The Higher Reaches of Success

Tony Robbins

For more than a quarter of a century, Anthony Robbins has served as an advisor to leaders around the world. A recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, organizational turnaround, and peak performance, he has been honored for his strategic intellect and humanitarian endeavors.

Tony has touched the lives of nearly 50 million individuals through his books, audio products, and live engagements, and challenged each person to radically transform their quality of life. So when Ken asks Tony, "What are the actual limits to the swiftness of transformation?," he's asking the right guy.

"If you say, 'That's not a very safe life, that's not a very secure life,' well, if you want security, go to prison! If you want freedom, step up!"

Exploring the nuances of the question, Ken notes that certain kinds of transformation seem to occur over longer periods of time, from months to even years. For example, you can't become fluent in French in a weekend no matter how committed you are to learning the language; it will take several years of diligent study. But there do seem to be ways that we can accelerate this kind of growth, thereby achieving fluency in two years instead of four (for example).

As Tony explains, we need to completely redefine what we can "reasonably" expect to achieve in our lives. "What's reasonable is completely controlled by the presuppositions of your map of the world, your Map of Meaning. The people that change society almost always are unreasonable people. Whenever someone says, 'what's reasonable,' everything inside of me just starts to explode—forget reasonable! What I really would rather say is, 'what is it that moves you?'"

In Tony's own life, that motivating force has continued to grow, mature, and expand over the years. He shares that as a man in his twenties, he was dedicated to proving to himself that he could take any individual and help them achieve any goal in their life. In his thirties, he applied the same principal to groups of people. Now, in his forties, he's working with organizations, and in his fifties, he plans to work with government. For Tony, his sphere of care and concern keeps expanding to a more comprehensive, integral embrace, one of the hallmarks of genuine development.

Tony comments that his sixties will be for his spiritual growth, but for now, "I don't see a separation between building a billion-dollar a year business and the spiritual drive to contribute. Instead of going off somewhere to have that spiritual view, I think it's something you have got to live each day...." From advising heads of state, to running five private companies, to spending time with his family, Tony's day-to-day life is a beautiful expression of that deep desire to contribute and make a real difference in the world.

We couldn't be more thrilled to have Tony as a guest. If all you've ever known of Tony has come from late-night infomercials, we invite you to take a closer look at a man whose vision for individual excellence extends far beyond the personal....