Re-awaken The Giant Within - Book Review

Re-awaken the giant within is a self help book by Motivational speaker Anthony Robbins. In the foreword to this book, Tony Robbins recounts his low days in life and contrasts it with the high days, 12 years after he decided to change his own life. He says, he harnessed a principle called the concentration of power. When we focus all our resources in mastering a single area of our life, when we concentrate our power, nothing is impossible. We can then create dramatic changes and improve our life.

Some quotes that I liked from this book:

Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year—and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!

Whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by some better decisions upstream.

Live your life intentionally instead of going with the flow

Most powerful way to shape our lives is to get ourselves to take action

Emotion is created by motion

In your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped

Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear

As per the Author, for any lasting personal change, the following is needed:

1.            Raise your standards - Demand more from yourself by setting tough goals.

2.            Change your limiting beliefs and your belief systems.

3.            Change your strategy. Ex. Find a role model who is doing what you want. Follow them.

Many people know what to do. Few do what they know. The key is to take action!

Master the following 5 areas of life for lasting changes:

1.   Emotional:    Master your emotions to achieve your highest potential

2.   Physical:       Take control of your physical health so that you look and feel good;

3.   Relationship: Create quality relationships — first with yourself, then with others

4.    Financial:     Create financial abundance.

5.    Time:           Make time your ally

DECISIONS - THE PATHWAY TO POWER

Three decisions that you make every moment of your life control your destiny.

1.            Your decisions about what to focus on.

2.            Your decisions about what things mean to you.

3.            Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire.

A story from Anthony Robbin’s life:

I became an excellent public speaker because, rather than once a week, I booked myself to speak three times a day to anyone who would listen. While others in my organization had forty-eight speaking engagements a year, I would have a similar number within two weeks. Within a month, I’d have two years of experience. And within a year, I’d have a decade’s worth of growth. My associates talked about how “lucky” I was to have been born with such an “innate” talent. I tried to tell them what I’m telling you now: mastery takes as long as you want it to take. By the way, were all of my speeches great? Far from it! But I did make sure that I learned from every experience and that I somehow improved until very soon I could enter a room of any size and be able to reach people from virtually all walks of life.

LIFE’S MOST IMPORTANT LESSON

The most important lesson we learn in life is what creates pain for us and what creates pleasure. This lesson is different for each of us and, therefore, so is our behaviors. In order for a change to last, we must link pain to our old behavior and pleasure to our new behavior, and condition it until it’s consistent. The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors. What you link pain and pleasure to will shape your destiny.

BELIEF SYSTEMS: THE POWER TO CREATE AND DESTROY

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.

Two women turn seventy years old, yet each takes a different meaning from the event. One “knows” that her life is coming to an end. To her, seven decades of living mean that her body must be breaking down and she’d better start winding up her affairs. The other woman decides that what a person is capable of at any age depends upon her belief, and sets a higher standard for herself. She decides that mountain climbing might be a good sport to begin at the age of seventy. For the next twenty-five years she devotes herself to this new adventure in mastery, scaling some of the highest peaks in the world, until, in her nineties, Hulda Crooks becomes the oldest woman to ascend Mount Fuji

THE TEN EMOTIONS OF POWER

These are, as per Tony Robbins, the good emotions that one needs to cultivate to lead a successful life!

• ·         Love & Warmth
• ·         Appreciation & Gratitude
• ·         Curiosity
• ·         Excitement & Passion
• ·         Determination
• ·         Flexibility
• ·         Confidence
• ·         Cheerfulness
• ·         Vitality
• ·         Contribution - The secret to living is giving

Various Challenges and exercises available in the book:

• ·         CHALLENGE: WHO AM I?
• ·         CHALLENGE: THE TEN-DAY MENTAL CHALLENGE
• ·         EMOTIONAL DESTINY EXERCISE
• ·         RELATIONSHIP DESTINY EXERCISE
• ·         MASTER YOUR TIME & LIFE EXERCISE

I felt that this book would be useful to folks who have already read and understood Tony Robbin’s philosophy. Although there is nothing new that he prescribes, I felt he has a way of presenting that is powerful and unique. There were some quotes that I really liked in this book. The book is also filled with exercises that are easy and fun to do. However I am not quite impressed with the manner this particular book it structured. I felt it could have been more cohesive. In some ways, there is too much material and information cramped in too less pages. It definitely needs more elaboration. Hence, I felt the focus missing.