Awaken the Giant Within

Your destiny is not defined by your circumstances but by the decisions you make, and truly deciding is a skill that can be trained. Robbins goes against a very common belief: that our results depend on where we come from, on context, on luck.

Three key ideas:

• Deciding is cutting: a real decision eliminates the other options; as long as you have an emotional plan B you haven't decided, you're considering.
• Pain and pleasure govern your behavior: you do what you associate with pleasure and avoid what you associate with pain, and those associations can be reprogrammed.
• Questions direct focus: "why is this happening to me?" produces excuses; "how do I use this to my advantage?" produces options.

What separates intention from result, Robbins says, is the standard you set for yourself. As long as something is a "should" it stays on the list of good intentions; when you turn it into a "must," your brain stops looking for reasons and starts looking for the way. The useful question is not what you want to achieve, but what you are no longer willing to tolerate.

Underneath all of this is a foundation Robbins calls state management. To achieve something, the first step is to tune yourself to having already achieved it, to act as if you had already gotten there. Every emotion and every action is born from a state, and that state can be triggered deliberately with two immediate levers: physiology (posture, breathing, movement) and focus (where you direct your attention and the language you use with yourself).

His method is the RPM formula: Results-oriented, Purpose-driven, Massive Action Plan, and the sequence is critical:

• Result. Specific and measurable; not "be better," but something concrete and verifiable.
• Purpose. The reasons you want it, and they are not reasoned, they are felt. Put yourself in the shoes of someone already living the result to feel the satisfaction of getting there, and in the shoes of someone living the consequences of not achieving it to feel that pain.
• Massive action plan. It can include very hard things, but with the purpose emotionally anchored, difficulty stops being the obstacle.

Group similar tasks into blocks, the "chunking," and ask each block the same three questions in the same sequence.

A simple place to begin: pick the decision you've been postponing for months, run it through result, purpose and plan, and execute the first action within 24 hours.

The author's line: "It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."

As a founder it will help you prepare your psychology before the high-pressure moments: quitting your job, putting out the small candles you keep lit so you can truly focus, stretching for a fundraising pitch, a negotiation, a layoff. It really is a handful of decisions that change the destiny of your career; prepare yourself to make them in the best way possible.