I can remember sitting in the audience at one of Tony Robbins’ events. He said the phrase “Rewire your brain.” This was the first time the concept of neuroplasticity was introduced to me.

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout your life. It’s a simple reality that your brain changes and therefore whatever you think and do can be completely shifted. In other words, nothing in your life is fixed.

This was a radical idea for me back in 2013 when I was battling extreme mental illness and believed it would be my eventual downfall. My life was a mess and I was just existing. The pain had numbed me and I didn’t give a damn about anyone else.

I remember sitting in the taxi on the way home after the event, knowing I’d never be the same again. It was an emotional experience that I thanked Tony for initially, and later, realized that Tony’s ideas were just the catalyst. The changes were the results of my actions.

Tony’s ability to rewire my brain with his words and ideas changed everything. They can do the same for you.

“Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning we give it.”

This quote is the best way to reprogram your brain forever. It’s more than a reframe; it’s a transformational thought that will set you free.

Your brain gives meaning to every thought you have. That’s right: you decide the meaning of everything in life. Someone can tell you their opinion but you decide if you are going to accept it or not.

Your failures can have an empowering meaning.
Your near-misses can mean you’re almost there.
Your periods of stagnation can mean you’re preparing.
Your lack of luck could mean your lack of trying.

What meaning are you going to assign to everything that happens going forward?

“We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.”

There are things you daydream about all the time. Your mind can tell you that these fantasies can never be real.

The truth is you can be anything you want. You can dream something up out of nowhere and then use your daily actions to manifest it into the physical world. The key concept here is that we are responsible.

We decide on the changes.
We commit to the changes.
And we respect the changes with our actions.

People always tell you what you can’t do but rarely what you can do. That’s why you’ve got to give yourself permission to do exactly as you wish. Don’t wait for outside validation because you may not ever get it.

“Every man dies. Not every man lives.”

You’ve met that man or woman who is dead inside. They show up every day at a job they hate, to pay for a house they don’t need, to buy stuff they think will make them happy, and the entire time they treat most people badly.

Their excessive debt weighs them down. They don’t know why they do what they do. They don’t care about anything in particular. Life is a race to survive and making it through is ‘good enough.’

There’s no point in being alive unless you actually live. What does living look like?

• Showing up with energy
• Taking care of your health and wealth
• Finding ways to be helpful to others
• Smiling for the heck of it
• Enjoying the small events
• Taking on crazy projects
• Not being afraid to fail
• Loving people for no good reason
• Spending time being creative
• Taking time off without stressing about money

You rewire your brain when you refuse to do anything less than living your life to the fullest.

“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”

There are times where we sit around and realize that we haven’t taken the actions we committed to. Understanding why that is can be challenging.

This quote from Tony holds the answer. A lack of action means you’re still unsure about the right decision for you.

Don’t blame yourself or think that you’re lazy; go back and understand whether the decision you made was the right one.

It’s easy to make the wrong decision — and even easier to go back and change your decision so you can remove the barrier to the actions you know you must take in your life.

“If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real.”

This one quote completely changed how I took action.

The old days used to involve me feeling like I wanted to take action or saying “I’ll do it tomorrow.” It was a subtle problem that didn’t look like it was the root cause of my failed dreams.

The shift in my mind was simple after hearing this quote from Tony. The moment you think of an action you need to take, either take action right then, or if that’s not possible, schedule that action in your calendar.

I remember wanting to sign up to the gym and always putting it off. After reading this quote, I looked up a few gyms at 9 PM one night. To make the action real I left my contact details on three gym’s websites. Even though it was too late to call and sign up with the gym, this next best action forced the goal to become a reality.

Sure enough, the next day, all three gyms called me to book an appointment. It was too hard to back out so I made the appointments. Shortly after, I was a member at a local gym and now felt like I had to get value out of my membership. Eventually, I began to enjoy going to the gym and it changed my health for the better.

Schedule your actions the moment you think of them.

“The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”

When you talk to people that have unmet goals that they’ve never started, you might see something odd: they have a story about why.

It’s not just any story either. They can tell their story about what they never got started with, with pinpoint precision. They can blame the results they’ve never got on a divorce, their kids, a job they hate, or toxic friends. The story you tell yourself about why you can’t have that thing is the barrier.

Stories are an enabler of your excuses.

Stories are how you explain your broken dreams to people you’ve just met.

Check in on your stories. In a single day, write down all the stories you tell yourself and other people. Here are a few of mine:

• You can’t change careers right now because the economy is bad
• Your writing results have gone backward because of the pandemic
• You’ve stopped posting so much on LinkedIn because you’re scared
• Having that cancer-check postponed is because of Covid-19
• Your work colleague doesn’t answer your calls because they think your sales results suck

These are some of my stories. Write down some of yours and notice how they limit your potential. Then drop the stories and write over the top of your old stories with new ones that empower you to take action.

“Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear.”

Your life can be dominated by fear.

Your thought patterns sound like this: “What if….happens and it ruins everything?” You find yourself thinking about the downside rather than focusing on the upside and getting where you want to go.

Fears don’t motivate you. No one wants to come face to face with their demons, unless they’re a navy seal on $200K per year.

Think about where you’re trying to head. What would life look like if it made sense? What direction have you always wanted to go and never gone?

“I’ve found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how, but 80 percent is knowing why. ”

Why you do what you do is crucial.

If you don’t know why you’re reading this article or why you feel bored or unmotivated, the ‘how’ becomes irrelevant. I’ve spoken to many people via email over the years who always want to know from me how they can do something. They look up to me as having some form of wisdom they don’t have which is false. It was only the other day that I realized what was missing: it’s the why.

If you have the why, you can Google the how.

The “why” is the hardest bit. It takes a lot of time to understand your motivations and decide on why you do what you do. My ‘why’ is to be helpful and inspire others through personal development and entrepreneurship.

What is your why? If you don’t know, what would you give as your answer if you had a gun to your head?

“At any moment, the decision you make can change the course of your life forever.”

This one makes me tear up.

You never know which decision you will make that will change your life forever. The decision I made to go to a Tony Robbins event in 2013 changed the course of my life forever.

The decision helped me defeat mental illness, it changed my career, it brought love into my life, it allowed me to start writing and reach tens of millions of people online, it caused me to drop my selfish tendencies, and it made me go from existing to living.

The decision didn’t start out as life-changing though. I didn’t want to go to the event because I was afraid to fly. When I got there, it felt like rah-rah nonsense and I was ready to leave in the first hour. It made me uncomfortable and opened up many old wounds. Every part of meeting Tony Robbins was scary.

While the decision to stay and listen to Tony seemed small and insignificant at the time, it led to all the results that followed.

Ihope these quotes from Tony Robbins can rewire your brain and show you what is possible. If one quote doesn’t have a significant impact on you then I hope the thoughts will at least lead you to the ideas that will.

You can do anything when you rewire your brain, believe anything is possible, and you control the meaning of what happens in your life.