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Chapter 1: What is the most powerful force that can change your life?
The most powerful force that can change anybody's life is the change of identity. What is identity? We all have a way of defining ourselves. And the problem is we probably defined it a long time ago. If someone says, oh, I can't do that, I'm not one of those. But they're really saying that doesn't match my identity. But when did you come up with your definition of yourself?
Chapter 2: How can identity shape your actions?
What's up? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Talking to you about all the things going on in your life, your relationships, challenges with your family, your kids, your mental and emotional health, whatever you got going on. For the last two decades plus, I've been sitting with people when the wheels have fallen off in their life.
I'm just trying to figure out what's the next right move. And so this show is real people calling from all over the planet. And occasionally I have a guest on. And today's show, I'm pretty excited about, man. This is like the OG goat. The OG goat.
The great Tony Robbins joins me to talk about hope, what comes next, the cycles of how the world turns, and ways each and every one of us can look in the mirror and demand and decide and transform our lives from the inside out. The thing I've loved about Tony forever is... He refuses to let people be defined by their labels. He just refuses. He sees so much potential in every single person.
And he's got a gift and he's been doing it for 40 plus years. He's got a gift for bringing that out of people. And so I'm excited to sit down with him, man. He's kind of been on my bucket list for a long time. And we have a great conversation here. So check out my conversation with the one and only Mr. Tony Robbins.
I want to start there in a culture obsessed with categorizing, labeling, and telling people what they can or can't do based on some sort of status, right? They have a snapshot of diagnostics. They experienced some trauma growing up. They've been through some hard challenges. Or maybe it's that nowadays it's fun to even beat up those who have been quote-unquote successful, right?
Like you've got a high net worth, so you have no problems. Quit whining about anything, right? You don't care about anybody. No, you don't care about anybody. You hate people just because you have money. Your whole career has been what I, man, tell me if I'm wrong, is almost the opposite of much of the, what I call the mental health, cultural zeitgeist, which is there's something wrong with you.
We're going to pat you on the head, go and sit in the corner and we'll advocate for you. You've been teaching people how to advocate and empower themselves forever. So how do you teach somebody who's trying to build a small family, an entrepreneur just starting out? I've got elderly parents now who are beginning to be reflective over their life. Like, did we have any value here?
How do you teach somebody how to develop a path forward in spite of not just park it and call it because I've got some label attached to me?
I think the most important thing is to get rid of the labels because labels become the story. And once you have a story, you live the narrative, right? So the most powerful force that can change anybody's life is the change of identity. What is identity? We all have a way of defining ourselves. And the problem is we probably defined it a long time ago.
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Chapter 3: Why is it important to eliminate labels?
If someone said, oh, I can't do that, I'm not one of those. What they're really saying is that doesn't match my identity. But when did you come up with your definition of yourself? And the power of identity is so powerful. Like if you, for example, let's say, you know, have a big goal and you start to go for it. The last minute you get fearful and you put it off, you procrastinate.
And then you go for it again. And the last minute you get fearful and procrastinate. You have four or five times. After a while, you don't want to feel bad about yourself. So you develop an identity. I'm a procrastinator. And now, by the way, you won't be disappointed. You'll do it on a regular basis. You won't achieve your dreams, but you'll be comfortable. You follow me? Absolutely.
Or another example might be, you know, because of your background, John, as a doc, is like, okay, a person is clinically depressed. Do you think a clinically depressed person ever has happy moments? What would you say? Yes or no? Of course they do. Of course they do. But if you catch them when they go, I'm not really happy, it just looked like I was happy.
Because our need to stay consistent with our definition is so high. When someone's having an identity crisis, right? Somebody says they're going through that. They're questioning everything. They don't know who they are, what they're about, what they really want. So we come up with a definition of ourself and it starts to control who we are.
If you go to somebody that used to smoke cigarettes and they don't smoke anymore, they haven't smoked in 10 years. And you walk up and would you walk up and say, would you like a cigarette? We're not going to say what brand is it? They're going to say, oh, I'm not one of those. I'm not a smoker. I'm not one of those. That's not my identity. That's how powerful identity is.
It works on both sides, though. Let's say metaphorically. You set a thermostat at 68 degrees. That's the temperature we want. That's your comfort zone, not your goals, not your absolute ideals, but what you're used to. So imagine 68 degrees as a metaphor for how much money you're comfortable with having. You want more, but that's what you're used to.
Or 68 degrees is how much intimacy, how close you are to people or your connection with God. It's a measure. Not what you want. It's what you're used to. Well, if all of a sudden things aren't as good as they should be, the 68 degrees drops down to 60. I'm sure you've experienced this in your life. I know I have in mind. Most people have. Suddenly something happens.
