Tony Robbins’ words perfectly confirmed by a certain fable

“Your past does not define you. Your past will never define your future. All successful people learn that success is buried on the other side of frustration. Unfortunately, some people don't get to the other side... They allow frustration to keep them from taking the necessary actions that would support them in achieving their desire. You get through this roadblock by plowing through frustration, taking each setback as feedback you can learn from, and pushing ahead.”

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His website [https://www.tonyrobbins.com] reads “Anyone who has ever achieved something worthwhile has had challenges and setbacks – because anything that is worth doing is going to be difficult. Overcoming adversity is a necessary step on the road to greatness.” It adds that Philosopher Edmund Burke said “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. Life is the worthy opponent – the antagonist – we all need to grow. When you have the right tools?to overcome adversity, you embrace the situation as a helper, rather than letting it stop you from achieving your goals and reaching your dreams.”?

The first right tool to surmount your adversities is to change your mindset or perception toward your hardships from hardships or curse you have to instead a blessing which you possess. You need to determinedly convince your mind that your hurdles represent your hidden blessing that has arisen to strengthen you so that you can eventually grasp your wonderful success firmly. This includes taking an unwavering resolution to go past your adversities, how extremely intolerable they seem.

All adversities appear intolerable, but they don’t. They don’t, because all successful people have crossed them and accomplished their desired incomparable success. However, these adversities also looked insurmountable to them at the time when they had not yet apprehended that these challenges were there to support them maximally instead.

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We have just employed the terms ‘support them maximally’, because these adversities have furnished maximal strength for their victims, so that the latter ones have achieved maximal success. In other words, it’s the adversities which have prompted them to adopt and implement robust and rigid action to defeat the adversities, irrespective of conditions in which they were then languishing.

We reassure you that when you take such a decision, opportunities suddenly present themselves for you to carry it out. Nevertheless, this will be feasible, only if you are really determined to perform action with all your heart, soul, energy and resources at your disposal then. This determination means peak performance which includes working to you full capacity. It requires majoring in major things-not majoring in minor things.

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When we major in minor things, it signifies that we are investing most of our time, resources, focus and energy on tasks and activities which provide very little or no contribution to the accomplishment of our goals. “Successful people are those who have learned to major in the major things,” says the Project Manager, Jose Colon-CMRP&PMP in his Mya 19th 2022 LinkedIn article, before adding “They [successful figures] spend most of their time, focus and energy on those tasks and activities that take them closer to their goals and dreams. Success leaves clues, and we need to identify and follow these clues if we want to achieve success in life.”

For instance, if you are undergoing unemployment and that you aren’t accomplishing anything worthwhile, you are majoring in minor things. Some of worthwhile actions you should take involve investing all your energy into seeking another job, and employing this time at which you hold no job for you to hone some of your skills. Or, you should seek ways to enter business. In brief, you ought to assure that you don’t permit your time to pass as a wasted resource. Beware that your time constitutes your second most important asset after the first one which is you “your healthy mind and body.” If you ensure peak performance in a certain area, even if you are languishing unemployment, this area shall lead you to incredible success.

Robbins is a perfect example and in his book ‘Awaken the Giant Within’ he wrote “I′ll never forget the day it really hit me that I was truly living my dream. I was flying my jet helicopter from a business meeting in Los Angeles, traveling to Orange County on the way to one of my seminars. As I flew over the city of Glendale, I suddenly recognized a large building, and I stopped the helicopter and hovered above it. As I looked down, I realized this was the building that I'd worked in as a janitor [caretaker and cleaner of large buildings] a mere twelve years ago!”

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“In those days, I had been concerned whether my 1960 Volkswagen would hang together for the 30-minute trip to work, my life had been focused on how I was going to survive; I had felt fearful and alone. But that day, as I hovered there in the sky, I thought, ‘What a difference a decade can make!’ I did have dreams back then, but at the time, it seemed they'd never be realized. Today, though, I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.”

Michel de Montaigne once said "I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures." Better Up [ https://www.betterup.com] says “What is the first step in overcoming adversity? Determination is one of the most important and effective tools to help you deal with adversity. Altering your mindset is a great first step in the face of adversity. As with making mistakes, if you opt to actively learn from each hurdle, you'll grow as a person and inspire others to learn how to overcome adversity.” Medium says “Adversity is a word that has a negative connotation attached to it but, it is your greatest tool. It can drive you to finish challenges.”

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The following tale covers those points, validating them.

