What Tony Robbins, the world’s leading self-improvement guru, does every single morning

There’s probably no bigger name in self-improvement than self-made Tony Robbins. The incomparably vivacious 6-foot-7-inch motivational speaker is known for his life-transformation immersions that draw up to 10,000 people, his best-selling books like Awaken The Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!, and he counts sports, business, and world leaders like Bill Clinton as clients.

Now Robbins is the subject of a Netflix documentary, debuting July 15, called I Am Not Your Guru. Created by the director of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Joe Berlinger, it lifts the curtain on what Robbins-style transformation really looks like, where his powerful philosophy comes from, and how his (often-eyebrow raising) method affects deep change for people.

One thing Robbins credits for his influence, success, and billionaire status?

His Priming Ritual, which he does every morning to create “a state for success, gratitude, and happiness instead of anger or fear.”

Below, we share some of Robbin’s super detailed pointers, which he recently explained on his podcast The Psychology of Success [Tony Robbins and X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis talk with Joe Polish about what it takes to achieve true wealth and fulfillment. Added May 27, 2016].

“Anyone who succeeds has a plan and acts on it every day,” says Robbins. “Most people are wired for stress, they’re wired for frustration, for feeling lonely. They have a highway to feeling pissed off and they’ve got dirt roads to happiness, so I decided I’m going to wire myself for happiness. I wasn’t born that way….Now I can just wake up and be happy. Because I’ve wired myself in a different way, neurologically, and then I show others how to do it as well.”

Here’s are the two practices Tony Robbins does every morning that massively impacts him to be successful and happy.

Take a cold plunge every morning—seriously.

I believe the body is the place that drives the mind the fastest. You can go inside your head all day, and try to resolve things, and make excuses or freak out… In order to make myself do things, I had trigger this body to feel strength and to know that when I say something, I mean it. And so I have simple ritual I do every morning, it’s enjoyable though it might not sound it, but it is now.

I am privileged enough to have multiple homes, at one of them I have a river… and at the rest I have cold plunges. And I go into 56-degree [water] for about 60 seconds every morning…. Every cell in your body, every nerve in your body explodes, and it’s phenomenal for your lymph system, phenomenal for your health. But it’s also just a simple discipline that says, “I say it, it happens.”

…And I do a Priming Ritual… it takes about a minute.

I don’t hope that I’m going to show up at my best, I create a state for it….So what I do is a breathing pattern. It’s an explosive breathing pattern I learned in India: breathing in the breath, then exploding it our from the gut, out the nose. I do that 3 sets of 10 pause, 3 sets of 10 pause, 3 sets of 10 pause, so it alters my state.

Then I just do three things for 10 minutes.

Because I have this deal with myself: If you don’t have 10 minutes for yourself, you don’t have a life…. I don’t even know if I want to meditate…to not think? I don’t know too many people who can do that. And I don’t even know if I don’t want to frigging think.

If you don’t have 10 minutes for yourself, you don’t have a life.

So I thought, I want to focus on the emotions that allow me to be the better me. And the two emotions that most people are messed up by are anger and fear. And when you’re grateful you can’t be angry. And you can’t be fearful when you’re grateful…

The two emotions that most people are messed up by are anger and fear—gratitude is an antidote to that.

So when I look at people almost always they’re reacting our of anger or our of fear. It’s some version; gratitude is the antidote to that.

1. I spend three minutes and think of three things, three people, three situations I’m grateful for….

I make sure one of the things I’m grateful for [each day] is something really simple like the wind on my face, or something beautiful, like my child’s smile….

And the reason I do that is that I remember interviewing the astronauts.… If you know the story of many of these astronauts, most of them had some major emotional challenges; some abused alcohol, some drugs. They have a real rough time [after their careers peaked at, say, age 32] because they forgot to find adventure in a smile. They thought the only way is to go to the moon. I train myself to make sure that it’s not just the big, beautiful things that are part of my life [that I’m grateful for] but the little things.

2. Then I do three minutes of a blessing, as corny as it may sound.

I imagine life, god, energy coming into my body, healing every muscle, every nerve in my body, strengthening everything—the best of me, my passion, my love, my generosity, my creativity, my humor.

Then I see any problem that needs to be solved, just being solved. Because otherwise I tend to think I got to do it all. And then once I feel that fully…. I do a circle of my intimate family, my kids, my wife, my friends, and circle all the way out to my clients and that same energy…. I imagine them being healed, getting what they need, having the life they deserve.

3. The last three minutes are my are my three to thrive.

I think of three specific outcomes that matter to me. And I don’t think about achieving them, I see, feel, and experience them as them done, and see the impact that it has. I see people’s lives touched, I see the joy I feel as it’s done, and I feel grateful. And it’s [all] 10 minutes, but honestly it usually goes 15-20 because I’m having a damn good time.

How about a workplace confidence booster? Here’s what successful women do to power their careers and learn what happened when Lena Dunham and Sheryl Sandberg teamed up to coach women in their careers…