Your brain goes, hey, you're supposed to be up here. You're down here. And you get this push. The heaters kick on to bring the temperature up again. You feel this push to get yourself back to where you want to be. Most people listening have had that experience, but they don't realize it happens on the other side too. If you get momentum, you start to do some great things.
I don't know if you've ever done this, John, in your life. And you start doing really well, like better than you expect. And you go from 68, metaphorically, to 75, to 78, to 80. You get about 90 degrees and all of a sudden your brain goes, hey, what the hell are you doing up here? You're a 68 degree-er. And then all of a sudden the heaters stop. You lose your drive.
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Chapter 4: What are the stages of life and their significance?
And then you've got to defend it during the summer, and then you've got to reap in the fall, and you've got to save some for the winter, right? Well, when we learned that, humanity exploded. Now we run the planet. For good or bad, we run the planet. Well, similarly, there's a pattern in people's life. So all those listening right now are watching. They're in one of the seasons.
If you're 0 to 21, you're in springtime. I'm making these numbers general, right? Everybody's slightly different. But what happens in that stage of life? Well, it's like if you start a business in an optimistic springtime, you think you're a genius because everybody's well in business in springtime. Everybody's optimistic. Money's available. It goes really well.
Well, similarly, when you're a child, you're protected. Now, someone's had to go to work at seven and eight years old, but still you're overall protected. Someone looked out for you. If there's a war, you didn't go fight the war. You're being fed information. You're being taken care of to some extent. And you're learning. It's a learning process. Now, 22 to 42 is the summertime.
That's the testing time. That's when you think you're invincible and you think you're going to be president of the United States, a multibillionaire, and have 100 relationships simultaneously and everyone's going to be happy. And you discover you can't even run one relationship by the time you're 30 or 35. And you discover you're not the president of the United States.
And so now you realize you're not invincible. That range is you're the soldier of society. You're going to take what you learn and say, I don't know if I believe this. I'm going to test what I believe. I'm going to see what I try. I'm going to create my model of the world, right? You might duplicate what you learned. You might come up with something new. But it's a testing period.
If we have a war, you're the ones that go to war, 22 to 42. That's who goes to war, right? So you're the soldier of business. You're the soldier of society. You're learning. You're growing. It's also the period of time where all studies show people are most unhappy, right? because they're trying to prove themselves, trying to figure out who they are. They haven't figured out relationship yet.
They haven't figured out their career yet, so forth. But if you keep growing through spring and summer, you get to the reaping time called fall, and that's 43 to 63. That 20-year period overall is when you'll earn the most because if you grew during spring and summer, By this point, you know more people. You have more relationships.
I'm sure, John, you can do more with your pinky now than you used to do working 20 hours a day. You might still work 20 hours a day, but you just do that much more. You can accomplish that much more. So you are the leaders of society. You're the engine of society. That's the power time. That's when you're going to have the greatest rewards potentially.
But the ultimate rewards, and I can tell you because I'm there now, is 64 to 84 to 104 to 120 rewards. The oldest humans lived 120. That's the wintertime, but that's elderhood. That's where you really get to lead, where your leadership is because you're not trying to prove yourself to yourself or anybody else.
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Chapter 5: How do good times create weak people?
Chapter 6: What skills are essential for future success?
That was great, man. Thank you.
But here's the history of the world in four sentences. And it comes back to what you started this question with. Good times create weak people. They don't mean to be weak. They just don't know. They've never been tested. If you live in Florida, you think cold is 68 degrees, right? If you live in Minnesota, cold is minus 30. So you have no perspective here, right?
So when you have good times, you don't get strong. By the way, if good times create weak people, weak people create bad times. Bad times create strong people. And strong people create great times. And then a cycle returns. That's the history of the world. So can we be optimistic about the future? Yes.
And by the way, the X generation, excuse me, the millennial generation, the Z generations that are looked down by Xers and baby boomers, like they're so weak and all that stuff. I have no worries about them. Yes, right now, some of them react like I have to have a trigger warning before you can talk about something. But that's not the majority of them. And because of winter, they will be tested.
And when they're tested, they will grow. And they have great tools, great technology tools, great intelligence, great caring. They're going to be the next heroes of the next generations.
Can you opt out of the cycle? To create your own safe, and I don't mean that in the way it's been politicized, but create a thriving place inside of a cycle like that? Or do you have to just ride it out?
No, look, winter, like I just said, winter in Florida is different than winter in Minnesota.
There you go. Yeah, that's great. I grew up in Texas. Yeah, so winter is 58 degrees. That's it. Yeah.
So the truth of the matter is, you know, I have a home in Fiji. I bought it. So if all hell is breaking loose in the world, they're on a different cycle. But we're so connected as a world, it still affects everybody. But your level of cycle will be different. But the best answer is not to hope you get yourself in a good place.
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Chapter 7: How can we prepare for rapid changes in the world?
