This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von • Transcript • 2026-05-18
Summary
Tony Robbins sits down with comedian Theo Von for a wide-ranging, deeply personal two-hour conversation that covers the mechanics of human psychology, emotional change, and what it actually takes to build a life that feels worth living. Robbins draws on decades of work with millions of people -- including Stanford-documented research on depression -- to explain why people stay stuck, why shame and self-pity are low-energy traps, and how the body, not the mind, is the fastest lever for state change. Theo's raw vulnerability about self-worth, difficulty feeling pride, and dependence on antidepressants turns the interview into something closer to a live coaching session than a podcast. The core insight running through the entire conversation is that suffering comes from focusing on yourself, and that identity -- not willpower, not goals -- is the engine of lasting change.
Key Points
Quotable Moments
Concepts & Ideas
Implementation Steps
Before you open your phone, run three minutes of embodied gratitude -- close your eyes and put yourself back inside a moment you are actually grateful for, not at it from a distance. Then three minutes of a mental cleanse and intention for others. Then three minutes of seeing three things you want to accomplish as already done, and feeling the celebration of that. Robbins has a free guided version at tonyrobbins.com/priming. This is not a meditation -- it is a deliberate rewiring of what your nervous system expects from the day ahead.
Pick one physically uncomfortable daily practice and do it every day without internal debate. The cold plunge works, but a hard run, a long breathwork session, or a heavy morning workout serves the same function. The point is not the practice itself -- it is training your brain that when you say go, the body goes. When you build this pattern in one area, it bleeds into every area where you need to act in the face of resistance. Start small enough that you can do it tomorrow, then never miss.
Robbins identifies three focus habits that, when all three are negative, reliably produce depression and frustration: focusing on what is missing rather than what you have, focusing on what you cannot control rather than what you can, and focusing on the past rather than the present and future. Write down your honest answer for each one. Then, without forcing false positivity, begin shifting each of them incrementally. You are not trying to be positive -- you are trying to use your mind instead of letting it use you.
When you are in a low-energy state -- ashamed, stuck, defeated -- do not try to think your way out. Change your physiology first. Shoulders back, head up, breathing fuller, moving faster. Robbins describes how a depressed person's body is completely recognizable before you even speak to them, and how changing that physical signature directly alters the biochemistry underneath it. Go for a run. Do ten pushups. Sing in the car. The emotional shift follows the physical one, not the other way around.
Identify the negative emotional states you return to most reliably under stress -- shame, self-pity, anger, anxiety, disconnection. These are your emotional home, built in childhood and reinforced by years of repetition. Write them down. Then ask: what needs are they meeting? Certainty? A form of self-focus? A sense of significance through suffering? Naming the need clearly is the first step to finding a higher-quality way to meet it. You are not broken -- you have a pattern that once helped you survive and now needs to be replaced.
Every time you say "I have a hard time feeling proud of myself" or "I'm not good at this" or "it never works for me," you are re-wiring that belief more deeply into your neural circuitry. Robbins is direct with Theo about this: stop rehearsing the old story. It is not that you are denying reality -- it is that you are refusing to keep building a neural highway that leads to the same dead end. When the old phrase starts to form, interrupt it. That is an old pattern. It is not true anymore. What am I choosing instead?
You cannot simply stop a behavior that meets a deep need -- the need will pull you back. When Theo quit antidepressants, he started running. When he quit smoking, he eventually needed to find something else that provided state change, certainty, and variety. Identify what you are trying to stop, map the needs it meets (Robbins' six: certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth, contribution), and deliberately design a replacement that meets at least as many of those same needs at a higher quality.
Goals are temporary. Identity is structural. Robbins uses the thermostat metaphor: if you still identify as someone who struggles with X, your brain will bring you back to X every time you drift too far from it. The shift is to decide, concretely, who you now are -- not who you are trying to become. "I am someone who does not negotiate with myself about my morning practice." "I am someone who does not do that anymore." Say it. Write it. Act from it before you feel it. The feeling follows.
