Toby Robbins told this story to Lewis Howes on his podcast, The School of Greatness, about a conversation he had with guru Krishna Ji and how it taught him to expect less and appreciate more…
You can either read the quote below or watch the video of the conversation near the bottom of this post
He said, ‘You know you teach the secret to life is Peak State versus Lousy State, or being energy rich versus energy poor… What if you swapped those words? And you swapped Peak State for Beautiful State?’ I said, ‘That works! A high energy state is a Beautiful State. Any state that would be high energy would be like love or joy or gratitude or drive or courage or faith or playfulness or fun… And Suffering States would low energy states. So that would be frustration, sadness, resentment, loneliness, boredom…’
He said, ‘If you swap them, there is something cool that you might see or do… I’ve made a decision that I’m gonna live my life where I’m gonna be in a Beautiful State everyday, no matter what; even if it rains on my parade; even if people do things that are unjust. The reason is because, in a Beautiful State, just like you teach Peak State, everything flows… If you think of Lousy States as Suffering States then you can end suffering just by ending the state.’
And I said, ‘ I don’t really relate to the word suffering’. And I think most achievers do. Most achievers, we don’t even get fearful, we get stressed. I always tell people, ‘Fear is the achiever word for stressed’…
But what really helped me out of that conversation was, I left and went, ‘Well, where do I suffer?’ And I realised that frustration is suffering. I get frustrated. I get concerned. I get pissed off. I get worried sometimes. I get these feelings.
So, what I decided to do was to create a 90 second rule for myself where I would send suffering as it arises. Because anyone who tells you that you can end suffering is full of crap. The reason is because your brain is a two million years old brain, not designed to make you happy. It’s designed to make you survive!
There’s no saber toothed tiger for you to react to so now we worry about what people are thinking about us; do I have enough money? And in this country, in America, if you are in utter poverty, and I hate poverty… but if you make the least amount of money in this country and you are in total poverty, you are in the 1% of earners on the earth! Because 75% of the planet lives on $2.30 per day.
So, what I try to show people you can’t build on failure, you can only build on success. Over the last two years, what I’ve done is played this little 90 seconds rule. If I feel tension in me, I go, ‘OK, that’s suffering. What am I stressed about? What am I concerned about?’ And what I immediately do is that I realise ‘stressful thoughts’.
Since I’ve seen Krishna Ji, I’ve kind’ve traded one thing, what I really do now, is that I dig in and I noticed that the only time that you have stress or you suffer is when you believe a stressful thought.
So, what would be one or two of the most stressful thoughts that happen to you most often?
[Lewis answers]
When there’s a sense of loss. Or sense of less…
What I told Krishna Ji is, ‘I think I’ve found the three triggers of suffering’. He said, ‘What is that?’ I said, ‘It’s loss, less, never.
Whenever you believe, or your mind believes, a stressful thought like, ‘Oh my God, this is not going well’, or ‘this guys screwed this up, and now I’ve lost something; I’ve lost this opportunity or I’ve lost the time or I’ve lost the money.
Or, it could not be someone else, it could be you! You could say, ‘I failed to do this; I did something, or I failed to do something and as a result I’ve lost something I value, something of significance; trust, love, money, freedom, whatever’.
Or, you’ve said something or did something or failed to do something or I’ve failed to do something or say something. Now I feel like I have less love, or less money or less freedom, less of something.
And one of the worse is never. If you start believing that because she said that or she did that or I failed to do this or I said that, I’ll never have love again, I’ll never be wealthy, I’ll never be free!
Once you believe that shit, it’s true, because you won’t initiate. You won’t solve it. You won’t create it.
So, I’m very sensitive to Loss, Less, Never; anything that triggers that. And the antidote to that is to realise it’s not you.
So, you’ve thought of ‘My business is stressful. I’m sure it’ll make it’ but a little part of you is, ‘Is this gonna make it?’. Or, ‘This guy screwed up and, look, it screwed me out of all these things’. When those things happen and you suffer, it puts you in a mode where you are really suffering about it yourself… It’s the me, me, me that makes us suffer. When a woman will say that ‘I am really worried about my children; I’m really stressed’ and she’s suffering about her children and I’ll listen to her, I’ll say, ‘Tell me’, and she’ll say, ‘Well, they are not doing this, not doing that, and I’ll turn to her usually and say, ‘I hope yo can hear yourself ’cause the only reason you’re suffering is not because your children, it’s not because they are not doing well, it’s because you think that you’ve failed them. It’s about you! Because otherwise you’d just be working on a soluation. But you’re busy beating yourself up, feeling bad, thinking of the worst case scenario, right?
So, the antidote to suffering, the antidote to Lost, Less, Never is appreciation.
I always tell people, ‘Trade your expectations for appreciation, your whole life changes’.