479: Redefining SUCCESS with Jairek Robbins

[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today, you get to hear a conversation that I just had with my friend Jairek Robbins. And Jairek is someone who I’ve known for probably 10 years, I think, longer than that. We had lunch in San Diego probably at least a decade or so ago. And he was in the Miracle Morning movie if you’re aware of that. He was featured. He and his wife Amanda had a cameo in there as well, but Jairek had a part talking about vision boards and showing you his vision board while he walked on the treadmill.

Jairek is now the President recently of SUCCESS Enterprises, which you might know as SUCCESS Magazine. They’ve been around for 126 years. I did not realize that. Darren Hardy used to run SUCCESS Magazine. Now, Jairek is the face of the brand, and they’re doing some really exciting stuff over there to help people, which you’re going to hear about today. If you don’t know Jairek, he’s a bestselling author.

Fast Company calls him inspiring and says he’ll make your life less ordinary. Forbes says Jairek will teach you how to succeed. Deepak Chopra will advise you to go to Jairek to help create meaning and fulfillment in your life. Brian Tracy applauds Jairek’s ability to teach people how to develop meaning and purpose in life and then to make a difference in the lives of others.

If you’re looking for ways to level up in life and business, Jairek is your guy. And if you don’t know, Jairek’s dad is Tony Robbins, the famous author and speaker and seminar leader. And you’ll hear a cool story about Jairek’s brush with death when he was in Uganda. He was in Uganda. He had malaria. They gave him six days, not six months, six days to live. And he called his dad for advice. And he said his dad normally gives excellent advice, but on this day, he thought it was the worst advice he ever gave, that it wasn’t helpful. I guess his dad was about to go on stage in front of 10,000 people, but he thought he was brushing him off.

So, then he called his mom, asked his mom for advice. Mom, he ended up, anyway– I’ll let you hear the story in the podcast today. Keep listening. I think you’ll really love this episode with Jairek. I love Jairek. I love his energy. I love his mindset. He’s been raised in personal and professional development and he’s really, really making an impact for people. And I think he’ll make an impact for you during today’s episode.

Before we dive into the episode, I want to thank our sponsors that make this show possible, that bring it to you every week, that help support my family, first and foremost, Organifi, they make the highest quality organic whole foods supplements that are not filled with chemical fillers, binders, and preservatives that you can scoop into your favorite glass of water or nut milk or smoothie. I use Organifi every day and I have for roughly, I don’t know, seven years. I really don’t keep track. It could be five, it could be eight. It’s around seven-ish, give or take.

But if you want to check out their products, their protein powder, their immunity supplements, their liver supplements, just there’s a whole variety of things, if you want to boost your health, your energy, your mental clarity, head over to Organifi.com/Hal, that’s an O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi with I’s dot-com/Hal, and then just check out their product line. They’ve got a great variety of products and I can swear by their quality of products, the team behind them across the board, they’re going to add value to your life, and make sure you use the discount code HAL, H-A-L, at checkout for 20% off your entire order.

And then, last but not least, today, I’m bringing you the podcast from the Miracle Morning app. And you go, “The app’s a sponsor?” Kind of. It’s our app so we’re sponsoring our show. And the Miracle Morning app is a free app. If you don’t have it, you can download it free on iOS or Android. And it is a completely free app and there’s a ton of features. You can track your SAVERS every day, those six habits that make up the Miracle Morning. You earn achievements and stuff along the way.

There’s a built-in journal so you can journal every day. There’s a prompted version of that journal so you can free write or you can follow prompts if you want something to help give you those thought joggers to get started. There is also a free affirmations creator that allows you to create your own affirmations, and like the journal, there’s a prompted version to help get you started. There’s also timers built in. I mean, it’s a ton of features. And there are free guided SAVERS tracks for each one of the SAVERS from the voice of the Miracle Morning app, Lucy Osborne.

And then, if you want access to the entire library of over 150 tracks and more features, there is a premium version, but it’s completely optional, and you can do a seven-day free trial. So, check it out. Head over to MiracleMorningApp.com, and if you go there from your phone, it will actually take you to either the Apple Store or the Android store. And if you already have the app, maybe do the seven-day trial and see if you like the library. It’s awesome. We actually play the tracks. Not only do I use them daily, but I play them at our team meetings, I play them on calls with other people, on keynotes I’m hired to speak. I play the app tracks all the time because they’re really, really, really good. So, check it out. Let me know what you think.

All right. Without further ado, the President of SUCCESS Enterprises, talking about how to redefine success, what it means to you, how to make your life as good as it can possibly be, my good friend, Mr. Jairek Robbins.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: And I’m on with Jairek Robbins. What’s up, buddy?

Jairek Robbins: How you doing, sir?

Hal Elrod: Dude, it’s so good to see you. It’s been way too long.

Jairek Robbins: It has been a while. How’s life in Texas?

Hal Elrod: It’s good, man. We’re living on the land. We’re homesteading. We’ve got sheep and we’ve got chickens. And we got dogs and cats. Those are pretty normal. But what else? What other animals do we have? Yeah, we have– but it’s like my wife is slinging eggs. My wife and kids are slinging eggs. The kids would come home and be like, “Mom, I need a dozen for Betty. Bring it to school today.”

