Tony Robbins on the 5 Keys to Wealth and Happiness

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” — Henry David Thoreau

If you want to grow your wealth and happiness, you also need to grow your capabilities and skills.

You need to be able to deal with frustration rejection, financial pressure, and complacency.

And you need to know how to create more value than you receive.

So if it feels like some invisible force is holding you back from your wealth and happiness, take a look at whether one or more of the 5 keys to wealth and happiness is the answer you seek.

In Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement, Tony Robbins shares the 5 keys to wealth and happiness.

1. You Must Learn How To Handle Frustration

Problems are part of the package.  Your ability to solve problems and deal with frustration are key to your success.  If you avoid problems, or can’t handle frustration, you limit what you’re capable of in terms of wealth and happiness.

Tony Robbins writes:

“Here’s the first key to the creation of wealth and happiness.  You must learn how to handle frustration.  If you want to become all you can become, do all you can do, hear all you can hear, see all you can see, you’ve got to learn how to handle frustration. 

Frustration can kill dreams. It happens all the time. 

Frustration can change a positive attitude into a negative one, an empowering state into a crippling one.  The worst thing a negative attitude does is wipe out self-discipline. 

And when that discipline is gone, the results you desired are gone.

So to ensure long-term success, you must learn how to discipline your frustration.  Let me tell you something.  The key to success is massive frustration.  Look at almost any great success, and you’ll find there’s been massive frustration along the way. 

Anybody who tells you otherwise, doesn’t know anything about achieving. 

There are two kinds of people — those who’ve handled frustration and those who wish they had.

People get paid very well to handle frustration.  If you’re broke, it’s probably because you aren’t handling much frustration.  You say, ‘Well, I’m broke, and that’s why I’m frustrated.’

You’ve got it backward.  If you handled more frustration, you would be rich.  A major difference between people who are financially secure and people who are not is how they handle frustration. 

I’m not callous enough to suggest that poverty doesn’t have huge frustrations.  I’m saying the way not to be poor is to take on more and more frustration until you succeed. 

People say, ‘Well, people with money don’t have any problems.’ If they take on enough, they probably have more problems. 

They just know how to deal with them, to come up with new strategies, new alternatives.”

2. You Must Learn How To Handle Rejection

You need to know how to deal with, learn from, and leap frog rejection.   Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and you can use rejection as a tool for learning what works and what doesn’t.  It’s feedback, not failure, unless you give up and stop trying.

Tony Robbins writes:

“Here’s the second key.  You must learn how to handle rejection.  When I repeat that in a seminar, I can feel the physiology in the room change.  Is there anything in the human language with more sting than the tiny word ‘no’?

If you’re in sales, what’s the difference between making $100,000 and $25,000?

The main difference is learning how to handle rejection so that fear no longer stops you from taking action.  The best salesmen are those who are rejected the most.

They’re the ones who can take any “no” and use it as a prod to go on to the next ‘yes.’”

3. You Must Learn to Handle Financial Pressure

Whether you have too much or too little there’s always some sort of financial pressure around you.  Part of being able to fund your life and live your lifestyles involves dealing successfully with financial pressure.

Tony Robbins writes:

“Here’s the third key to wealth and happiness.  You must learn to handle financial pressure.  The only way not to have financial pressure is not to have any finances.

There are many kinds of financial pressure, and they’ve destroyed many people.  They can create greed, envy, deceit, or paranoia.  They can rob you of your sensitivity or rob you of your friends.

Now remember, I said they can, not that they will.  Handling financial pressure means knowing how to get and knowing how to give, knowing how to earn and knowing how to save.

When I first started to make money, I started to catch hell for it.  My friends disowned me.  They said, ‘You’re into money.  What’s your problem?’  I said, ‘I’m not into money.  I just have some.’

They wouldn’t see it that way.  People somehow perceived me as a different person because I had financial status.  Some were very resentful.  So that’s one kind of financial pressure.

Not having enough money is another kind of financial pressure.  You probably feel that pressure every day.  Most people do.

But whether you have a lot or a little, you deal with financial pressure.”

4. You Must Learn How To Handle Complacency

If things are good enough and you’ve got what you need, then why keep trying?  Because life’s not static.  Things change.  If you want to keep what you’ve got, then you’ve got to go for more.

Tony Robbins writes:

“So you can do anything.  And that’s where number four butts in.  You must learn how to handle complacency.  You’ve seen people in your life, or celebrities or athletes, who reach a level of success and then stop. 

They start to get comfortable, and they lose what got them there in the first place.

Comfort can be one of the most disastrous emotions a body can have.  What happens when a person gets too comfortable?  He stops growing, stops working, stops creating added value.  You don’t want to get too comfortable.  If you really feel comfortable, chances are you stopped growing.  

What did Bob Dylan say? ‘He who is not busy being born is busy dying.’  You’re either climbing or you’re sliding.

You can take any experience and make it an opportunity for growth, your you can take it and make it an invitation for decay.  You can see retirement as the beginning of a richer life, or you can see it as the end of your working life. 

You can see success as a springboard to greater things, or you can see it as a resting place. 

And if it’s a resting place, chances are you won’t keep it for long.”

5.  Always Give More than You Expect to Receive.

Zig Ziglar taught us that we can have everything in life we want, if we will just help enough other people get what they want.  It’s true.  If you want to capture more value, you need to create more value.

Tony Robbins writes:

“Here’s the last key.  Always give more than you expect to receive.  This may be the most important key of all because it virtually guarantees true happiness.  If you want to make your life work, you have to start with how to give. 

Most people start their life thinking about nothing but how to receive. 

Receiving is not a problem. 

Receiving is like the ocean. 

But you’ve got to make sure you are giving so you can start the process in motion. 

The problem in life is people want things first.  A couple will come to me, and the man will say his wife doesn’t treat him well.  And the woman will say it’s because he’s not every affectionate.  

So they’re each waiting for the other to make the first move, to provide the first proof.  

What kind of relationship is that?  How long is it going to last?

The key to any relationship is that you have to give first and then keep giving.  Don’t’ stop and wait to receive. 

When you start  keeping score, the game’s over.  You’re standing their saying, ‘I gave, now it’s her turn,’ and  the game is over.  She’s gone. 

You can take your score to the next spinning planet because the scoreboard doesn’t work that way there.  You’ve got to be willing to plant the seed and then nurture its growth.

What would happen if you went to the soil and said, ‘Give me some fruit.  Give me some plants.’?  

The soil would probably respond, ‘Excuse me, sir, but you’re a little confused.  You must be new here.  That’s not the way the game is played.’ 

Then it would explain that you plant the seed.   

You take care of it.  You water it and till the soil.  You fertilize it.  You protect it and  nurture it. 

Then, if you do it well, you will get your plant or your fruit sometime later.  You could ask of the soil forever, but it wouldn’t change things. 

You have to keep giving, keep nurturing, for the soil to bear fruit — and life’s exactly the same way.”

If you internalize and embrace these 5 keys to wealth and happiness, you can overcome a lot of what holds people back over a lifetime.

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