Book SummaryUnlimited Power, by Tony Robbins

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Unlimited Power

Unlimited Power is a classic self-help book that teaches you how to take control of your life. The author, Tony Robbins, claims that the key to this is ensuring that your actions, beliefs, and goals all work together and complement each other. He believes that doing so will allow you to harness a level of energy and conviction that would normally be impossible to access, and he says you can use that energy to achieve all of your goals in life.

Robbins is a world-famous life coach, motivational speaker, and business strategist. Unlimited Power, published in 1986, was his first big hit as an author. The book has enjoyed largely positive reviews praising its...

Unlimited Power Summary Harness the Power of Your Mind

Robbins believes that taking control of your life starts with taking control of your mind.

Many people find themselves wasting enormous amounts of time and energy because their thoughts and beliefs aren’t aligned with their goals—their mental gears grind against each other instead of meshing smoothly. For example, imagine someone wants to lose weight but spends a lot of time thinking about food and believes that he lacks the self-control to eat healthily. He’ll waste a lot of energy fighting against those thoughts and beliefs and berating himself for his perceived lack of willpower.

The first step toward achieving your goals is to eliminate that internal resistance; in other words, to make sure that what you think and what you do are really getting you closer to what you want.

(Shortform note: As a partial counterpoint to Robbins, psychologist Tara Brach says that it’s impossible to fully control your thoughts and feelings; however, you can make sure that they don’t control you. In her book Radical Acceptance, Brach says that you should face each moment with [recognition of...

Unlimited Power Summary Take Power Over Your Life

Now that you know how to create energy and momentum by controlling your body and your mind, it’s time to learn how to harness that energy to achieve your goals. Based on Robbins’s ideas, we’ve created a four-step process to accomplish anything you can imagine. We’ve included some of Robbins’s essential tips to help you through the steps.

Step 1: Decide What You Want

Before you can start working, you need to know what you’re working toward. Robbins says that an effective goal must be clear, ambitious yet achievable, and most importantly, inspirational. That last point is crucial because, no matter how much energy you have, you won’t want to put any of it toward a goal that doesn’t excite you.

(Shortform note: Robbins suggests setting goals that are challenging enough to inspire you but not so hard that they become frustrating or disheartening. In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone suggests a different approach: Think of a realistic goal, then multiply it by 10. For example, if your “reasonable goal” is to retire in 20 years, your 10X goal—doing it 10 times faster—would be...

Unlimited Power Summary Other People Multiply Your Power

So far, you’ve learned how to create incredible energy by aligning your thoughts with your actions and how to use that energy to take control of your own life. However, no matter how empowered and motivated you are, there will always be limits to what a single person can achieve. That’s why Robbins says that you can only achieve the titular Unlimited Power through leadership and cooperation.

Counterpoint: Play to Your Strengths

Robbins says that the only way to achieve your full potential is to become a good leader with strong people skills. However, this is a narrow way of thinking, and not everyone is born to be a leader. As a counterpoint, in Limitless, Jim Kwik says that the key to unlocking your potential is to identify where your talents naturally lie.

Kwik says that there are four kinds of intelligence and that everyone is a natural-born genius in at least one of them:

1) What Robbins describes here is what Kwik calls a blaze genius: someone with strong people skills and leadership...

Unlimited Power Summary Use Your Power to Help Others

Now that you know how to create and harness unlimited energy to achieve your goals, Robbins warns that you mustn’t let your personal successes define you or control you. In other words, stay true to your own beliefs and values even after you successfully transform your life.

For example, don’t start believing that you’re better than others because of what you’ve accomplished. Similarly, don’t fall into the trap of believing that your only worth is in what you accomplish or how much money you have so that you become obsessed with working.

Others may try to define you or stereotype you based on superficial things like your job title or your income; don’t accept their judgments either. The only one who defines you is yourself.

(Shortform note: Robbins talks briefly and simply about defining yourself, but in reality, doing so is a complex and deeply personal process. Some people define themselves by their jobs (CEO, artist, scientist), others by their belief systems (Christian, atheist, humanist), and still others by their relationships (loving parent, supportive friend, and so on). The good news is that you’ve already taken...

Shortform Exercise: Align Your Beliefs With Your Goals

The key idea of Unlimited Power is to fully harness your energy by making sure that your thoughts, actions, and goals all support one another. In this exercise, you’ll choose one or two of each (thoughts, actions, and goals) and make sure they’re all aligned with each other.

What’s one goal that you’d like to achieve? Describe it in detail. (For example, your goal might be to spend a year putting 10% of each paycheck into a savings account.)