Jairek Robbins: My favorite thing is the Instagram stories people are creating about egg dealers. Usually, that’s good with five chains and fur coat and all this stuff. And it’s like egg dealing in 2023. My other favorite, though, was a guy who went to go check on his chickens and he looks inside and goes, “What the– what? What?” And he goes, “What is that?” And he holds up a chicken, and the chicken has a bunch of gold chains around its neck.

Hal Elrod: No. That’s so funny. Yeah, I never realized how much I would love chickens. I love their personalities. They’re just fun. And they free range on our property. So, I’ll just be out sitting in the backyard at lunch or laying on a lounge chair, getting some sun, and chickens come up and just bobbing their head, picking up soil on the ground, and like, yeah, they’re cool. And then when people come over, they’re like, “Whoa, whoa, there’s seven chickens over there. Wait, those are sheep over there.” I’m like, “Yeah, this is the life, man. We’re living it.”

Jairek Robbins: It’s crazy. We got chickens. We put up a chicken house. We have the coolest chicken house on our street. And my wife is so tired of chickens pooping everywhere that we sold our chickens. This is right before the egg shortage, so.

Hal Elrod: No way.

Jairek Robbins: Like someone else may bank on that transaction.

Hal Elrod: The struggle is real, man. There’s chicken poop everywhere. It’s crazy. A lot of power washing at the house. Hey, dude, so I want to start with– the reason we even are here today, I texted you the other day just to congratulate you on SUCCESS. And for those that don’t know, you are now the President of SUCCESS Enterprises. Tell us a bit about what you’ve learned working for this legendary 126-year-old brand and tell me the difference between SUCCESS Enterprises and SUCCESS Magazine because I only know the latter. I don’t fully know what the Enterprises entail. So, I love to hear about that. How did you get this role, man? It’s really exciting.

Jairek Robbins: Totally. Totally. So, SUCCESS Enterprises, 126-year-old company, it represents the magazine. We have Success.com, SUCCESS Magazine, SUCCESS Coaching. Auxiliary companies, we have SUCCESS Lending, we have SUCCESS Spaces, our locations. So, we have a lot going on under the umbrella of SUCCESS.

And I think something that’s pretty unique is a brand that’s been around for 126 years. I mean, it’s represented Og Mandino. Napoleon Hill has been a part of it. We have some of the most legendary, prolific, humanistic-type people who wanted humans to do better, wanted people to live better lives. Going all the way back to Orison Swett, the guy who founded it, he wrote a really, really rough youth where he had lived between multiple homes, I think, nine by the time he was 13. And one of the places he ran across this book about personal development and it helped him psychologically, emotionally, personally to develop. And then he started this and dedicated it towards helping others live a better life, helping others become happier, healthier, stronger, more fulfilled to kind of summarize a platform there.

And it’s bound to represent some of the best on Earth over 126 years. It’s pretty cool. If you go back and look at the covers, we have everyone between Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, Marie Forleo. We have the Sharks. We have all kinds of people and we’ve been considering this concept of success. How do we bring those tools, those strategies, those insights that help people achieve success in their life and business?

Hal Elrod: Beautiful, man. And when he started it, was it as a magazine?

Jairek Robbins: Yeah, yeah. I think Russell Brunson might have the first copy.

Hal Elrod: Get out of here.

Jairek Robbins: Yeah. He was doing some research on it and digging around in personal development, and I think he actually got his hands on the physical first copy.

Hal Elrod: Wow. You need to get that back. You need to get that in your possession.

Jairek Robbins: That’s okay. Our archives, we have a copy of it as well, but even one of those people who went and found it in the world. We recently had a subscriber who’s collected probably thousands of issues, say, “Hey. I don’t know if you all want these for your archives, but I have just about every issue for the last–” and I forget how many years it’s been. But he says there’s six boxes of issues. And it’s amazing looking back at some of the content that’s been covered over decades and decades and decades of publication.

Hal Elrod: That is really cool. And so, how did you get this gig? I mean, it is a prestigious gig. And before you answer that question, to my understanding, Darren Hardy was the face of SUCCESS for many years. That’s how I knew SUCCESS, right? And also, so is your role, are you in the role that Darren was in before? Is that the same role or different, similar?

Jairek Robbins: Different role. Similar but different. So, I got a text or a direct message on Instagram, actually, and it said, “Hey,” it literally said, “I promise this isn’t a scam.” And I wrote back that I’m pretty sure that’s what every scam would start it. And he goes, “No, I’m serious.” And I said, “So am I.” And he goes, “Here, someone wants to talk with you about an opportunity.” And I said, “This is not getting any less scamming.” And he goes, “No, seriously, if you’re open to it, I can set up a meeting and you can talk to these people about an opportunity.” I’m like, “Sure, I’ll entertain it.”

Hal Elrod: At least he didn’t ask for, are you looking for an additional stream of income? Because that would have just ended it.

Jairek Robbins: That would really set off the red flag. So, want an additional stream income? We have someone who has an opportunity he wants to talk to you about it. I say, “Okay, opportunity. That’s interesting.” And so, I often keep my eyes open and just watching stuff that’s coming through. And so, it popped up and I said, “Okay, sure. Set a meeting.”

