How To Have A Better Quality Of Life & What Tony Robbins Is Really Like | My First Million Podcast

Shaan Puri

It's like Michael Jordan and then you go down to BJ Armstrong. It's like, "Oh..." So, I've tried a bunch of times [to talk] about Tony Robbins, how great he is and blah blah blah. I like him a lot. I got a lot of value out of going to his workshop, but it was...

Sam Parr

all with you and I bailed because it freaked me out

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and a lot of people get freaked out. A lot of people's preconception is just, "This is like a cult. This guy's a snake oil salesman or whatever." They think, "What am I getting myself into?" I gotta admit, when I went there, I was like, "Okay, cool. I'm going, but I'm not doing any of that dancing shit. I'm just here for the information. I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna be quiet. I'm not gonna yell, I'm not gonna hug, I'm not gonna dance." And you...

Sam Parr

friends sat separately so you wouldn't be embarrassed if you didn't

Shaan Puri

I went with my brother-in-law, and we just agreed beforehand, "Yo, we might end up doing the dancing stuff." So, you sit on that side of the room, and I'll sit on this side of the room. Let's see how it goes. We didn't see each other except for at the end of the night when the event would end each day, and we would get back together. By hour one, I'm dancing and doing all the good stuff too. It was a lot of value. You know, it cost me like $1,000 to go to this thing, and I thought it was tremendous. In the event, he upsells, just like this guy does, right? He's one of the first lifestyle coaches and business coaches out there. He’s been doing this for 40 years now. He went from audio tapes to books to infomercials, and now the internet. Whatever the channel was, he wrote it and was like, "I'm the business coach. I'm the lifestyle coach." I got a lot of value, and at one point, he upsells his Business Mastery class. He says, "Okay, if you like this, if you like how you're feeling right now..." Right after he makes you feel great, he points to a table and says, "That table over there is for anybody who wants to grow their business. It's $10,000. You spend 5 days with me, and if you don't get $1,000,000 of value from this thing, I will give you all your money back." In that moment, I was like, "Dude, I got $1,000,000 of value today. Of course, I would do that!" So, I didn't actually sign up for it, but our buddy Siiva did. I believe so. Sorry, Siiva, if I got that wrong, but I'm pretty sure he told me he did. I have several friends who actually did it as well, and they said, "Yeah, it's great." If you have a business that's worth tens of millions of dollars, if you can get a sort of 2%, 3%, or 5% lift...

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

In your business, just through improving your own psychology, your own enthusiasm, and your own tactics, it's obviously paid itself off, right?

Sam Parr

And so, how does the infrastructure of this work? Like, I'm looking at it now. Does Tony Robbins literally have to be at all the events?

Shaan Puri

No, so, well, he does his live events. Yes, he's the traveling salesman that does the live events. He probably does, I don't know, I'm going to get it wrong, but let's call it 20 to 40 live events a year.

Sam Parr

a lot that's hard work

Shaan Puri

A lot. You know, every week or two, he's somewhere. Then he has his sort of army of coaches that are trained under him. By the way, they all seem garbage. So he has this... you know, the people who are the actual coaches. I will call you and do all this other stuff with you. They are, you know, like there's a fleet of them. I don't know, a hundred people that just do the coaching thing.

Sam Parr

infrastructure is garbage those people are garbage

Shaan Puri

When I met them, I was not impressed. In fact, on the days... Tony Robbins has been doing this for 40 years. He’s been public speaking on stages, hyping crowds up for like 40 years, right? So he can't actually do two days back to back. He does Day 1 and goes from 8 a.m. till 1 a.m. There are no breaks. You can go to the bathroom, but you're missing the action when you go.

Sam Parr

and just talking the whole time

Shaan Puri

He's on stage, talking to an audience of 10,000 people. I've been twice now; actually, I've been three times, so I should correct that. The first time, I was just experiencing it. The second two times, I was observing it because I took a fleet of friends. I bought tickets for my family and friends, saying, "This is the best gift I can give you," and they loved it—most of them. Anyways, he holds people's attention for like 14 hours straight, which is incredible. You know, most people can't listen to a 6-minute YouTube video and have their attention held. But then, the second day, it's not him on stage because his vocal cords are shredded, so he can't speak. His number two comes up, and this guy's a good public speaker, but he's not like... it's like Michael Jordan, and then you go down to B.J. Armstrong, and it's like, "Oh no, I came here for Michael Jordan." So literally, this guy just says stuff, and then he tees up a video of Tony talking 10 years ago when he used to do this for all four days himself.

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

He queues up the video of Tony, and you sit there watching YouTube videos with 10,000 other people. This guy's just moderating it. It's like this bizarre experience.

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Shaan Puri

I didn't really sell it very well, but I'll tell you this: that was probably the best money I've ever spent on anything self-improvement-wise. If you add up all the books or anything else, it's not even close.

Sam Parr

maybe I should do it

Shaan Puri

You should totally do it! I took about 20 people, so I paid for 20 people's tickets to go since then.