Once upon a time it lived a grandfather and his grandchild. The grandfather gave a piece of rhodium to his grandchild and challenged him to never lose it. Otherwise, he would languish in repugnant life. Rhodium is the most valuable/expensive and rarest mineral so that gold pales in comparison to its value being almost 6 times more valuable than gold.

The grandchild received the piece of rhodium and went to store it in his house. One day, he went to hunt in a forest and thieves burgled his house and stole everything including his rhodium which represented the most precious property he owned.

Back home from the hunting and with a game he’d chased, he found that he was stolen. His heart dwelt nowhere else than on the piece and he rushed to the place where he’d put it, to find that it had been taken and that nothing was actually still at home. He was then completely paralyzed by the situation.

His grandfather immediately reached him and asked him what had happened to him. His grandchild failed to answer him correctly, he instead raved, because of failing to understand and accept what had just occurred.

But the grandfather attempted to know what had transpired, despite the fact that his grandchild responded incoherently to him insanely. He tried to endeavor to appease his grandchild, telling him that being devastated by the incident could do nothing else than excessively worsening his situation. He convinced him that he had to stop feeling shattered to that extent, especially because the occurrence wasn’t his fault. He instead suggested that it was probably to strengthen and teach him an exceedingly great lesson and even constitute an inexhaustible source for his success and pleasure in the future.

Yet, the grandchild wasn’t pacified by his grandfather’s words. In the meanwhile, the grandfather told him he felt that the thieves had hidden the rhodium in the forest, but that he couldn’t find it since he couldn’t exactly know the place. He then recommended him to instantaneously go to the forest and dig soil so that he might try chances to get another piece of rhodium.

The grandfather reiterated that his true success was lying in the rhodium. Obtaining another piece equaled his true unparalleled success composed of abundant wealth and happiness. Missing it constituted the opposite.

The grandchild wasn’t really persuaded that he could get any piece of it, since he didn’t know where he would exactly search for it. But again he was sure that his life could mean nothing at all, without the rhodium. Thus, he felt forced to go to look for it.

Arriving there, he undertook to dig. On the first day, he dug and found nothing. On the 2nd day he decided to move to another place where he dug but in vain. On the 3rd day, he also accomplished the same and discovered nothing.

After passing a month in the same scenario, he felt extremely exhausted, sad and weary that he decided to quit and then go to live badly. He then took his equipment including a pick, a shovel and a wheelbarrow and embarked on returning home with the perfect conviction that he would not return there.

But in the middle of his way home, he felt that he’d just adopted a wrong decision. He thought “If I return there and randomly choose a place where to start digging, but without skipping anywhere so as for me to maximize chances of not leaving any place not dug, maybe I will find a piece.”

He returned there and began digging. He dug and dug very energetically. At the 4th hour, he landed such an immensely huge sack of rhodium hidden that he was dazzled and failed to comprehend whether he was right or dreaming. He carried his incalculable treasure and it drastically and definitively changed his life and that of all his relatives and even people who were living in the community. This is the end of the tale.

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This grandchild has chiefly been motivated by the feelings of pain and pleasure which we will address in our next edition thoroughly. The feelings of pain and pleasure form contain incomparably powerful energy which pushes us to work, whether we please or not. As a result, we finally find ourselves in the position of realizing our long-standing goal.

Robbins carries exceedingly great lessons from seemingly insuperable adversities through which he first underwent, before reaching his unimaginable success. “The past does not equal the future,”?he once declared. For you to comprehend his incalculable success you can the article accessible at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/hunger-success-unquestionable-secret-successful-whats-ndabananiye-6kkgf/?trackingId=hrbGOcyyTuWSj2kwq7sHIA%3D%3D]. You can read this article accessible at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/tony-robbins-hardships-which-have-paved-his-path-ndabananiye-4s07f/?trackingId=Oqqu%2FUD8T4G9HTRtBm5SEw%3D%3D, to fathom his hardships.

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By Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye- Media, Empowerment& MBA.

ADEPE Deputy-Programs Manager, with a demonstrated history/experience of involvement in women’s empowerment, project/program management, peace-building/conflict transformation, training, public awareness campaigns, governance and budget transparency, advocacy, documentation, the broadcast media industry, and community justice, among others.

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He is skilled, among others, in English and French, Project& Program Management, Media Production, Peace-building, Leadership, Advocacy, and Kinyarwanda- English-French Translation, and Mind-Body Connection and its Link with Health through extensive reading and investigation about these two fields as well as Health Reporting and Communication. Strong management, media and communication professional with a Bachelor's and Master's focused in Journalism& Communication and MBA-Project Management respectively from University of Rwanda and Mount Kenya University.

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