Find Joy and Fulfillment by Giving Your Greatest Gift | Tony Robbins

hey everybody happy labor day weekend it's tony robbins and i just wanted to send out a little video message uh by the way i'm here in fiji it's a rough life i'm doing two back-to-back seminars but doing it here makes life not feel like much labor but i got here because i had the privilege of stumbling upon a fundamental principle in my youth and that principle was taught to be my original teacher and his name was jim rohn and jim taught me when i was just 17 years old that in life there's only one way for you to really truly have your labor be fulfilling a you have to align with what's most important to you what you really believe in what's meaningful for you that if you settle for something less than that well you might have to do it because you have to pay your bills you can't ever give up pursuing what's going to make you feel most alive because ultimately i really believe that the probably the most i don't know the most sacred thing in our lives that we can give another human being besides our love is our labor you think about your labor is your energy it's your time it's your emotion it's your intellect it's your spirit to some extent and if you can find a way where what you do for a living activates that sense of what you're made for then work is not work whether you'd be in fiji or whether you'd be in a an environment that might be seen less exciting and promising in the moment trust me i've worked in plenty of those too but with the same level of excitement and passion because i found what turns me on that makes me feel alive makes me feel like i'm doing something that's worthwhile and on labor day i think a lot of people it's just a holiday to get away and take time off of labor uh and my hope is to trigger you to think about how could you turn your labor into your love i think it was uh mark twain who said when your vocation becomes your vacation that's when life becomes truly magnificent and i'm privileged enough to have that but i pursued it and one of the secrets that i found and i know you know this in your soul is that we all know if you're going to be masterful at something you don't show up you know as the best in the world at something you don't show up in environments that you want to be in you get there because you did things for thousands and thousands of hours most of you know the concept of mastery taking 10 000 hours that's an arbitrary number but i'm sure you've heard about you want to get really good at something it's 10 000 hours because when you do something enough with enough intensity enough intention to constantly get better when your labor is your love and where your labor is something you have to always get better at then usually what happens is you get these insights that allow you to serve more but i also think that labor you know we're talking about this weekend what makes people fulfilled by their labor is is their motives for it if your motive is just to make money or just to pay your bills or or just to get rich or whatever you think that's going to be those people never really are fulfilled even if they make the money the most fulfilled human beings in my experience and i've had the privilege of working with literally four million people from 125 countries now around the world the people that are most alive regardless of the economics are people that have found something that they really feel the motive is more than just themselves you know we all know what it feels like when you're trying to do it for something for someone you love and you're not doing it as a trade you're not trying to get something back you're just doing it because it's what you're made for and um i always tell people motive does matter that if you're just doing something for yourself there's nothing wrong with that because life supports whatever else supports life if you're part of life and you're trying to do something it's going to make your life better i think the universe god whatever proper term for you whatever your belief system is you know infinite intelligence gets connected to you and it gives you insights but i think if you're trying to serve more than yourself more life than just you when things support more of life more of life shows up to support you and that might sound kind of airy fairy but it's my experience you know when you're trying to support your family when suddenly i had four kids three of them overnight my life changed my intellect changed my abilities changed because i was trying to serve something more than just me when i started really focusing how to serve a community and then a country and then humanity as corny as it may sound you get insights you won't get when you're just trying to somehow you know make your labor happen or get the job done so labor could be love and it isn't for most people most people i think are unhappy in their life because they look at labor as work uh they look at it as why should i have to effort so much and in my experience effort is the reward if you are doing something you love it's there so if you don't have it you might say tony that's all wonderful you're in fiji and you do what you love and i don't have that thanks so much for giving me the lecture i'm not coming from that place i'm come from the place of saying you can discover something that you're really passionate about but in order to do it you got to get out of the story of what you can't do and you've got to put yourself on the line i mean so many people right now this labor day are out of work and when you have when you don't have the privilege to be able to work you start realizing that work really is a privilege and most of us know that two-thirds of the planets living on two dollars a day so no matter how difficult our life may be most of us our worst challenge is somebody else's greatest dream and i think it starts with the gratitude for what we already have it starts with understanding that what's wrong is always available but so is what's right and if you and i can figure out what's right with what we do if we can start where we are and enjoy that labor everything changes i'll give you a silly example of kind of a funny story i had some partners in business when i was just uh gosh i think i was 18 years old 19 years old and uh one of them they're both good friends of mine still but one of them kind of called out to me they're harvey and maryland diamond if you ever read the books fit for life they were my partners before that book was written and i kind of helped them build that business up initially and it was a health business and i believed it i was passionate about it and harvey maryland got involved with a particular guru that they really believed in in india and gradually they started to decide that what they were going to do is they were going to do this chant in the seminars we're doing which were seminars and how to become a peak state of fitness and health and we're doing them for successful business people those days in beverly hills and west los angeles and a couple other areas and i was concerned that they were now going off to india to have these spiritual experiences and they were to come back and they were going to try and convert people to some form of spirituality whether it was right or wrong didn't matter just it wasn't what we were in business for and i wanted to change people's lives with health so being a young kid and thinking of all the answers i went to india with one thing in mind i'm going to make sure that i have a conversation with a guru and he straightens my partners out so they understand that their labor is a gift and they