Robbins is emphatic: suffering comes from focusing on yourself. The fastest exit is not positive thinking -- it is doing something genuinely useful for someone else. Not performatively, and not to earn approval, but as a real act of service that pulls your attention outside your own head. This is not a spiritual suggestion -- it is a neurological one. You cannot sustain suffering and genuine outward contribution simultaneously. When you feel stuck, find something you can do for someone today, even something small.
Momentum is biochemical. Just as stacking bad experiences compounds your stress chemistry, stacking good experiences -- acts of service, physical wins, small moments of pride, progress toward a goal -- compounds your positive chemistry until it becomes a new baseline. Robbins describes how Theo felt better days after going to recovery meetings, not while at them. The stacking is the practice. Keep a short daily record of one thing you did that you are genuinely proud of, one thing you grew in, one thing you gave. Stack it forward.
Cleaned Transcript
Theo Von: Today's guest is the number one life strategist on the globe. He's a philanthropist, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and an inspiration to many. He's worked with some of the most successful people on Earth as an adviser. I feel lucky to get to sit down with him today. Today's guest is Mr. Tony Robbins.
Theo Von: You do so many things to fine-tune yourself. What is that tuning like for you in your regular life -- being ready for the day?
Tony Robbins: I start every day in a cold plunge. I've been doing it for like 20 years. There's never a day I look forward to it. I don't wake up and go "I can't wait to freeze my ass off." But to me it's a discipline -- it's like training my mind. It doesn't feel good when you go in, but you feel amazing coming out. Going in, I don't negotiate with myself. I've trained my brain: I say go, we go. At my home in Sun Valley I walk through the snow and get in the river -- 41 degrees. When you train your brain that when I say go we go with no negotiation, that shows up in every other part of your life.
Tony Robbins: I work out every day. I do a 10-minute process -- it's not really a meditation, it's more a way to condition my nervous system and my mind. Three pieces, three minutes each. The first three minutes: what are the emotions that mess people up in relationships and business? Usually anger or fear. The antidote is gratitude -- you can't be angry and grateful simultaneously. So I train my nervous system starting every morning with this process. I think of one thing at a time, a minute each -- I see and feel something in my life I'm really grateful for. Little things and big things. It's real, it's not like I'm seeing it from a distance, I'm experiencing it. That creates a biochemical change.
Theo Von: Sometimes I make a gratitude list and I'm just writing the things down and there's no real connection inside of me. I know it's not going to help that much.
Tony Robbins: That's the difference. If I said think of a time when you rode a roller coaster and you remember it from over there -- that's disassociated. But if I get you to imagine being in the front seat, coming over the edge... you can feel it right now. That's what I do with the gratitude. I get in my body as if I was there, see it, feel it, experience it. That creates a biochemical change as opposed to just a thought. A thought's not enough. Then I do three minutes of a cleansing -- kind of a prayer for others. Then I do three minutes of what I call "three to thrive" -- three things I want to make happen. I don't sit there and beg for them. I see them as done, I feel them, I celebrate them as done. Because when your subconscious mind believes it's done, it makes it happen.
Tony Robbins: What do you have the first thing in the morning otherwise? Your phone. Your phone has a mixture of things. If you have a lot of responsibilities, companies, people -- you look at that thing and it's like you're not in control of your life. So I set my life first. Priming is a psychological principle. A lot of times when people think something, they think "oh, that's my thought" -- but it's been primed by something in the environment. If you don't direct your mind, you get whatever shows up.
Tony Robbins: I decide I want to advertise in my own mind. I'm not going to have somebody else take control. So I prime myself every day. My brain is in a grateful state, an anticipatory state, a moving state -- because otherwise you get whatever you feel like. And there are days I wake up and I don't know what city I'm in, my body's gone, I've had three hours sleep across time zones. If I didn't reset, it'd be fake. You can't move people if you're not moved. You can't touch people if you're not touched. You can't make people laugh if it doesn't make you laugh. When you do the priming every day, it trains your nervous system to look for things to be grateful for. Most people's patterns are just habits. If you don't use your mind, your mind will use you.