So, they set a meeting and I looked at my calendar and the email address is legit. Now, oh, maybe this is something actually useful. And so, I showed up to the meeting and this wonderful woman showed up, her name is Courtney, and she had a big smile on. And she says, “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m so excited to talk with you.” Lots of great energy. And she says, “We want you to become the face of SUCCESS.” And I’m like, “Thanks. What are you asking for?” And she’s like, “Well, we want you to be the President of SUCCESS and do this, this, this, and this.” And I was like, “Thank you, but no, thank you. I’m busy. I have my own companies. They’re doing great.” I have a business mentor for the last eight years who told me, “Do not get distracted.”

I built the business. My business requires three days a week, four hours a day to run it and operate it. We have a team of 15-plus people. We have clients 150 something, 165 countries around the world. We have active clients working with us, I think it’s 165. But we have clients all over the world. Our business is working. I have a team. It’s highly leveraged. It’s in the position. And it took me 14 and a half years to build.

Hal Elrod: Sure.

Jairek Robbins: I don’t want to get distracted. I sure sh*t don’t want to go take a job somewhere. Like, uh, it’s my real reaction. And so, I guess I grew up with all the psychological training job, just over broke, working paycheck to paycheck. No, thank you. I’d rather at least own my job and be self-employed. But as become a true business owner, where I own the entity and the entity works for me, and then invest my cash and have my cash working for me. I’ve been ingrained in that psychology so I’m not a fan of jobs to say the least.

And so, I talked with them. I said no. I went over to my business mentor and my wife, and they talked me into it. They went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a good one. You should do it.” I was like, “What are you talking about? You’ve told me for eight years, do not get distracted.” He goes, “I know, but this is a good one.” Now, I teased him. I said, “You’re either going to be the chapter of the book that says always listen to the old guy or you’re going to be the chapter titled The Old Guy Isn’t Always Right. We’ll find out over time.”

Hal Elrod: That’s funny.

Jairek Robbins: And so, where it’s at right now, I stepped into that role. My main focus was really coaching the life for them. So, I focused on that department. I had 300% year over year growth in the department as far as revenue is concerned. We got things moving in the right direction. We’ve been able to bring on amazing, amazing set of coaches and we’re setting the foundation to be able to really scale it from here.

Hal Elrod: That’s incredible because, yeah, I mean, when you’re talking about the business that you were running that was in 150 clients, 150 countries, that was essentially a coaching business. Is that right?

Jairek Robbins: So, that business is training. That’s more or less personal development training. We have a program and that one has gone around the world. Basically, what I did was I was working in coaching and consulting, so two sides of that, with one-on-one clients. And over the years, I had a rule that every five clients, I’d raise the price. One, in personal development and business consultant, for some reason, we generally have a tough time justifying raising the price, mainly because it’s a helping profession and helping is most important.

So, if someone comes to me and they’re like, “I really need your help, but I just can’t afford that.” My heart always goes, “Screw the money. Where do you need help with?” And I’ll get them the result, like that’s who I am. People always say, “What would you do if money wasn’t an issue?” Well, if you hang out with me on a Saturday morning, I wake up, have my Miracle Morning routine, do all the good stuff, and then I usually pop into my DMs and just help people. And it’s like, “Hey, what are you struggling with? Here, let me help you. Here, have you read this? Have you done this? Have you applied this? Here, let me send you a PDF. Let me make sure you have this.” I will literally have fun just helping people navigate their stuff in life. It’s a passion of mine. It’s a hobby, it’s a joy. It’s something that brings bliss and fulfillment to my daily life. It feels good to be able to have solutions for people and help them navigate the stuff they’re going through.

And so, generally speaking, I give stuff away all the time. And my team doesn’t like that always because it’s a business and it pays their earnings and paychecks and they kind of need to make sure they’re secured in their jobs, but it’s just my nature. So, I do that. And in this piece, as we brought that to life around the world, I noticed every five clients I’ve raised my price, at one point, I started to get pretty expensive where people would pay tens of thousands of dollars a month to work with me and that was fun. It feels nice to the ego. It’s great for lifestyle. But the part that kind of frustrated me was it prevented me from helping more people. So, my business went better, my finances got better, my lifestyle improved, but the reach of humans didn’t go up. And so, what I did…

Hal Elrod: You’re helping less people at a deeper level, if you will.

Jairek Robbins: Yeah. So, I took all the same tools that I had been teaching people at 10 grand a month and said, “How do I get this to the majority of humans in an accessible way?” So, I broke that into a program on high performance. We put it on Udemy and we made it, I think, it’s 13 bucks or 18 bucks. And I was like, “There.” Now, all these people can have access to the same stuff that people pay 10 grand a month to work with me one on one with. They can have all the tools, myself, Shawn Stevenson, Wim Hof, Ben Greenfield, all the tools, they can have them and they can go better their life.

