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Are you looking for motivational quotes by Tony Robbins? What does he have to say about success, money, and decision-making?
When you google “motivational speakers,” Tony Robbins appears at or near the top of the results. A speaker and writer for decades, Robbins has said a lot that’s worth hearing again and understanding more deeply.
Keep reading for 15 motivational quotes by Tony Robbins.
Tony Robbins Motivational Quotes
We plucked out some of the best Tony Robbins motivational quotes from three of his books and organized them into five categories: money, decision-making, success and achievement, thoughts and behaviors, and creating your dream life. We added context and explanation for each quote to help you understand his ideas.
Quotes About Money
“When you lack confidence about money, it unconsciously affects your confidence in other areas too.”
Becoming skillful with money gives you confidence that spills over into the rest of your life. When you know your finances are in good shape, you can live with greater assurance that you can withstand any trials and tribulations.
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Money: Master the Game reflects his belief that your emotions influence your thoughts and actions. If you feel lethargic, your thoughts and behaviors will likely also be sluggish and unmotivated. If you feel energized and confident, your mindset and actions will reflect that enthusiasm.
“You’re already a financial trader.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Money: Master the Game refers to the main point of the book: Mastering money means building an investing strategy that yields passive income for life and gives you the choice of when, where, and whether to continue working. Conversely, neglecting to master money means that you’ll always need to trade your time for money.
Robbins argues that earned wages alone can’t create true wealth if we spend that money instead of putting it to work. If you spend what you earn, you’ll need to trade more hours for more dollars—but, if you invest your money, it can create income while you’re inactive.
If you fail to master money, it will take control of you. You’ll have to spend all your time getting more by trading hours for dollars at a traditional wage-earning job. Instead, Robbins asserts, you must learn to make money work for you by investing to build passive income.
“The secret to wealth is simple: Find a way to do more for others than anyone else does. Become more valuable.”
Robbins says that you can multiply your income without adding to your working hours by finding a way to provide more value to your company or your customers. Expand your knowledge and skills, offer something few other people provide, and be innovative. The more value you continually add to people’s lives, the more money you’ll earn consistently.
Reflect on how you can be more valuable to your company. Can you increase efficiency, develop new systems, improve output quality, or cut costs? Find a way to add 10 times the value of the salary raise you want. You might have to get creative. One massage therapist who was constantly booked up couldn’t possibly take additional clients to increase his earnings, but he realized that he could connect with a nearby physical therapist and get referral fees. As a result, he nearly doubled his income without increasing his workload.
Look for ways to add value in all areas of your life, including your home and community. Although you may not be paid for these efforts, you’ll feel fulfilled and enjoy a rich life if you live by this principle.
Quotes About Decision-Making
“Enjoy making decisions.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Awaken the Giant Within is about embracing your decision-making power. Many people mistakenly believe their lives are shaped by their circumstances—they go where the current takes them without making any active decisions, feeling out of control.
However, life is actually dictated by decisions. When you make a decision about who you are and what you want, you’re making a commitment to do anything necessary to realize that vision. Each decision—no matter how small—sets into motion a series of actions and events that ultimately shape your life.
“Anytime you have difficulty making an important decision, you can be sure that it’s the result of being unclear about your values.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote, also from Awaken the Giant Within, relates to this point he makes: Your values dictate every evaluation and decision you make. When you’re clear on your values, they act as your compass, guiding you unequivocally toward any action that upholds them.
However, your values developed largely without your awareness—through external influences like parents, friends, and culture—and, as such, you may not know what they are. Reflect on what your values are, evaluate whether they’re guiding you to the life you want, abandon disempowering values, and adopt empowering ones.
“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action.”
Once you have a goal in mind, figure out a course of action that seems likely to get you closer to that goal, then take that course. In Unlimited Power, Robbins emphasizes this step very strongly; no matter how much you want something or how carefully you plan, you’ll never get closer to your goals unless you take action.
Once you’ve started your plan of action, regularly review your progress toward your goal and consider whether each action so far has served you well. Robbins adds that, in many cases, other people’s responses to your actions will be the best indicator of whether or not you’re getting closer to your goals.
If you determine that an action got you closer to your goal in some way, then continue doing it. However, if it didn’t, then you must be flexible enough to change your approach. Another of Robbins’s essential tips is that you mustn’t let yourself stagnate.
Quotes About Success & Achievement
“Who you know, where you go, and what you own are not the true measure of personal success.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Unlimited Power reflects his belief that true success in life doesn’t come simply from creating unlimited power or even from achieving your personal goals. Rather, success comes from using your unlimited power to help others.
Robbins recommends taking 10% of your income and donating it to good causes. Furthermore, he suggests starting this practice today rather than waiting until some undefined point in the future when you’re “successful.” However, Robbins adds that generosity isn’t just about money; you can be generous with your time, with your skills, with your love, or with anything you have that others need.
Finally, give more than you think you’ll ever get back—the happiness and fulfillment you’ll get from doing so are worth more than anything you could possibly give away.
“Knowledge is not power—it’s potential power. Knowledge is not mastery. Execution is mastery. Execution will trump knowledge every day of the week.”
To act effectively, start with theoretical knowledge—for example, knowing how to build wealth—and then take action. Thinking and feeling positively won’t work unless you take effective action.