Sam Parr

you paid 20 grand

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I basically became an affiliate for him. I didn't get paid; I just believed in it so much that I paid for 20 other people to go. Since then, it's been 4 years, and of those 20 people, I would say 4 were like me. They were like, "Holy shit, life changed! That was the most valuable thing." So, 4 out of 20, let's say. Then another, let's call it 15, were kind of like, "That was amazing." But when I talked to them a year later, they were disappointed in themselves for not carrying it forward. They said, "God, it was so good! I had so much clarity and so much energy, but I'm kind of mad at myself. I just let it fade from there. I don't even really remember it now; I just remember what I felt then." Yeah, I guess I didn't really get too much value because I'm not doing any of the things I wanted to do after that weekend. Then there are 3 or 4 people who literally left. They were like, "This is way too culty. This is pop science. I don't like this. I don't believe this. I don't like how he's manipulating everybody. I'm out." And I was like, "Okay, that's the spectrum."

Sam Parr

anyone I know

Shaan Puri

Alex, the founder of Calm, hated it. So, he just went for a bike ride, I think in the middle of one of the days, because he was like, "It's just too much for me." He said, "I didn't feel good about what was going on." So, I left and rode my bike around the city. I had fun doing that. And then what?

Sam Parr

what was the number one takeaway

Shaan Puri

For me, oh dude, I have a notepad full that I call "the Bible" because I was like, this is the closest thing that I have to religion, right? It's like religion in many ways. Oh.

Sam Parr

my god

Shaan Puri

Real religion is like an operating philosophy for life, right? That's what people use religion for in many ways. You know, "Don't harm your neighbor," blah blah blah. It's an operating philosophy. So, I'll give you two of the nuggets. The first one is: **The quality of your life is equal to the quality of the emotions you have on a day-to-day basis.** What does that mean? It's kind of a mouthful, but like, we're both in a good position. We're very privileged. We're more successful than we ever thought we would be. Seven years ago, the position we're in now would have made the seven-year-ago us envious. But your happiness is not ten times more than it was seven years ago, right? You're probably feeling about the same. The reason why is that life is not about what you have and what you've achieved; it's about who you've become. What most people miss is that it doesn't matter if you're rich, if you have a family, or if you're famous. If the emotions you're feeling on a daily basis are stress, then you have a **shitty quality of life**. If you're feeling anger or upset, then you have a **shitty quality of life**, regardless of everything else. So then the question is: **How do you figure out how to change your emotions on a day-to-day basis so you're feeling good every day, regardless of your situation?**

Sam Parr

what was the answer

Shaan Puri

So, he gives you three tools. He's like, "Alright, here are the three ways you can change how you feel." The very first thing is that your body is physical. If you have a radical change in your physiology—he calls it that—this basically means if you do a bunch of push-ups, if you exercise, if you run, or if you jump into a cold pool. This is also why people like taking hot showers; it helps them relax. The fastest way to change how you feel is to physically change your body. In fact, Emmett, who's the CEO of Twitch, was telling me this the other day. He was kind of talking about this on Twitter. People have panic attacks, and when you have a panic attack, it's a really uncomfortable feeling. Most people with panic attacks...

Sam Parr

I don't

Shaan Puri

really want a solution of like how do I not get these

Sam Parr

I take medicine

Shaan Puri

And so, some people take medicine, and that's one way to change your physiology—chemically changing your physiology. What most people try to do is help others think their way out of it. They're like, "Oh, just don't be so anxious, and you need to just relax," as if that can help. If it was that easy, we would all do it. Actually, what science has shown is that the fastest, most effective, kind of quick and dirty way to stop a panic attack is to plunge your face into really cold water. If you do that right at the start of a panic attack, it will stop it because your fight or flight will kick in, and it'll override that.

Sam Parr

One time, I accidentally ate brownies that my roommate made, and they turned out to be **edible brownies**. I don't smoke weed, and I hate weed so much; I don't do any of that. I ate a lot of brownies, and I was like, "James, I'm flipping out!" He goes, "Yeah, I'm sorry, those were weed brownies." I started having a panic attack, and I went and got in a cold shower. That was the only thing that helped.

Shaan Puri

Oh nice, okay. Yeah, so the fastest way to change the way you feel is through your body, either through heat, cold, or getting your heart rate up by exercising. It doesn't have to be like going to the gym; it can be as simple as doing 10 jumping jacks. You will feel different than you did right before that. The second one is focus. So, what are you going to focus on? Where you place your focus is going to determine what your brain is signaling to your body about how to feel. If you're focused on pain, then you're going to feel bad. If you're focused on how somebody did you wrong or how this guy cut you off in traffic, you're going to get outraged. But if you focus on things you're grateful for, things that are going well, or things that you can trust and rely on, you'll feel different. Then the last one is language. It's either language or story, which basically refers to the words you use and the story you tell yourself. The big idea, and I recommend this to anybody who's in business, is that the quality of your results is linked to the quality of your decisions. The quality of your decisions is linked to the quality of the internal monologue you have. So, the conversation you have with yourself ends up dictating the decisions you make, which in turn dictates the results you get. That's kind of what I pulled away from the whole thing, and then it's all a bunch of strategies to do that better.

Sam Parr

I think you just saved me $1,000

Shaan Puri

well you gotta get up and dance otherwise it doesn't stick

Sam Parr

this is awesome I like learning about this

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I always hesitate to talk about it because it's kind of preachy. But I believe that it doesn't help some people.

Sam Parr

It's never preachy when you can make fun of it. So, you do a good job of making fun of something and then you explain what it is. That's never preachy.

Shaan Puri

sounds good