Tony Robbins: The Secret to Living is Giving | Big Think

Tony Robbins: The Secret to Living is Giving

Watch the newest video from Big Think

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The acclaimed self-help expert recently visited Big Think to discuss his new book and share stories about what wealth and generosity mean to him.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TONY ROBBINS:

Tony Robbins is a life coach and bestselling author who has published five books in 14 languages. He is the creator of the #1 personal and professional development system of all time, Personal Power; more than 40 million audiotapes have been sold worldwide. His best-sellers include Unlimited Power (1987) and Awaken the Giant Within (1991). His latest is Money: Master the Game (2014).

Since fathering the life coaching industry, Robbins has produced the #1-selling audio coaching system of all time. He also is a corporate Vice Chairman, and Chairman overseeing five private companies. Robbins has been honored by Accenture as one of the "Top 50 Business Intellectuals in the World"; by Harvard Business Press as one of the "Top 200 Business Gurus"; by American Express as one of the "Top Six Business Leaders in the World" to coach its entrepreneurial clients; by Forbes as a Top 100 Celebrity; by Justice Byron White as one of the world’s "Outstanding Humanitarians"; and by the International Chamber of Commerce as one of the top 10 "Outstanding Young People of World."

Robbins has met with, consulted, or advised international leaders including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, Princess Diana, and Mother Teresa. He has consulted members of two royal families, members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marines and three U.S. Presidents, including Bill Clinton. Robbins has had the unique opportunity to identify patterns and model the underlying strategies generating consistent results for some of the most successful individuals in the world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Tony Robbins: I think everybody wants to be a giver and not a taker. I mean if you take, take, take you might feel good about getting things for a moment or two but you can’t feel good about yourself as a human being. I mean I think one of the core messages of this book is you’ll never get beyond scarcity. You have to start beyond it. And what most people don’t know is you read statistics about money. Money is one of the most emotional topics that you’ll see with people. I mean it’s one of those things where you can get people charged up pretty quick. The subject is so emotional for people – they get so angry and it’s because money is just a vehicle. It’s just a tool. But it’s also a canvas. It’s a shape shifter. Whatever you project on it it becomes. If it’s evil, then you’ll have evil. It’s like money can create or destroy. It can destroy somebody’s life. If you’re mean you’ve got more to be mean with. If you’re caring you have more to be caring with. You can fund a hospital. You can support – keep somebody from starving. You can do some amazing things with this vehicle if you use it properly. It’s like electricity. You can light up a city or you can kill people. So everybody picks the part that they’re used to because in essence money in the end is power. And so if you feel like you don’t have it, everybody else does you’re mad. Rather than saying how do I become empowered.

When I was 11 years old we had no money and no food on Thanksgiving and a person came and fed my family. Now they didn’t deliver it personally. They sent it through somebody else. And to this day I don’t know who did it. But it changed my life. The food didn’t change my life, it was the fact that strangers cared that changed my life. That made me care about strangers. It shifted the direction of my life so I know the value of that. So I’ve been paying it forward since I was 17. I fed two families, then four, then eight. Then I built my little company and got my employees involved. And eventually started feeding a million a year, then two million. And over the last three or four years I’ve been matching my Foundation. My Foundation feeds two million people and I feed another two million on top of it, four million a year. But when I was writing this book I started seeing that last summer Congress passed new budget where they cut food stamps. They don’t call it food stamps anymore but they cut that support by 8.7 billion dollars. Two million people without support overnight....

Read the full transcript at