need to give their labor separate from their spiritual belief so i go off on this journey and i go to india and i stay outside this ashram because i'm not a follower of this thing and they're in the ashram and i go have my meals and one day i come back from having this meal and this little monk comes up to me and the monk says excuse me i've not met you uh i introduced myself and he says what are you here for i said well i'm here to see the guru i want to have a meeting and if you don't think about india you don't just have a meeting with a guru people come for five or seven years they don't get such meetings and i said i'm here to get his help to straighten something out it's very important with some of his followers and a man said well i haven't seen you at seva and i said what's sava he said well save this will you come and volunteer your time to give work to give labor to the guru and i said i'm not a follower of the guru so i don't do save he goes yeah but you're staying in the guru's place i said i'm paying to stay in the guru's place he goes it doesn't matter you're eating the guru's food i said i'm paying for the guru's food he goes but here you have to pay and you must give labor and you must volunteer four hours a day to save a i'm thinking you got to be kidding me but after he left he said you should report to this place for your assignment i'm thinking there's no way i'm going to do this but then i started feeling guilty i see all these people doctors and lawyers and moms and kids and they're all working and so finally i report for seva thinking all right i'll get this out of the way and so i show up for the save i'll never forget right for my labor remember and the guy looks at me goes oh big man furniture mover and i go no no no i got a bad back i got a bad back which was true but i was exaggerating how bad it was at that moment just because i didn't want to do a bunch of heavy labor and when i was growing up i grew up very poor and i'm the oldest of three and i had to do all the shopping all the grocery shopping on my bicycle come home make the meal and i was happy with all that but then right when you wanted to be done with your work and go watch sports or do something great i had to wash the dishes so i swore someday i will never do the labor of washing dishes i will afford a dishwasher i will find some way to not have to do dishes i tell you there's a background because when i told him i couldn't be a furniture mover he looks down and goes home only one other job left dishwashing now dishwashing in india is a different labor than you might picture in your kitchen you're in this ashram and i report and there's these milk solids and yogurts on the floor and you're standing in your bare feet and you're taking these filthy dishes coming across and it's four hours a day for six or seven days i'm telling you i was so angry i was so mad as mad at myself that i was there as a matter of was and i was washing these dishes and upset and plus i was a vegan and you know i didn't like the fact there was milk on the floor i was judgmental about everything in the middle of all this stuff after about an hour of being angry i got tired of being angry and some part of me kicked in and goes damn whatever you do you're the best at it why don't you be the best damn dishwasher so i start washing these dishes with a frenzy and i'm like come on guys speed this thing up and something magical happened the thing that i thought was most disgusting and filled with labor and work became play and i started to laugh at myself and i thought what an ego jerk you are to think that you're below washing some dishes and then i got beyond my ego and jerk into why not just enjoy whatever you do and then when you do all of a sudden it's not work anymore and that was my great spiritual breakthrough i eventually did meet with his guru and tried to straighten him out but he didn't think very much of an 18 year old kid straighten him out he laughed quite a bit he did talk to my partners and said i think you guys should just you know keep teaching what you're teaching and fit for life went on to be one of the most successful books in history uh but i can't claim credit for that as a part of that little piece but i will tell you that if you can get over what if you can get yourself to love to do the stuff you hate to do then there's no limit to the success you can have in your life if you can take the things that you're afraid you'd have to do to succeed in your business or to succeed in your life or to succeed in your relationship there are things everybody doesn't want to do and the more focused you are and how you're not going to do that the more life seems to bring those things up for you and makes them barriers so maybe on labor day maybe it's time to take something that you can't stand doing and saying you know i'm going to do this for two hours i'm going to find a way to love the hell out of it and if you did you might find a little breakthrough you might find that if you're in the moment with anything and you tap into your ability to enjoy anything in life and you just focus on what you can give instead of what you can get and that state of giving work disappears and uh doesn't matter if you're by the ocean or in the desert it doesn't matter with um whether people even thank you or not honestly as much as we all enjoy people's gratitude when you've done something really well and you know it doesn't matter what anybody else says you know who you are you know what you've become you know what you've given in the end even the people that seem to be selfish inside we all are yearning for something more in ourselves we're yearning to feel like our life matters and i see people all the time it makes me choke up who are just working their tail off innate and they're just so focused on the work that they've forgotten that it's a gift they can give sometimes that gift is just their joy sometimes that gift is your attention sometimes that gift is a level of effort that's extraordinary and i think one of the reasons i've been able to reach so many people is when people come to my events if you can imagine you know most people won't sit for a three hour movie that somebody has you know spent 300 million dollars on and i take people for a weekend for 50 hours i've got you know oprah winfrey there who says i won't sit for two hours and ends up loving it and becoming a dear friend and i've got a soccer mom from germany on a headset translated for 50 hours and they all come out of that going most incredible experience of my life it's because when i'm up there it isn't labor it's serving um if you can tap into that service gosh then i get choked up when i talk about it it's um it's what life's made for it's life's not about me life's about we you know that maybe on labor day it's a good time to remember that um labor is service and service is life and then when we serve something more than ourselves we feel more alive so that's my two second rant um i'm an emotional guy and it's an issue that i think most people are missing and it's it's you see so many people out there without a job or jobs that are just completely unthanked i think one of those jobs is all of the people in the men and women in the armed services that are going out there working their tail off giving their labor where their life is on the line for us and i hope maybe on labor day you'll think about some of those people too so take care blessings live strong and live with passion

Channel: Tony Robbins

Views: 167,829

Keywords: tony robbins, motivation, inspiration

Id: 9fP2kPNJ0jo

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021