Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

e constant is our sense of identity. If we begin to question who we are, then there is no foundation for
all of the understandings upon which we’ve built our lives.
If you don’t know who you are, then how can you decide what to do? How can you formulate values,
adopt beliefs, or establish rules? How can you judge whether something is good, bad, or indifferent? The
biggest challenge for someone who perceives his identity as a drug addict is: What does he change his
identity to? To a “recovering drug addict”? This doesn’t change his identity; it merely describes the state
he’s in currently. “Drug-free” doesn’t do it either, because most see it as a temporary state—and it still
focuses on drugs as one of the ways of defining oneself. When this person develops the conviction that
he is absolutely clean, that he’s now a “Christian,” “Muslim,” “Jew,” or “Buddhist,” or now that he’s a
“leader”—or anything else other than a “drug addict”—that’s when his behavior changes. As we develop
new beliefs about who we are, our behavior will change to support the new identity.
The same thing happens with a person who has excess weight whose identity is, “I’m a fat person.”
This individual may diet and lose weight in the short term, but he will always gain it back because his
sense of certainty about who he is will guide all his behaviors until they are once again consistent with
his identity. We all must maintain the integrity of our convictions of who we are, even when they are
destructive and disempowering.
The only way to create lasting change for an individual who’s been using drugs is to change his
conviction from “I am a drug addict” to “I’m a health nut” or “I’m a living example that no problem is
permanent.” Whatever the new identity, it must be one that would never even consider the use of drugs.
If drugs are offered again, his immediate response is not to evaluate whether he should use them or not,
but to simply state with absolute certainty, “I’m not that kind of person. That’s who I used to be.”
Those with excess weight must transform their identity from a fat person to a vital, healthy, and athletic
human being. This identity change will shift all their behaviors, from their diet to their exercise, and
allow them to create the long-term physiological changes that are consistent with their new identity.
This shift may sound like it’s merely a semantic manipulation, but in truth it is a much deeper and more
profound transformation of personal reality.
In fact, one shift in identity can cause a shift of your entire Master System. Think about it. Doesn’t a
drug addict have a completely different system of evaluation—the states he consistently experiences, the
questions he asks, the values that guide his actions, and the references he organizes into beliefs—than
does someone who considers himself to be a leader, a lover, an athlete, or a contributor? While it’s true
that not all identity shifts are as complete as others, some are indeed so far-reaching that one Master
System is literally replaced in a moment by another. If you’ve repeatedly attempted to make a particular
change in your life, only to continually fall short, invariably the challenge is that you were trying to
create a behavioral or emotional shift that was inconsistent with your belief about who you are. Shifting,
changing, or expanding identity can produce the most profound and rapid improvements in the quality
of your life.
©2013 Robbins Research International. www.tonyrobbins.com 74