What is true wealth?
Real wealth is so much more than money
How will you know when you’ve reached true wealth? Is it when you have your dream home? Once you own an expensive car? Perhaps the signifier is when you’re wealthy enough to have your own private airplane? In Tony’s opinion, these are the wrong things to use when measuring your wealth.
The people with mansion-sized homes, with three sports cars sitting in the garage, with a private plane that takes them to and from their vacation home – these people may not necessarily have access to true wealth. None of these are indicators of true wealth; they’re indicators of monetary wealth.
True wealth is the ability to live life on your own terms. It’s freedom. Tony explains that money itself isn’t wealth, it’s a vehicle – a tool you can use to achieve financial freedom, to go after the dreams you didn’t think were possible, to design your life in a way that makes you feel alive and fulfilled.
While Unshakeable is a financial freedom playbook, the process of becoming unshakeable is a mindset that extends far beyond the stock market. Being unshakeable, in your investing strategy and your lifestyle, is about managing your head and your heart in order to design the life you deserve. What’s the point of achieving financial freedom? It’s not the concept of having money that makes us yearn to become financially free; it’s the freedom part. True wealth – true financial freedom – is being free to focus on the things that matter most to you in life.
Unlike the investing world, there aren’t clear cut rules for achieving happiness. Fulfillment will come in different shapes and sizes for different people, but there are common principles we all can follow to help us find emotional and psychological fulfillment.
With the tools and strategies from Unshakeable, anyone can become financially rich. The question is: Are you going to be rich and happy, or rich and miserable?
Join Richard Bradley, Editor-In-Chief of Wealth Magazine, and Tony Robbins in this episode of the Unshakeable Podcast, and learn about Tony’s approach to happiness, the secrets to true wealth and what we can do to fight against the impulses of our own minds.
Richard Bradley Interview Show Notes
[01:03] Richard Bradley, Editor-in-Chief of Wealth Magazine – What is true wealth?
[01:31] Tony: Security, portable power, family… it’s whatever we make it out to be, like a shapeshifter.
[01:50] Money doesn’t change people, it just makes you more of what you are.
[02:06] What is it that makes you feel totally alive and truly abundant?
[02:17] What is your idea of an extraordinary life
[02:43] You can be rich and happy, or rich and angry
[03:08] It’s about defining what life on your terms looks like
[03:18] Nothing worse than an angry rich man or woman
[03:24] We have a 2 billion-year old brain: focused on fight or flight, and survival
[04:14] We don’t appreciate enough. How do you organize your life so that you’re not just waiting for a certain amount of money to be happy
[04:33] Money is not the solution, it’s a vehicle. If you use it right. But have to control the head and heart to have the quality of life that we deserve.
[05:01] Richard: What financial freedom is going to do, help us achieve?
[05:16] Now that we’ve helped people achieve financial security, how do they figure out what true wealth means to them?
[05:44] Tony: it’s about life on your terms.
[05:57] Getting rich is one thing, staying is another. Rich = not just financial, it’s emotional, spiritual, health, etc.
[06:01] Two skills for true wealth, first is the “Science of Achievement”
[06:34] After talking to top investors, Tony found that everyone invests differently, but there are some things that everyone has in common: The Core Four
[06:46] Same as health, everyone is unique, but there are fundamentals that if you violate the rules you’re going to not have energy, get sick
[07:23] Three fundamentals for achievement
[07:32] What is something in your life today that once was a dream? Something you see as a sign of success, that once seemed impossible?
[08:09] Richard: For me it was writing a book. “It’s amazing to me that it happened.”
