Anthony Robbins teaches a concept that he calls the “Ultimate Success Formula”. Regardless of what you want to do or accomplish in life, you can use this formula to achieve it. This is the first of five installments explaining the details of this formula.
Step #1: Know Your Outcome.
You must know your objective. You must understand it and be able to describe it in a detailed, positive way. (Tony calls it an “outcome” instead of a “goal” because it adds more certainty to the description. It is like saying you “will” do something instead of you “should” do something.)
You mind will be drawn toward whatever you focus on. So you must focus on a positive image of what you want, and NOT a negative image of what you don’t want. For example, if you say “I don’t want to be fat”, your brain will only see the image of being fat, and so it will draw you to that outcome instead of what you actually want. Instead, you should say, “I want to be healthy, fit, and at my ideal weight of 175 lbs. I want to be active, run a marathon, and have tons of energy every day. I want to wake up in the morning with a feeling of excitment and passion, look great in my clothes, and feel proud of myself every time I look in the mirror.”
According to Tony, clarity is essential. The more vivid your vision of the outcome, the better. (He referred to a part of the brain called the “reticular activating system.” According to Wikipedia, it is “believed to be the centre of arousal and motivation in animals”.)
Tony Robbins estimates that less than one percent of the population has absolute clarity in their goals. Instead, most of them are caught up in making a living versus designing their own life.
The purpose of knowing your outcome is to clarify your focus. The more time you spend deciding, describing, and clarifying your outcome, the more certain you will be about what you actually want. When you visualize the outcome in excrutiating detail, it helps your brain achieve that outcome. In one of his audio tapes, for example, Tony discusses how spent days on this aspect of planning his life. He wrote thirteen pages in the process of describing the ideal woman that he wanted to meet and marry. And he met and married her within a year.
You and I can achieve anything we want in life. If we spend the time to determine exactly what we want, and visualize it in such extreme detail that we actually feel it and experience the feelings associated with its achievement, our brains will drive us there.