And I think one of the coolest things is I love going in there and reading the comments of reviews. It’s like 4.6 or 4.7 out of 5 stars, has 8,000 people from 150 or 100 something countries around the world. And it’s so awesome, seeing everything between a student in India saying, “Thank you, sir, you helped me ace my exams,” to a female pilot who’s following her dream, who lives in a country that women do not become pilots. Her family is not okay with her pursuing this career. But she took a stand and says, “You know what? It’s my passion. It’s my dream. I’m going to do it.” And she used the program to keep her psychology strong and keep mentally and emotionally resilient. She became a pilot and then sent me a note of her parents saying how proud they are of her.

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Jairek Robbins: And so, just knowing it’s reaching people at the moment they need it in their life with the tools they need to actually navigate whatever they’re going through.

Hal Elrod: And this is the $13 program?

Jairek Robbins: Thirteen bucks.

Hal Elrod: So, how do you find that?

Jairek Robbins: I think you go to U-D-E-M-Y dot-com, Udemy.com/highperformance.

Hal Elrod: High performance, okay. All right. Awesome. Udemy.com, U-D-E-M-Y dot-com/high performance. Yeah, dude, I’m going to check that out. For 13 bucks, what do you get to lose? That’s incredible.

Jairek Robbins: I’m telling you, it’s all the best tools I use in exactly how to use it. It’s simple, tactful, and useful. That’s what I wanted. I wanted someone to plug in. It’s three hours long, and it just turns you into a rocket ship to get you where you want to go.

Hal Elrod: Beautiful. I have to share something with you that I don’t think I’ve ever shared this to you. I don’t think you know this, but our mutual friend, Theresa Laurico, when I had cancer, so I was diagnosed with cancer and I told the oncologist, “I don’t want to do chemotherapy. No offense, doc, but it’s poison and I don’t want to poison my body.” And he said, “Hal, you’ve got two to three weeks to live if you don’t start chemo tomorrow.” And I thought that was a scare tactic.

So, my wife is squeezing my hand till it’s going to break. She’s crying. I’ve two to three weeks to live if I don’t start chemo. So, I go home. I call some of the best holistic oncologists in America, two of them, and they said, “Hal, your oncologist wasn’t exaggerating. Whether or not he was trying to scare you, the cancer you have will kill you in the next few weeks, and there’s nothing that any holistic oncologists can do. There’s no time. Your organs are failing. They’re shutting down.” And I went, “Oh, God. Okay.”

So, reluctantly, I started chemo the next day, and it was so difficult because, like you mentioned, like a J-O-B, you were conditioned your whole life to be an entrepreneur, right? I’ve conditioned for the last 20 years to be healthy and build my immune system. So, talking to Theresa Laurico about it, she checked in, “How are you doing?” And I said, “I’m really struggling. I’m doing this chemo. I feel like it’s poisoning me. And I know that me having that belief is not going to heal me.” And she said, “Let me tell you a story about Jairek Robbins that I think will help you.” And I want to hear you, I’m going to tell you real quick what she told me, and then you can actually clean it up with the facts, but she said…

Jairek Robbins: I’ll tell you the real story.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, exactly. So, she said, “Jairek was in another country. He caught, I think, it was malaria. He called his dad.” And your dad is Tony Robbins, pretty much, he doesn’t know, who’s been on the cover of SUCCESS magazine. That’s what I was thinking when you were listing up the people, and your dad, don’t forget that. But she said that you called from the hospital. You said, “I’ve got to do this medication. I don’t know what to do.” And he said, “If you believe it’ll work, it’ll work.” So, that’s the high-level version of the story. And I applied it, and every time I would have the chemo, I would go, “God, thank you for this medicine killing the cancer but my body being strong enough to survive any of the harmful side effects.” So, turning it over to you, tell that story.

Jairek Robbins: Okay, I’ll tell you the story. So, I was in Uganda volunteering. I was living in a rural farming village. No electricity, no toilets, no running water. It was a rural farming village. Most people were living in grass huts with mud walls, like it’s a rural way. We were there teaching them how to do organic farming. We were also teaching them how to do kitchen stoves made out of clay, so how to mix clay, how to build an oven in their hut, and then how to create a chimney to get the smoke out of the facility so that they aren’t getting smoke inhalation every night when they try to cook dinner on an open fire. So, we were teaching them life skills, things that would help in the villages that that’s…

Hal Elrod: No, wait, wait. I have to ask what people might be thinking, which is where did you learn how to organic farm and build clay stoves? Or was it the organization you were with that kind of facilitated that?

Jairek Robbins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, they brought us there and they had us work for two and a half weeks with the government to learn all these skill sets.

Hal Elrod: Oh, wow.

Jairek Robbins: And then they sent us out to the villages to go then train people living in the villages on these skill sets. So, we had a crash course for two weeks and then we were put out into the work to go educate and train and help people put it together in their lives, which falls right in line with what I love to do. I learned a skill, I learned how to apply it to my own life and get the result, and then I found a way to go help others do the same. And that’s a life philosophy I have, which is learn it, live it, give it. Learn what it takes to live life you want to live, live it, apply it, and get the tangible results in your life, then give it, find a way to go pay it forward to others and help them navigate the journey you’ve just kind of transcended yourself.

Hal Elrod: I love the simplicity of that. Learn it, live it, give it. I love that. Keep going.

