It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

The past does not equal the future.

If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in your life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve.

Your emotional state is the most important factor influencing performance. The ability to access empowering states at will is the master skill of achievement.Keys to state management:<ul><li>Recognize that states are primarily physiological, not just mental</li><li>Develop specific anchors that trigger resourceful states</li><li>Create rituals that consistently produce desired states</li><li>Practice daily, not just during crises</li><li>Interrupt negative states before they gain momentum</li></ul>The person with the most flexibility in accessing different states will control any situation.

State Management

Your emotional state is produced by three interrelated patterns:<ol><li>Physiology: How you use your body (posture, breathing, movement)</li><li>Focus: What you pay attention to</li><li>Language: How you speak to yourself and others</li></ol>Change any element for instant state control. Physiology is often most powerful—emotion is created by motion.

The Triad of Influence

Your personal standards define what you're willing to accept in life. Unlike goals, which you may achieve or not, standards are lines you refuse to fall below.People who achieve lasting change:<ul><li>Raise their standards (what they demand of themselves)</li><li>Change limiting beliefs (what they think possible)</li><li>Shift strategies (their approach to results)</li></ul>Most people focus only on strategies while maintaining low standards and limiting beliefs, explaining why most change attempts fail. When standards rise, the how-to often resolves through newfound commitment.

Personal Standards

The Purpose Formula transforms any experience—even suffering—into meaningful contribution:
<ol>
<li>Capture the experience fully (embrace rather than avoid it)</li>
<li>Appreciate what it's taught you</li>
<li>Share the lessons to help others</li>
</ol>
This formula works because:
<ul>
<li>Purpose is created, not discovered</li>
<li>The need to contribute beyond ourselves is fundamental to human fulfillment</li>
<li>Meaning transforms suffering from something to escape into something valuable</li>
<li>Sharing your experience helps others while healing yourself</li>
</ul>
This approach doesn't suggest suffering is good—rather, it provides a way to transform inevitable pain into something that serves a greater purpose.

The Purpose Formula

The words you habitually use directly shape your emotional experience. By selecting empowering vocabulary, you instantly transform your state and perception of challenges.
Practical shifts:
<ul>
<li>Replace I'm overwhelmed with I'm fully engaged</li>
<li>Transform I'm angry to I'm disenchanted</li>
<li>Shift from I'm afraid to I'm experiencing concern</li>
<li>Change failure to learning opportunity</li>
</ul>
Your language pattern creates a neurological filter for experiencing reality. Words that diminish negative emotions and amplify positive ones give immediate control over your psychology.

The Vocabulary of Success

Decisions, not conditions, determine destiny. Three decisions shape your life:
<ul>
<li>What to focus on</li>
<li>What things mean</li>
<li>What to do</li>
</ul>
True decisions cut off all alternatives, include total commitment, and require immediate action. A genuine decision creates immediate behavioral change, not just intentions.

The Decision Point

Beliefs are the guiding force behind all human behavior and achievement. They function as self-fulfilling prophecies.
Beliefs create results through a four-step process:
<ol>
<li>Belief: What you're absolutely certain about</li>
<li>Potential: What you're willing to consider</li>
<li>Actions: What you're willing to do</li>
<li>Results: The outcome of your actions</li>
</ol>
Limiting beliefs create artificial boundaries that feel real but exist only in your mind. To change beliefs:
<ul>
<li>Identify disempowering beliefs</li>
<li>Find counter-evidence that challenges them</li>
<li>Create new, empowering alternatives</li>
</ul>

The Science of Belief

All human behavior follows the Pain-Pleasure Principle—we act to gain pleasure or avoid pain. What controls behavior is not actual feelings but what we anticipate will lead to those feelings.Key distinctions for lasting change:<ul><li>Short-term vs. long-term consequences (most prioritize immediate feelings)</li><li>Unconscious vs. conscious associations (most decisions happen unconsciously)</li><li>External vs. internal motivation (internal creates lasting change)</li></ul>By consciously linking pain to unwanted behaviors and pleasure to desired actions, you transform patterns without willpower.

The Pain-Pleasure Principle

Your rules are invisible standards determining when you feel pain or pleasure. Most people create rules making happiness rare and suffering common.Two critical types:<ul><li>Pain rules: What triggers bad feelings</li><li>Pleasure rules: What triggers good feelings</li></ul>Key transformations:<ul><li>Create happiness rules that are easy to meet (within your control)</li><li>Create suffering rules that are difficult to meet (require many conditions)</li><li>Recognize and rewrite invisible rules you've unconsciously adopted</li></ul>

Rules Revolution

Transformation Vocabulary changes emotional intensity instantly. Choose words that intensify or diminish feelings to control your emotional life.Implementation:<ul><li>Replace negative emotion words with milder alternatives</li><li>Choose words that amplify positive emotions</li><li>Be consistent until automatic</li><li>Use even when it feels inauthentic</li></ul>Words aren't just descriptions but instructions to your nervous system—they neurologically change your state by interrupting established patterns.

The Transformation Vocabulary

Your Values Hierarchy determines every decision you make. Not just what you value, but their order shapes your life direction and decisions under pressure.Key insights:<ul><li>Most people never consciously identify their values</li><li>Conflicts between people often stem from different value hierarchies</li><li>Internal conflicts occur when values compete (security vs. adventure)</li><li>Moving toward values creates different results than moving away from their opposite</li></ul>By consciously reorganizing your values hierarchy, you immediately change decision patterns and resolve seemingly impossible conflicts.

Value Hierarchies

Your brain automatically answers any question you ask it. The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life. Questions direct focus, and whatever you focus on, you feel.Disempowering questions create disempowering states:<ul><li>Why can't I ever succeed?</li><li>Why don't people like me?</li></ul>Empowering questions create resourceful states:<ul><li>What can I learn from this?</li><li>How can I use this?</li></ul>By consciously choosing better questions during challenges, you immediately shift your emotional state and access more resourceful parts of yourself.

Questions Drive Focus

Look, we've all felt stuck at some point, right? This powerhouse book shows how your daily decisions—not conditions—determine your future. Tony delivers a no-BS system for taking control of your emotions, body, relationships, and finances through small choices that compound into massive life changes. It's like having a peak performance coach in your pocket, pushing you to live with passion instead of on autopilot.

‘Tony’s incredible understanding of the world, people and human nature make him the ultimate like coach. He knows what it takes to make people excel… and win!’  – Andre Agassi ‘Robbins is a mass of walking energy and passion.’ – Time Out Are you in charge of your life? Or are you being swept away by things that are seemingly out of your control? In AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN, Anthony Robbins, the bestselling author of UNLIMITED POWER, shows the reader how to take immediate control of their mental, emotional, physical and financial destiny. Further praise for Tony Robbins:- ‘A fascinating, intriguing presentation of cutting-edge findings and insights…  including the growing consciousness that true success is anchored in enduring values and service to other.’  – Stephen R. Covey, Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Anthony Jay Robbins is an American author, coach, speaker, and philanthropist. He is known for his infomercials, seminars, and self-help books including the books Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within.