Having been exposed to the various success stories revolving around Anthony Robbins and his work with changing people’s lives, I was glad I had the opportunity to attend Total Success in Singapore when he was there from 6th to 8th May 2015.
I first learnt of him after watching his Ted Talk about 3 years ago on youtube, the one where he high-fived Al Gore. Since then, I have gradually found out more about his methods and work.
There are so many things that I have learnt from him in this 3 day programme that I will probably need to write an entire report to list down all the various learning points. Rather than doing that, I have decided to focus on just 1 key learning point that I took back from him in this particular post today.
Anthony Robbins brought up the concept of an identity, which basically refers to how others identify us, and most importantly, how we identify ourselves. If you define yourself as someone who, for instance, exercises every single day of your life, then chances are, you are somebody who does that, and your behaviour tends to be congruent with the identity that you identify yourself with.
One of the strongest human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves to be. We are satisfied, be it consciously or subconsciously, when we take actions or obtain results in life that is consistent with the identity that we identify ourselves with. When our actions or results that we obtain in life is beneath, or exceeds that which our identities ‘deserve’, we may become uncomfortable with that, and take certain actions to bring ourselves back to a state that is congruent with the identity we have in mind. Sometimes, this is what some people call ‘self-sabotage’.
To be able to achieve more in life, be happy about it, and to be able to look forward to more, we have to ‘update’ how we identify ourselves, or rather, to be more specific, we need to expand our identity!
When was the last time you did that?