Jairek Robbins: That’s where I was at. We were in the villages. I, like you, in a different form, and I was brought up in Southern California, and in Southern California, meditation and green drink solves every ailment you can come up with, or close to it, at least that’s what I felt like growing up. So, you got a headache? Meditate, drink some vegetable juice. You got a stomach ache? Drink some greens and meditate. I just had a list of everything you could solve.

And so, I got malaria. I went to the doctor because I wasn’t feeling well. I had a fever, my stomach hurt, all the signs. And he goes, “Oh, you have malaria. You need to take the malaria medication.” I was like, “Doc, I’m from California. We meditate and green drink, our way out of stuff, I’ll do it.” And so, he was like, “Okay, pal.” So, I went home. He gave me the medication. I did not take the medication. I went home and just kept living life.

Fast forward, it got worse and it kept getting worse and worse to the point that my fever was now to the moon. I was having chills. I was having trouble breathing at one point. I was getting dizzy. I was getting nauseous. I couldn’t keep food down. It was getting bad. I went back to the doctor and he goes, “Oh, hey, Mr. Meditation and Green Drink, how’s that working?” And I was like, “I’ve been doing it.” And he’s like, “I know you have.” And he looked at me. And he goes, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in terms of trying to cure malaria.” And I was like, “Well, most people don’t agree with me. I have my own way and it’s working for me. I’m going to stick with it. I was stubborn.” And he was like, “I don’t know how to explain this to you.” He’s like, “Do you use sunscreen?” I was like, “Of course.” He’s like, “That’s topical medicine.” I’m like, “Oh, no, it’s not. It’s prevented–” I had all these stories, what was medicine and what wasn’t medicine, probably similar in some way to you.

And he sat me down. He goes, “Here, there’s stories in life, and then there’s facts. And when facts meet stories, facts are what’s real. So, let me just show you the facts.” He drew my blood. He put it up on the screen, and I had 55,000 parasites per one red blood cell, according to the machine he ran my blood through. I went, “Wow. That’s a lot.” And he goes, “Yeah, that’s too much.” And he said, “Let me do math for you. We can agree on the math. You can’t tell an emotional story about math. It’s math. It’s just numbers.”

And so, he did the math and he put it through his equations. And every 8 to 10 hours, the malaria hatches. It busts through the cell and kills the red blood cell. It feeds on the water, so it immediately dehydrates you, which means you feel horrible. And then it goes and lays eggs in all the other red blood cells and repeats the process and doubles every 8 to 10 hours.

And so, he said, “At this rate,” he did the math. He says, “You have about six days left to live.” And I’ve probably been like, “Excuse me?” He’s like, “You have six days left until–” And I said like, “Until what?” And he’s like, “Until your body won’t be able to sustain itself.” I’m like, “Uh, I don’t like that at all.” And he’s like, “Take the medicine.” I was like, “Man, hold on. Okay, give me the medicine. I’m not going to take it, but just give it to me just in case.” And he’s like, “I’ve never met someone so stubborn in my life. What are you…” I was like, “I don’t know. It’s just how I was brought up.”

So, I walked out of the room and I picked up my phone and I called my dad. And I texted his assistant so they knew what was going on. He was just about to walk on stage at a seminar and teach for 15 hours. And I caught him right in the green room. And he goes, “Hey, buddy, how are you doing?” And I was like, “Not good. I was just told I have six days left to live. That’s not a good feeling. And I feel like sh*t, I’m in a hospital in the middle of nowhere. I don’t have any friends or family around. It doesn’t feel good at all.” And he said, “So what are your options?” And I was like, “Well, I can either not take the medicine and keep doing what I’m doing, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Or I could take the medicine. And the doctor said, I’ll go through the worst 11 days of my life, but on the other side, I might live.” And I was like, “There’s not a lot of certainty either.”

And he said exactly what Theresa told you. He said, “Here’s what I can tell you, buddy. If you believe the medicine will heal you, take it and take it now. If you believe your body will heal you, it will. Whatever you believe with total certainty, do it and do it now.” He’s like, “I love you. You’re going to be fine. Go for it.” That’s the first time in my life I hung up the phone and thought, that sh*t didn’t help. This is part of the story Theresa didn’t tell you.

Hal Elrod: No, she didn’t tell me that part.

Jairek Robbins: And I was like, he basically just said, if you believe in it, do it. If you don’t believe in it, don’t do it. And then he said, “I got to go.” I’m like, that guy, he’s full of so much helpful advice and he’s helping so many things and he’s always had amazing insights. I’m like, God, I mean, presidents and billionaires and all the people who are the best on Earth at what they do, come to him in the moment when it matters.

Hal Elrod: And there were 10,000 people in the arena waiting for him to come out of this green room.

Jairek Robbins: Ten thousand people waiting for him to change their damn lives. And I’ve been off the phone. My dad went, then he didn’t help. And it’s the first time in my whole life, he’s always delivered, and in that moment, I was like, well, that just didn’t land. And then I picked up the phone and called my mom. Totally different experience.

Now, on the other side, my mom was not always the one who landed with the advice, but this time, she goes, “I didn’t raise you for 18 gosh darn years,” different words but gosh darn years, “for you to go die in some godforsaken country. You take that medicine, damn it.” And then she said the words you always feel like a chill down your spine when a mom lays in it, “and I’m on my way.” And then I was like, “Oh, sh*t. My mom’s never been out of the country.”

