you a powerful
example. Here are the values of a woman we’ll call Laurie who attended one of my earliest Date With
Destiny seminars: love, health, security, freedom, success, acceptance, excellence, harmony, respect,
integrity, honesty, fun.
At first glance, these values look wonderful, don’t they? You would think that this person is probably
loving and healthy and freedom-oriented. With a closer look, though, we can already see a few
challenges. Laurie’s third value is security, and her fourth value is freedom. Do those two sound like they
go well together?
The reality was that this woman was wired for massive pain. She was frustrated in every sense of the
word, and was literally becoming a recluse, hiding out from people. No therapist she’d visited could
figure out why. They were all working on her behaviors, her fears, and her emotions, instead of looking
at the way her Master System of evaluating every event and experience of her life was wired.
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