He said, I was just thinking, how can I teach it to my kids about six months ago? And I found the answer. And I said, what's the answer? He goes, asymmetrical risk reward is the least amount of risk, most amount of upside. So I kept asking the question, what's an investment I can make that has no downside? I cannot lose and only upside. And I said, I don't think, I can't think of one.
He goes, most people won't even ask the question. But he said, I asked it for six months till I got the answer. And he goes, the answer was nickels. I said, nickels? He said, yeah, if you invest in a nickel, it never goes down. It's always worth a nickel. But he said it costs nine cents to make a nickel. That's how our government works. He said it won't last forever.
He said they used to do that with pennies. Pennies used to be made of copper. Now there's almost no copper. It's mostly tin in pennies. But here's what you need to know. Those pennies that were the old ones... worth twice as much, three times as much just because of the content. He goes, just the content itself.
It costs nine cents to make it, but the actual, if you were to melt that smell value of that five cents, it's really seven and a half cents. So he says, I can make a 25 to 30% return on day one. I go, but you can't melt the money. He goes, no, no, no, no, you can. He goes, but you don't need to because he said, like I said, when they change the game, the numbers will go up.
So he called the Fed and bought all the nickels. He bought 20 million nickels, truckloads of nickels, had his kids carry all the nickels, put them in there. He said, if I could push a button right now and buy all nickels, I'd make my entire thing that. He goes, because I'm up 25 to 30 percent instantly. And he goes, there's no downside. So that mindset is what can shift people.
They don't have to live this small little world, but they have to be willing to understand that four-letter word that most people avoid at all costs. It's called risk. It's not about not taking risks. It's about taking intelligent asymmetrical risks. Those are the people that win at the highest level. And that's true with your family. It's your emotional risks.
The downside is so little compared to the upside of you stepping up and telling the truth or breaking through in that relationship or going after your kid and not letting this stuff continue. But most people, especially after COVID, don't want to risk anything. I remember I was telling people the six-foot thing. There's no science behind it.
I was telling people that in 2020 and people were online slamming me and everything else. And like four months ago, Fauci admitted under oath that the six-foot thing had no science behind it, that he didn't know how it kind of appeared, and people walking around like lemmings, freaking out if someone was within four feet of them. We have to take risks to have life.
Can you imagine the people that settled this country and what they had to do to cross the oceans to come here to deal with this world, the risks they took so we could have this? They would be so embarrassed by us, right? It's like, we're not going to take any risks for anything. Time to take some intelligent risks. That's how your life changes.
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Chapter 8: What does the future hold for generations to come?
And if you get people that are burnt into the ground who love each other, they'll say stuff and do things that will really hurt the relationship. So the level of your energy, as simplistic as that sounds, is where it starts. And it doesn't matter how much sleep you have. It doesn't matter how much food you've eaten. What matters is the psychological habit of energy.
And so one of the things we do in three or four days is people condition their nervous system at a higher level of energy, and then everything changes. When you're in a peak state of mind, I mean, have you ever done this? Have you ever been in a lousy state where you can't remember your own cell number, how to spell a difficult word like the? You know the answer, but what the hell? Yeah.
And yet there's other times when you get on the flow, when you're in a peak state where you do something or say something goes perfectly. I don't even know how I did that, but I'm impressed. I like that. I want to do that again. It's all state driven. So we show people how to change their state because most people say to me, well, I just don't feel like it.
Well, if I waited until I felt like it, I couldn't have done 90% of what I've done. I've learned how to change how I feel so I can do it. And that's one of the most important skills of life that almost certainly don't get taught in school or just about anywhere else.
But when we get people in an environment like that, they come out saying it's the greatest experience of their life because they experience themselves at their best.
Dude, I love it. All right. So January 30th, tell us about the Time to Rise Summit that you're putting together.
Well, you know, as I mentioned, during COVID, we had to figure out how to adapt because all the giant structures in the world, all the stadiums were shut down. And I was like, I got lots of other businesses, but this is my mission. So I got a way to help people. So I built a studio. I put 50-foot high ceilings, 20-foot high LED screens, 50 feet around. And then I went to the founder of Zoom.
And Eric's on. And I said, look, he's a fan of mine. I said, I can't have a thousand, need 25,000. And then I created some software. So instead of clapping, you shake your phone and it sends electrical signal. If one person does it, you don't hear it. But when 25,000 people do it, it's like thunder. So now people at home are experiencing something like they're there.
And so we decided I'm going to eliminate all the things that stop people. It's money. It's travel. It's time. So I said, let's do an event to help people right now. They need it desperately. Let's charge nothing. Let's do it so they can do it from their home or their office, wherever they are. We'll do it on Zoom. And let's make it so that it's not too long, but not an hour of some pump-up.
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