Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek) did an interesting interview with Tony Robbins (author of Awaken the Giant Within) on his podcast. They covered a range of topics, but we’re going to focus on the part where Robbins explains what attitude and way of thinking we should use to master a built-in flaw in our brain, and so suffer less over the things that sometimes cause us pain or worry.
As Robbins puts it, the human brain isn’t designed to make us happy and fulfilled. It’s designed for survival.
That’s why, according to Robbins, this organ is always searching for what’s wrong, for the dangers (real or imaginary) that could hurt us, so that we can fight and/or run away.
If we leave this old survival software running the program, what chance do we have of enjoying life? That’s the question Robbins asks.
A mind without direction naturally operates in “survival mode”, so it will constantly be spotting and magnifying those potential threats to our wellbeing. The result of letting this “software” run is a life full of stress and anxiety.
Yet most people live this way because, even though it isn’t the best path to follow, it’s the path of least resistance.
According to Robbins, these people make unconscious decisions based on habit and conditioning, and they are at the mercy of their own minds, minds that are running the wrong or outdated software. They assume that feeling frustrated, sad, angry or stressed is an inevitable part of life, and so they unconsciously decide to live in a state of suffering.
But there’s another path we can follow, Robbins says, and it consists of directing your thoughts: rewriting that software or updating it.
Before going any further, let’s look at the difference between these two emotional and mental states to understand how they work.
1. The beautiful state
When you love and are loved, when you feel joy, gratitude, wonder, creativity, growth, curiosity, appreciation and so on, we could say you’re in a beautiful state. And in this state you always know what to do, and you do the right thing. You feel alive and full of energy, and the best version of yourself comes out.
It’s not that all threats and dangers have disappeared in this state. They’re still there, but you don’t see them as serious problems. In this state, you’re in harmony with your true essence.
2. The suffering state
When you feel stressed, sad, worried, frustrated, angry, depressed, irritable, resentful, fearful and so on, you’re in a state of suffering. We’ve all experienced these kinds of negative emotions at some point in our lives, or at hundreds of points. Without exception.
These states of suffering, or negative emotions, can drain your energy completely. If a negative pattern or emotion persists for a long time, it can lead to depression.
In most cases, a state of suffering is the result of a mind without direction, whose software is on autopilot looking for problems.
(See: 5 rituals to reverse depression and boost your happiness, according to neuroscience)
This is how Tony Robbins explains it.
Think for a moment of a recent situation that caused you pain or suffering: a moment when you felt frustrated, angry, worried or overwhelmed. Every time you feel emotions like these, he says, your sense of suffering is caused by your mind steering you towards one or more of three particular patterns of perception. Consciously or unconsciously, you’re focusing on at least one of these three triggers of suffering:
1. The suffering of loss
When you focus on loss, you convince yourself that a particular problem has caused you to lose something you value.
For example, if you have a conflict, a problem or an argument with your partner, you may come to feel that you’ve lost their love or respect. Other people don’t always have to be involved, though. In many cases it isn’t about something someone did or didn’t do: this sense of loss can be triggered by something we did or failed to do.
For example, you spent too long thinking and missed an incredible business opportunity, or you made a bad investment and lost money.
Clearly these things can cause suffering that is “earned”, but that is no longer necessary, because there’s no going back.
2. The suffering of being or having less
Many people will recognise themselves in this one: when you focus on the idea that you have less than others, or that you’re going to have less, it causes suffering, and often the complaining starts too.
You may think, or be convinced, that because of your background or a particular situation you’re going to have less success, less money, less joy or some other painful consequence.
And here our brain works “magic”, because it’s capable of finding 100,000 culprits to explain why we’re going to be less, without ever pointing the finger of blame at the one who’s really responsible: ourselves.
3. The suffering of never
This is when you focus on the idea, or are consumed by the belief, that you’ll never have something you value, such as love, joy, respect, wealth or opportunities. If you focus on “I’ll never be”, you’re doomed to suffer, because if you believe that you’ll never be happy and that you’ll never be the person you want to be, both scenarios will come true. And this pattern of perception is a sure route to pain.
Your mind is always trying to fool you
You’ll understand this perfectly. When your partner leaves you, your mind tells you you’ll never get over it. In fact, you feel as if the world has already ended for you. You can’t see beyond that loss, that “less” and that “I’ll never be happy again” because my partner has left me.
Fortunately, apart from a few suffering fanatics and lovers of obsession, most people discover over time that life goes on, that the suffering passes, and that there are other partners out there. And the same thing happens when you’re fired from your job or your business goes bust.
See also: How to get over a broken heart in 72 hours
In all three patterns Robbins has shown us, the truth is that it doesn’t matter whether the problem making us suffer is real or not, because our mind is going to make it real.
He asks whether you’ve ever had the experience of thinking that someone (a friend, a colleague, your partner) did something wrong, quickly feeling incredibly upset and angry, only to discover that you were completely mistaken and the other person didn’t deserve the lecture you gave them.
In the middle of a state of suffering, when negative emotions take control of your mind, reality doesn’t matter much. Your focus on life and happiness is created by your feelings, and our feelings are often created by our focus.
Put more simply: suffering is caused by our focus. Even more simply: we’re choosing to suffer when we obsess over what we’ve lost or might lose, over what we’ll always have less of, or over what we’ll never have.
So what can you do to stop suffering?
Once we know how these patterns of emotions, feelings and focus work, we can change them systematically and free ourselves from these habits of suffering.
It all starts with understanding that it’s a conscious choice: you can choose to suffer or you can choose to be happy. It’s all about mastering your mind and its states.
Suffering goes away when we give our decisions more power
In Robbins’s view, our lives are determined not by our conditions but by our decisions.
If you look back over the last five or ten years, we’d bet you can remember one or more decisions you made that changed your life (for better or for worse). Maybe it was choosing one job over another, one university degree over another, getting married, or snorting that white powder you now can’t stop taking. They’re decisions with positive or negative consequences.
What would have happened if you’d made a different decision? Your life would probably have changed radically. It might have been better or it might not have been so good, but there would have been some change. Well, when we make decisions, changes happen. In other words, we steer our lives according to the decisions we make.
(See: Smart, happy people take these risks in life)
What’s the most important decision you can make in your life right now?
Tony Robbins says the most important decision you can make in your life is this one:
Are you committed to being happy no matter what happens?
In other words, you’ll have to commit to enjoying life and being happy not only when everything is going well, but also when everything seems to be against you, when you suffer injustices or when you suffer losses of some kind.
For Robbins, making the conscious decision I’m done with suffering and I’m going to be happy no matter what is the ultimate decision for reformatting our brain’s outdated software. It’s the way to override the mind that fights for survival and makes us suffer whenever our wishes or expectations aren’t met.
And Tony concludes that this is the only way to decide that you are 100% responsible for your mood and your experience in this life, because life is too short to suffer.
But personally, I have to add something more…
If we left the article there, it could be twisted in all sorts of ways and come across as conformism (being happy with what I have instead of fighting for what I want).
That’s not what it’s about. As you know, around here we firmly believe that you have to fight for what you want. In other words, don’t suffer because you have less than your neighbour, and don’t compare yourself with your neighbour, but fight for what you want to achieve.
If you fail in your quest, that’s part of the game. Don’t suffer, and keep going after what you want. Remember that while you’re constantly fighting to achieve your goals, there’s no room for frustration, and your mind will be active and proactive.
So control your emotions, control your state of happiness and control the decisions you’re going to make to change your life.
See also: 4 people who overcame their “limitations”
Featured image: Charles Le Brun, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
