Part 3 – Review of Tony Robbins’ Ultimate Edge

Sessions 3-8 – Personal Power Classic Days 1-5

Sometimes there’s good news and sometimes there’s bad news. Let’s start with the bad news first.

It’s been almost two weeks since I last posted my progress with Tony Robbins’ Ultimate Edge program. I just haven’t had ANY time to sit down and write my thoughts. So, I’d like to say sorry to any of you out there who’ve been waiting for this blog post.

Now the good news; I’ve been continuing pretty much every day with the sessions and Tony has continued to inspire me to be more than I am today. I have been getting up 45 minutes early every day so that I can do my Hour of Power. Aside from the muscle pains that come from any new workout routine, I have to say my energy has been great, and perhaps more importantly, my outlook for each new day has been great.

So, let’s take a look at the journey Tony takes us on in the first few sessions of the second part of the Ultimate Edge program, called Personal Power Classic (PPC), which comes from Tony’s classic Personal Power 2 series.

Originally a 30 day program, Personal Power 2 has been condensed into a seven session mini-program, with each session building on the lessons learned in the previous one.

Day 1 of PPC – Success leaves clues, baby!
On day 1 of PPC, Tony speaks about the power of making decisions and introduces the “Ultimate Success Formula” for creating success in our lives:

1. Know your outcome
2. Take action
3. Observe your results
4. If what you’re doing isn’t working, change your approach

Another little secret to achievement is that success leaves clues; we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Tony recommends modelling to achieve results more rapidly; find someone who getting the results you want, find out what they’re doing, and do the same things!

Our assignment for day one of PPC is quite simple: take two decisions and take immediate action that is consistent with these new decisions.

My thoughts
Good, interesting session with lots of tips to achieving what we want to achieve. The assignment was simple and I finished up looking forward to the next session.

Day 2 of PPC – You get what you focus on
We’ve all heard the metaphor about the carrot and the stick; the carrot being an incentive and the stick being a deterrent. In the second session of PPC, Tony speaks about pain and pleasure, the two controlling forces that direct your life.

It’s simple, everything action we take in our lives comes from our need to avoid pain or to gain pleasure… or likely a combination of both. So, to take control of your life, it makes sense that you must somehow take control of these external forces. But how?

According to Tony, our reality is based on whatever you focus on. So, in order to change your behaviour, focus your attention on the carrot and the stick: how NOT changing a behaviour will be more painful than changing it, and how changing it now will bring immediate pleasure.

You can probably guess what the assignment is for this session.

1. Take four new actions that you’ve been putting off
2. Identify pain you’ve associated with following through in the past
3. Identify the pleasure you’ve associated with not following through
4. What pain will you get if you don’t follow through now?
5. What pleasure will you gain when you follow through?

My thoughts
I liked this session a lot. I found the assignment thought-provoking and somewhat challenging. Taking the four decisions wasn’t the tough part; what was more difficult was searching for the pain and pleasure I’ve experienced by not following through on these decisions in the past.

On another note, one thing Tony always says that you should never leave the scene of a decision without taking action. I’m happy to say I did take action on a few things that were long overdue… thanks for the nudge in the right direction, Tony!

Days 3 and 4 of PPC – Your associations are controlling your motivation
Building on the last session, Tony explains that our neuro-associations – the pleasure or pain we link to a situation in our nervous system – determines our behaviour. So, if we want to change our behaviour, we have to change the pain or pleasure we link to that behaviour.

Tony introduces a science he calls Neuro-Associative Conditioning (NAC). Basically, NAC is a way to change our limiting associations. So, if you’ve been putting off taking a certain action, Tony teaches you how to link massive pleasure to taking action now. Similarly, if you’ve been overindulgent (overeating for example) and need to stop a current behaviour, the NAC process will allow you to link a lot of pain to that behaviour.

The assignments for day 3 and 4 of PPC are to identify three empowering neuro-associations and three disempowering neuro-associations from your past. Then, take the four actions that you have been putting off (listed a couple of sessions ago), and get leverage on yourself by identifying 10 reasons why you must make a change now. Once you’ve done that, find ways to interrupt your current patterns and then practice (that’s the conditioning part of NAC) breaking your old patterns.

My thoughts
I found this tough. Perhaps it is because I wasn’t fully understanding neuro-associations (I had to listen to these sessions twice), or it’s because I don’t have any strong neuro-associations. I’m not sure, but I will continue working on this, because I don’t think I’ve fully grasped NAC yet. That’s something worth mentioning; just because you’ve completed an assignment for one of Tony’s sessions, that doesn’t mean you can’t go back and do it again. In fact, I would encourage it… it’s all part of making adjustments to achieve your goals.

I did appreciate that going through these exercises has forces me to get honest with myself; something I’ll certainly be doing more of as I continue along my personal growth journey.

Day 5 of PPC – Goal setting workshop
You knew it was coming, didn’t you? What kind of self-help program would this be without some sort of goal setting exercise! Setting goals makes sense – remember that the first step in achieving anything is knowing what you want to achieve.

Here, Tony leads us through a workshop to setting goals in three key areas:

1. Personal development goals
2. Thing /material goals
3. Financial / economic goals

For each of these areas, our assignment is to identify as many goals as we want. Then, list when you want to achieve them; for example, one year, three years, etc. And then, find the top three one-year goals and write a paragraph about why you are committed to achieving that goal now.

Remember that you should never leave the site of a decision without taking action. So, for each of your top three goals in each area, take some action toward achieving it.

Finally, take what Tony calls the rocking chair test. Imaging yourself many years from now, sitting in a rocking chair, looking back at your list and realizing that you never achieved certain goals. How would tha make you feel? Then turn it around – look back from your rocking chair and see that you’ve achieved your goals… and experience those positive feelings.

My thoughts
It’s always fun to be able to dream. To be like a kid again, making my Christmas wish list for Santa to bring; no limits and no worries about how I was going to achieve it. It was fun to be able to look at my wish list and then think about what I really want, when I want it and why.

Next up: finishing up Personal Power Classic and then on to Get the Edge