How To Build An Extraordinary Life - Tony Robbins - #889

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
It feels a little bit like a curse, I think, of driven people to have high expectations. How can people who are always very hard on themselves, learn to build up their self-esteem a little bit more?

**Tony Robbins** (0:13)
I don't know if self-esteem is the answer.
I don't think it's bad to be hard on yourself, as long as you also celebrate when the victories happen. But so many people will tell you, I have poor self-esteem because when I was a kid, people said this to me and that to me. It's convenient that we remember those things and not the positive things that also occur, obviously. But I think it's more important to realize that self-esteem is earned. It's only earned by you with yourself. You're not going to get self-esteem because everybody praises you. Someone can tell you your whole life that you're brilliant, you're a genius, you're beautiful, you're handsome, and you're not believe it. Someone can tell you you're a piece of crap and you're never going to become anything. And there's a part you can say, I'll show you, as many people have, and then they develop drive out of it, right? So it's really self-esteem comes from doing incredibly difficult things where you know you pushed yourself. It's not virtue signaling, it's not telling people about it. It's what you know inside your soul is true. And the more you do things that are incredibly difficult, and especially things that are meaningful, meaning they're not just about yourself, the higher that esteem would be. I think the most important thing for self-esteem is to find something you care about more than yourself. As long as you're in your own head, the nature of the mind is reductionism, right? Good, bad, right, wrong, all those types of things. Of course, life is much more, many different cues than that. And so when you find something you care about, whether it's your kids or whether it's something, your job, your career, whether it's a mission you have, that's something you want to bring to the world, nonprofit, it doesn't matter what it is. If you find something you care about more than you, you won't be thinking about yourself all the time and all your bullshit self-esteem shit just goes out the window. I mean, it's just, when I hear it, it's just so manby-pamby BS. You can have crappy self-esteem and achieve a hell of a lot. Now, the real question is, what do you want? And I think there's, if you want an extraordinary life, which my definition of that is life on your terms, like what's my idea might be different than yours completely. Some people, it's three beautiful children, a white picket fence. Some people it's building a multi-billion dollar business. Somebody else that's writing poetry, right? So instead of looking for somebody else, it's like, okay, what do you really want from your life? And aligning yourself with moving forward towards what you really want. And I think if you can do that in a way that also you feel serving others simultaneously, there's a sense of meaning in life that can't be replaced by self-esteem or praise or compliments or being nice to yourself. And I don't think it's bad to be tough on yourself. I'm pretty tough on myself, I'll be honest with you. But I also, I'm much better at celebrating now. And I also realize being overly tough on yourself usually comes by making comparisons that don't make sense.
I remember, I could just was walking by and I saw as I was walking here, a picture that reminded me of something which was years ago, I was in Atlanta, Georgia. I was in my early 20s, 23, 24, 25 and I was doing a seminar. And those days there weren't 15, 20,000 people, it was 125 people. I remember because it was the biggest seminar I'd done. I thought it was so exciting. And I give my heart and soul and going 12, 13 hours a day. And on the third day, the rooms were so small, then I'd go by and look in everybody's eyes. I gave everybody a flower. I mean, it's just, I look back now, it seems silly, but it was really just, I wanted to make that connection. I want to make sure that they had made that shift. I was like so obsessive about making a true transformation happen. And earlier in the day, I got a phone call from a friend of mine who said, the boss, Bruce Springsteen, he was the biggest star in the world in those days. I loved him. And he's four blocks from you. He's at the Atlanta Stadium there with the Hawks play. You got just finished early and come over and you got to take it in. It was Christmas time. He said, it's going to be incredible. I said, I'd love to come. But I said, I just can't do that. That's if I said, if I finished somehow in time, it all happens. He's still on stage. I'll call you and see what's going on. So I finished the seminar. I don't know how long it was, almost 11 o'clock at night. But Bruce usually does, especially in Christmas, he's like three encores. And so my buddy calls me and says, get your butt over here. He's doing his second encore. I think he might even do three if you get here. Get over here, see the end. And so I sprinted the four or five walks to get in, got in the stadium, couldn't find my buddy. But I got up into some high seats and I'm looking down. And it was back when Clarence was still there. And it was just the drive and the energy was incredible. The crowd was so engaged and he was doing Christmas songs and he ends with, you know, born to run, you know? And I'm like, I'm so into it. And about three quarters of the way through the song, I got depressed. I'm like, what the hell? And what it was was I was like, shit, what I'm doing doesn't matter. This guy's got 15,000 people here. I got 125 for three days. I'm not making any difference at all. And I was like, and I literally was walking out and people born around, I was pissy inside myself, you know? Like, but I was feeling so great before this, but not making this comparison. And of course you're never fair. You compare it to somebody else's life that has a totally different path, a totally different experience. We all develop in different stages and different things. We all want different things. But what was ironic, though, the reason I tell you this story is it was like four years later and there I am in that stadium. And I'm not doing this crappy little two and a half hour concert, right? I'm doing 12 hours and the crowd is going crazy. Screw you, Bruce. And I just like, no, I just like, you know, it was humorous. You know, you get to look back and say, you know, you judge yourself too soon. And I can tell you a dozen stories like that with me. So I was so hard on myself. But eventually you wake up and say, it's good to be strong with yourself, but beating yourself up just lowers your energy. And when your energy gets lower, you produce less, right? You don't have, and you don't have the same level of joy. You don't have the impact that you want to have, nor do you have the excitement that you really want to have. So I look at it, I look at it as something that it's worth earning your own self-esteem, but it's really not the secret. The secret is to find something else you obsess about more than yourself and you'll have a level of energy that will compel you over the long term.