[08:31] What seemed once impossible is now lived… the law of familiarity
[08:47] If you’re around anything enough, you take it for granted
[09:23] The way you achieve: become obsessed and you’ll make it happen:
[09:31] Focus is power
[09:59] Part of our brain: Reticular Activating System (RAS) lets your brain focus on things that are important
[10:37] Step two is taking action, finding what works
[11:01] If you’re running east looking for a sunset, no matter how positive you are, you won’t see the sunset
[11:22] Need to have a proven strategy: compress decades into days
[11:57] Third step to achievement: you still need a little grace. The part we do, and the part that comes to us
[12:21] Grace shows up a lot more when you do the first two steps, when you acknowledge it
[12:49] Grace determines the quality of your life
[12:55] Tony interviewed Sir John Templeton, asked him, “what is the secret to wealth?” He answered: Gratitude
[13:48] It’s not enough to have money, you can have money and be miserable, you can be rich emotionally, psychologically
[14:05] Second most important rule to life – The Art of Fulfillment. It’s an art, not science.
[14:18] Rules of the game to succeed, but not for fulfillment
[14:40] God loves diversity; same is true with people – different sources of fulfillment
[14:55] Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure
[16:53] We all have something different as our inner desire, you need to find what fulfills you
[17:05] A cautionary tale: Robin Williams, the loss of a national treasure
[18:42] He lit everybody up, except himself
[19:15] Most of us live a life where we succeed but we’re not truly fulfilled
[20:10] Richard: Tony, what is your method for happiness?
[20:15] Tony: To be fulfilled there aren’t hard, fast rules, but there are principles
[20:23] You have to grow. The purpose of a goal is to become more.
[20:48] What makes us happy is who we become. One word that makes us happy: Progress
[21:21] We grow because that helps us give more – share it with someone you love, it magnifies it
[22:04] More excited about feeding one billion people than any material thing, so much more meaning when it’s not just about you
[22:19] The challenge is our brain: it’s looking for what’s wrong, because that helps you survive
[22:30] Peak state = high energy, feel extraordinary, producing results is easy
[22:46] Low energy state = say things and do things that hurt your relationship
[23:39] Peak State = Beautiful state, Low-energy state = suffering state
[24:08] Over achievers don’t suffer, right?
[24:12] Overachievers don’t have fear, they have stress. Stress is the achiever word for fear.
[24:28] If I follow the trail of your stress, it will show you your deepest fear
[24:36] If you want to change your life, you have to acknowledge that you suffer
[24:53] New definition of suffering
[26:10] Stress is a symptom of something deeper – don’t be proud of your stress
[26:20] You can get better without the stress
[26:44] when you’re stressed you’re not present
[26:52] Write down 2-3 most stressful thoughts. They are likely the same as everyone else’s.
[27:51] What you call your thoughts aren’t yours, they’ve been around for 150 year’s
[28:30] how to turn the channel so you’re not suffering and you’re in a beautiful state
[28:38] What does it take to turn the channel? It takes acknowledging the flavor of suffering
[29:06] it starts with making the most important decision of your life: who you spend time with, and who you love
[29:28] Decide: Do I want to be happy, do I want to commit to being happy?
[30:08] Life is too short to suffer
[31:01] It’s the thoughts that are stressful that you believe that mess you up — when you question them, you break the pattern
[31:20] The more you train yourself to do it, the easier it becomes
[31:40] Don’t wait to be rich, richness is joy and abundance
[32:01] Loss, Less, Never: the sources of all suffering
[32:06] The antidote is to see it for what it is, know it’s “BS,” and find something to appreciate
[33:49] So much of our life has become about expectation. If your expectation isn’t met, you suffer
[33:54] Trade expectation for admiration
[34:43] Richard: The book not only provides tools for financial growth, but you combine them with tools that acknowledge that money is not paramount
[35:27] What people really want is joy
[36:46] Closing remarks
Legal Disclosure: Tony Robbins is a board member and Chief of Investor Psychology at Creative Planning, Inc., an SEC Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) with wealth managers serving all 50 states. Mr. Robbins receives compensation for serving in this capacity based on increased business derived by Creative Planning from his services. Accordingly, Mr. Robbins has a financial incentive to refer investors to Creative Planning.