And I’ll give you a fast forward story. My poor mom got all the inoculations in one day, which would make everyone sick. Then she got on five different flights from Los Angeles all the way. She was never in great shape. She was running through the airport in Cairo. She ran to the airport in London. In Cairo, she got off the plane and they put stairs instead of a ramp. And on the bottom stair, her bag swung forward and pulled her and she fell on her hands and knees. All the people behind her were clapping because they thought she was kissing the ground to be grateful they landed.

Hal Elrod: Oh, my God.

Jairek Robbins: “Jairek, people are rude here.” Some old guy grabbed her boob when he pretended to be asleep and felt her up on the plane. I’m like, I’m half dead or I’ll kill him. And then she finally arrived. And the hotel she stood at, she’s like, “Take me to my son.” And he’s like, “No, it’s dangerous. You can’t drive the roads at night. It’s dangerous. We have to stay at the hotel. We’ll go in the morning.” And so, they pulled in the hotel. The dude has a machine gun when she arrives at the gate, so she’s never seen it before. She’s scared. There’s a giant frog in her bathroom and mosquitoes all over, mosquito net all night. And then she finally arrives. And my favorite thing that happened, I was starting to feel better after about eight or nine days in the hospital at this point.

Hal Elrod: So, at that point, you took her advice?

Jairek Robbins: I took my mom’s advice.

Hal Elrod: And I’d imagine, let me ask it, did you combine it with your dad’s advice?

Jairek Robbins: Totally. Totally. I wrote about this in my book, Live It!, where I started using mental visualizations, affirmations, incantations, thinking of creating a compelling future. I was doing everything I knew mentally, emotionally, and psychologically to prepare myself to go beyond that six-day. You have to. You have to in that moment. If you give up, if you decide this is it, if you decide this is the end, if you can’t have a compelling future, and you’re not clearly emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually connected to it, life will take you out.

Hal Elrod: Totally.

Jairek Robbins: It’s easy to give up and die. It’s hard to keep living. And so, that ability to make a decision that says, “You know what? This isn’t it, I’m not done, it ain’t over, and I’m going to find a way to forge through.” And then there’s tools. There’s tools you can use – visualization, affirmations, incantation. You’re driving it into your nervous system, your belief system. You’re creating empowering beliefs. You’re creating a compelling future.

In times like nowadays, I mean, things will get rough out in the marketplace, these are tools that are absolutely not optional in times like now. They’re mandatory at times like this. Not everyone’s going to survive what’s going on in the marketplace. Not every business is going to make it. Not every person is going to keep their job, like things are going to get more rough before they get better.

Supposedly supposed to land mid-summer this year. And I always say when things are easy or good, people tend not to do the practice necessary to prepare themselves for when things are hard. And when things get hard, you quickly find out who put in the practice and who didn’t. And so, we’re hitting a time in life where things are about to get hard and we’re about to see a lot of people melt down because they have been putting in the practice.

And so, in that moment in my life, I was practicing every morning, every afternoon, every day, constantly, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, preparing myself to make it through. Took the medicine, had the worst 11 days of my life. It sucked. I had vertigo. I mean, I was crawling to the bathroom. I lost– I went from 215 pounds down to 185 over that period of time, like it…

Hal Elrod: Thirty pounds in 11 days as well.

Jairek Robbins: Yeah, it roughed me up. And the fun part or the interesting part of that, I was starting to feel a little better. I was on the back of a bike taxi where you sit sideways on the back of a bike and a dude pedals you through town. And a van pulled up next to me and my mom looked out the window and just had that look on her face like, I’m going to kill you. And then I was like, “Ma,” the van stopped. I stopped. The door opened and my mom stepped out of this taxi van wearing neon yellow from head to toe, like a traffic cone.

Out there, I’m like, “What are you wearing?” And she goes, “Your damn grandma told me that people wear bright colors in Africa.” I was dying because my mom stepped out of the van in the middle of a village wearing neon yellow shirt, shorts, shoes, like she was blowing. I mean, she was a traffic cone you could see for miles down the road. And every person here in the village looked over like, “What is that?” Uh-oh, it was amazing.

So, it’s just those experiences, though. And the neat part was combining both their advice, my mom being willing to say, “Hey, I know you don’t want to. I know you’re being stubborn, but gosh, darling, take medicine because you need to right now. You’re in a time of life where the medicine is the thing that’ll help.” And Dad’s saying, “You got to make sure mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, you dial yourself in so you can see way beyond just the six-day possible ending point for you. And you got to build that into your nervous system so that your body will do the work through the challenges.”

Because there’s moments when you’re puking your guts out and everything’s coming out the other end and you can’t see straight and you have vertigo where you’re like, man, I don’t know if it’s worth fighting anymore, it might be worth saying, screw it, I’m done. But if you can drive that compelling future, if you can drive those beliefs, if you can drive those mental, emotional, physical, spiritual attributes of yourself to the point that you can see it, feel it, taste it, hear it, and experience something worth living for beyond yourself, you’ll do it. You’ll find a way through it. Humans are incredibly resilient.