In Money: Master the Game, Robbins explains that most people end up without enough money because they never make a plan and execute it. Afraid to look at their finances, they simply hope that things will work out and tell themselves that financial skills are too far above them. If nobody steers the ship, there’s no telling where you might end up. To ensure a positive outcome, make a plan and follow through with three key commitments: Focus relentlessly, commit completely, and embrace serendipity.
“The movers and shakers of the world are often professional modelers.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Unlimited Power refers to a practice called neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Nervous systems are like computers all using the same operating system. Therefore, whatever one person can do, any person can do; it’s just a matter of running the right mental “programs.”
You can figure out which programs to run by observing and imitating people who have already done what you’re trying to do. For example, someone who wants to become a better martial artist might study Bruce Lee: how he moves, how and when he strikes, and even how he breathes during a fight. Robbins calls this process modeling.
However, there’s more to NLP than just copying the person’s physical actions. Robbins says you have to copy that person’s mental state, intentions, beliefs, and values. If you want to achieve what someone else has achieved, then you must—at least for a short while—think and act exactly like that person.
Note: Although NLP has been debunked, scientists agree that imitative learning (learning by watching others) is an effective way to develop new skills.
Quotes About Thoughts & Behaviors
“The birth of excellence begins with our awareness that our beliefs are a choice.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Unlimited Power is behind his idea that you can replace your disempowering beliefs with powerful ones. According to Robbins, changing your beliefs is as easy as simply deciding to do so: You can identify a disempowering belief, pick a powerful belief that you’d like to replace it, and then act according to that new belief.
To help with this process, Robbins suggests that you imagine what life will be like once that new, empowering belief is in place. Envision, as clearly and specifically as possible, a situation in which you act according to that new belief. This will put you in the right mindset to go forward and make your imagined life a reality.
“Every day, stand guard at the door of your mind, and you alone decide what thoughts and beliefs you let into your life.”
In Money: Master the Game, Robbins explains that your beliefs determine what you focus on. They’re habitual thoughts that cause you to interpret your experience through the “lens” of that thought—a filtering function of the reticular activating system (RAS), a key part of the brain. Then, they influence your experience in accord with what the belief emphasizes.
For instance, you might believe that work is a slog. So, when you sit down each day, your mind will habitually pick out aspects of your experience that confirm that belief—such as daily aches and pains—and make you most aware of them. Then you think, “Ugh, another day of this,” and reinforce the belief—a positive feedback loop that will persist unless consciously broken.
“Our behavior is the result of the state we’re in.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Unlimited Power is about the close link between your mental and emotional states and what your body is doing. For example, someone who’s afraid will probably be tense, have an elevated heart rate, and breathe quickly and shallowly—these are all physical responses to the emotion of fear. However, the connection goes both ways. This person can bring his fear under control by relaxing his muscles, sitting up straight, and taking slow, deep breaths; a physical state associated with calmness and confidence.
The same goes for any mental or emotional state: You can create the state you want by recreating the physical cues that go along with it. For instance, if you want to improve your focus, you could lean forward; if you want to feel happier, you could force a smile. Just as your body naturally reacts to what you think and feel, your brain naturally reacts to what you do.
Quotes About Creating Your Dream Life
“Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards.”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Awaken the Giant Within implies that your current thoughts and behaviors have produced the life you have now, so you can’t expect to get different results as long as you continue to follow the same patterns. Whether you’re an individual looking to improve your life, the head of a company seeking to make the organization successful, or a government leader trying to raise your country’s international profile, the basic principles of change are the same.
The first principle is to raise your standards. The standards you set dictate your aspirations, your expectations of yourself, and what you’re willing to tolerate.
“Why not make cheerfulness, outrageousness, playfulness a new priority for yourself?”
This Tony Robbins motivational quote from Awaken the Giant Within refers to positive emotions (“emotions of power”). The more you nurture them, the better protection they provide against negative emotions. One positive emotion is cheerfulness, which goes beyond feeling inwardly happy. Cheerfulness spreads happiness to those around you, while also vanquishing painful feelings such as anger, depression, disappointment, fear, frustration, guilt, hurt, and inadequacy.
Being cheerful doesn’t mean that you deny having challenges but that you feel assured that you have the tools to overcome them, which raises your self-esteem.
“The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself.”
Robbins contends that thinking is merely a sequence of asking and answering questions. In other words, virtually every thought you have is preceded by a question, even if it’s not one you consciously asked. The questions you ask yourself set the tone for your thought patterns, so it’s critical to make a habit of consciously asking yourself positive, empowering questions that will lead to empowering thoughts.
For example, if you’ve tried and failed to skateboard three times in a row, ask yourself, “What do I need to do differently?” This is an empowering question that’s framed to find a solution, and it leads to empowering, concrete solutions, such as, “Adjust my footing.” Don’t ask yourself, “Why can’t I get it?” This is a disempowering question that leads to disempowering answers such as, “I’m not coordinated enough.”
Wrapping Up
These motivational quotes by Tony Robbins just scratch the surface of all he’s written over the years, but they still provide a fairly comprehensive idea of his ideas and advice. What would you add? Let us know in the comments below.
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