Hal Elrod: There are so many things that are coming up for me. One is, it reminds me I interviewed Dr. Bernie Siegel a few years ago who wrote Love, Medicine and Miracles, famed cancer surgeon, and he had treated over 3,000 patients and he said that the one commonality in every patient that survived their cancer, including those that survived cancer is that they shouldn’t have statistically survived, that he didn’t even think they were going to survive. He said they were stubborn, essentially. They had their mindset that I’m going to survive. There’s no other option. And then they did.

And then he said he saw people with lesser cancers that they should have beaten, but they had given up hope. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my layman’s explanation is always, we have trillions of cells that are listening. They’re always doing whatever we tell them to do. And if we’re living in stress and we’re living in fear and we’re thinking, oh, my gosh, I’m going to die, they’re like, oh, we’re dying? Okay, I guess that’s what we’re doing.

But if you implement the practices you’re talking about, which most of those are all part of the Miracle Morning, it’s visualization, meditation, affirmations, journaling, reading, focusing on what you want in your life, then your cells go, oh, that’s what we’re doing. We’re going to make it. We’re going to live. We’re going to create an amazing future. And you’re harnessing your own God-given power to manifest what you want your life in not a– I would say yes, in a spiritual way, but in a practical way, just as much.

Jairek Robbins: Totally, totally. In the book of Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, who was a psychologist who was working with people going through concentration camps, he discovered the ones who make it versus the ones who don’t are those who decided they were going to make it. Those who decided they were going to make it for a reason beyond themselves were most likely to make it through.

The ones who didn’t make it, the fastest to die in the process, were the ones who thought someone was going to come save them, someone was going to magically rescue them. Those didn’t make it. The ones who said, you know what? No one’s coming to save me. I have to figure this out. I’m going to make it and I’m going to make it for and came up with a reason beyond themselves, those are the people who made it through.

Hal Elrod: I love that you’ve shared that because what that brings up for me, and if you’re listening right now, I know we’re talking about malaria and beating cancer, but I want you to understand…

Jairek Robbins: All the good stuff.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. These tools are– Jairek, you alluded to this, you mentioned it, which is turning your financial situation around, surviving the recession, turning your marriage around, like the tools that we’re talking about, visualizing what you want, creating a compelling future, creating affirmations that affirm who you need to be, how you need to show up to make the changes you want, to turn the things around, they’re universal to every aspect of life. And the Viktor Frankl story you just talked about, what it brought up for me is the power of personal responsibility.

Jairek Robbins: Totally.

Hal Elrod: The degree of responsibility you take for your life determines the degree of power you have to influence your life. And you mentioned Viktor Frankl, those that were waiting for someone to come save them, I’m waiting for the government to save me. I hope they do a stimulus. I hope that– like no one’s coming to save you. No one’s going to fix your life, change your life, turn your life around. And that can be scary for people, but it’s really empowering to go, oh, I am the one that is responsible for turning things around.

And quick example, when I was in my car accident and I was told I would never walk again, the drunk driver was– he might have been to blame for the car accident, but it was my responsibility to turn things around. Period. And so, yeah, if you’re listening to this, again, whatever area of your life that you want to transform, that you want to improve, any goal you want to achieve, realize that it begins with you taking 100% responsibility for that, and then every day, aligning your thoughts, words and actions, the Miracle Morning, these practices Jairek is talking about, to live in alignment with whatever it is that you want for your life, and then magically almost, right? Oh, wow, I’m aligning my entire being with what I want and look at these amazing people and opportunities and resources and even internal resources are showing up that are making what I want possible.

Jairek Robbins: So the other piece, you got to think about it. And there’s this wonderful training called the Drama Triangle. So, there’s three places, three roles people generally get into when there’s drama. They’re the victim. Life is happening to me and there’s nothing I can do about it. They’re the rescuer, the person constantly trying to block or protect or save all the victims in the world. Or they’re the persecutor, they’re the one that’s going after the person who’s calling themselves the victim and not able to do what they want to do or live the life they want.

In order to get out of that triangle, you have to elevate. The victim has to take control of their life and become the creator. Life doesn’t happen to me, life happens for me, and I have the ability to create the life I want. That is the major decision they must make. The person who’s the perpetrator, the one going after someone, they have to become a challenger. I challenge you to step up in your life. I challenge you to live a better life. I challenge you to go make your dreams real. I challenge you to do what you know you can do. And the rescuer has to become a coach. Instead of trying to protect them and do it for them, you have to believe that they have the ability themselves and you have to call that out of them. You have to challenge them. You have to coach them. You have to get them to apply their own inner strength, their own inner power. You got to get them to unleash their power from within, to awaken the inner giant, whatever you want to say. You have to coach them to bring forth the part of them that has what it takes to navigate a moment like this.

If you’re willing to make those three changes, everything elevates, and now, you become into the present moment, you can actually get sh*t done. If you don’t, you’ll get stuck in what’s called the Drama Triangle, where you’re constantly either the victim or the perpetrator or the rescuer, and it takes you nowhere in life. It keeps you stuck. It limits your ability to live the life that you really want. It limits your ability to make progress or actually do anything worth doing.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. Yeah, well said. And that, the Drama Triangle, if anybody’s listening, if you identify with either of those three roles, go back and listen to that again, what Jairek just said, because it’s about elevating beyond the role that you’re in when you’re stuck in that Drama Triangle. I’d love to wrap today up with the Core 4. I know this is a tool. It’s a passion of yours. And what is the inspiration of this concept? And how can people apply it to their lives?

Jairek Robbins: Totally. So, the Core 4, I did a live the other day and I was kind of riffing and I asked people, I’m like, “How many of you believe that you have something in your health that you could probably do a little better? Maybe you could get better sleep or maybe you could do better in your mental health or emotional health.” And everyone’s like, “Obviously, well, duh, that makes sense.” Now, they all get. So, everyone got something in their health they want to improve on and like, “There’s one.” I think, “What about your relationships? How many of you are just betting a thousand and have perfect relationships in your intimate, family, community, work, client relationships?” And everyone’s like, “Oh no, I got at least one I need to improve on.” I was like, “Okay, there’s two that you need to go for.”

Now, I was like, “What about your career or your business? How many of you have something you want to do better?” And everyone raised their hand. I was like, “That’s obvious.” And then I was like, “Ah, the fourth one is it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you keep and then what you do with it. How many of you Mike Tysoned yourself where you made millions of dollars and then made it all disappear, you became a magician, and poof, it was all gone?” And they all laughed. And I’m like, “Yeah, it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep and what you do with it, where you put it, and how you have it working for you.”

I remember a time in my life when I used to dream and brag about making six figures. That was the big number. And at this stage, we make more than that passively through our investments. And I was like, “Dang, how life has changed.” How cool to be able to transition that. And so, I decided to put together a program to help people in these core four areas. And so, it’s just come into life right now. I just developed a year’s worth of content. We developed the whole thing. This is one of those I’m going to put it at a price point that everyone can access type of things, like the Udemy course.

If people are interested, the place that I’m going to notify first is if you go to HighPerformanceValues.com, so HighPerformanceValues.com, take that values assessment which is a free gift from me to you to help you make sure your life is aligned with what’s most important to you. It’s kind of a good place to start for most people. Gets rid of those inner conflicts and all those frustrations of why am I doing this and lets you set up your day-to-day life. So, it’s actually in alignment with what you believe and what you value, what’s important to you.

So, start there. I’m going to notify that list of people first as soon as the Core 4 is ready. It is a community. We want to put together a community of humans who are all like-minded and working towards becoming better in their health, their relationships, their career, their business, and then their wealth. And I’m going to do my best to keep it at a price point that’s very accessible so that just about anyone can hop in and do the work.

Hal Elrod: Beautiful. Beautiful, man. That’s a fantastic program. And those four, it’s like if you’re thriving in all four of those areas, everything else takes care of itself because you become the person that you need to be to be able to handle your life.

Jairek Robbins: Totally.

Hal Elrod: The last thing I want to ask you, and then we’ll close. Am I allowed to talk about the next cover of SUCCESS Magazine and where people can get that?

Jairek Robbins: Oh, I don’t think so. But I know someone who is incredibly good looking that might be on it. It depends on when this is released. I think, April 24^th is when we’re allowed to say technically who is on the cover, but I know a guy and…

Hal Elrod: Well, there was a beautiful woman. If I’m being honest, there’s a beautiful woman on there.

Jairek Robbins: A good-looking guy, a beautiful woman, a strapping young lad, they’re on the cover talking about success and talking about beyond success. In the 80s, success used to be a yacht and a Ferrari. I don’t think that’s what success looks like nowadays. I think it’s far beyond that. And so, what is beyond just tangible, financial success look like in life. And it’s on the cover. We’ll be in newsstands all over the world. So, I think I saw it at Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble, all the airport newsstands. Go to your local newsstand, grab a copy, and I’m going to do something special.

So, I remember wanting to put things at a price point that people can access. If you go buy a copy of the magazine that someone really good looking and their family’s on, just can’t say who, but you’ll figure it out, you go buy a copy of that issue of the magazine. All you’re going to need to do is show us your receipt and we’ll give you free access to four free trainings I’m going to do, one on health, one on relationships, one on career, and one on wealth. And I’m going to give you all of what I know for free in those as just give you a head start to support you and help you navigate those categories in your life.

So, April 24th, they’ll hit newsstands. Go grab a copy, email in a copy of your receipt. You can email it to coaching@success.com. Once we get a copy of your receipt, we’ll give you a free invitation to those trainings, and then I will give you the best of what I know in those core four areas of life.

Hal Elrod: Awesome. Awesome, Jairek. Well, hey, man, you’re doing fantastic work in the world. You have been for decades. And it’s an honor to know you. It was an honor to feature you in the Miracle Morning documentary. And I’m grateful to watch your journey and what you’re doing at SUCCESS Enterprises and grateful to be a part of your life, brother. Thank you.

Jairek Robbins: Same, man. Thank you.

Hal Elrod: Awesome.

[CLOSING]

Hal Elrod: All right, goal achievers, thank you for listening today. I love you. Go grab a copy of SUCCESS Magazine, forward your receipt to coaching@success.com and you’ll get Jairek’s free trainings. And thank you for listening today. I appreciate you. I love you, and I will talk to you all next week.

[END]