Tony Robbins: People don't experience life -- they experience the life they focus on. Right now there's a filter. If you're happy, you are deleting all the things you could be pissed off about. If you're unhappy, you're deleting all the things that are great in your life. Our brains delete, distort, and generalize. If you don't direct it, you get whatever shows up. What's wrong is always available. What's right is also always available. It's just which one you pick. It isn't about positive thinking -- I've never been into positive thinking. I believe in intelligence. When you're in a lousy state, you treat people poorly, you don't perform at the highest level, you're not happy. When you're in a great state, you treat people better, you perform at a different level.
Tony Robbins: There are three decisions you're making every moment of your life -- most of them unconsciously. First: what are you going to focus on? If you constantly focus on what's missing, it's hard to ever stay fulfilled. Second: do you focus on what you can control or what you can't? Focusing on what you can't control is overwhelming. Third: do you focus on the past, present, or future? If you constantly focus on what's missing, what you can't control, and the past -- that makes you either angry, sad, frustrated, or depressed. I did this with Stanford during Covid. They had two professors who were clinically depressed, came to my five-day seminar, came back with no depression symptoms.
Theo Von: I just got off my medicine -- I'm like 17 days off right now.
Tony Robbins: Good for you. Your two patterns -- constantly focusing on what's missing and the past -- will make it a little harder to be happy long-term. You crack yourself up so in the moments you change your state, but if you want long-term change, all you'd have to do is change the habit. It just has to get conditioned. If you think about it it doesn't work -- by that time it's too late. Focusing on what you can control, enjoying the present and building the future -- just that little pattern change can change somebody's life.
Tony Robbins: They published results from that Stanford study in the Journal of Psychiatry. Six weeks after treatment with no drugs, just six days of rewiring your brain -- 100% of the people had no depression whatsoever. 77% of the people who had suicidal ideation had none. Eleven months later: 72% reduction in negative emotions, still no depression, 52% improvement in positive emotions. When you make a shift in how you use your brain and it gets conditioned, there's a biochemical change that actually happens in the body.
Tony Robbins: The path of least resistance never makes you happy. I hate the term "self-esteem" as it's commonly used. Kids were taught to get participation trophies. People can tell your whole life you're a piece of crap and your brain can go "screw you, I'll show you" and you become somebody. People can tell you your whole life you're beautiful and perfect and the best, and you can still not believe them, be depressed, and think you're nobody. Self-esteem -- esteem for yourself -- is earned by you doing something difficult for you. When you do something that's incredibly hard and you push through it, your brain starts to have inner pride. Not fake ego pride.
Tony Robbins: What makes people happy? Progress. If you get some big goal -- there's one of two responses when you achieve it. The horrible one is "is this all there is?" The other is a feeling of achievement, but how long does that last? Six years? Six months? Six days? Six hours? For most people it's somewhere between six hours and six weeks. So the purpose of life is not just to get your goals. Getting what you want doesn't make you happy. What makes you happy is who you become in the pursuit of those goals. The growth, the progress -- even if you haven't achieved it yet -- is what makes you feel alive. Because we're all made to either grow or die.
Tony Robbins: Growing and giving -- when you share what's great in your life, it magnifies. There's only so much joy you can have by yourself. That's why whenever something great happens, most of us want to tell someone, share with somebody we love. When you share it, it magnifies it. The problem with New Year's resolutions is they don't have depth. You've got to know what you want, why you want it, and what kind of person you'd have to be to have that and keep it. Then you have to be honest about the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Don't rationalize -- be truthful. Then figure out: is it fear stopping me? A limiting belief? An emotion getting in the way? A bad habit? A missing skill? Then find someone extraordinary at what you're trying to do and model them.
Tony Robbins: Everything we do, even things that seem stupid or self-destructive, we do to meet some needs. There are only six needs people have: comfort/certainty, variety, significance, love and connection, growth, and contribution beyond themselves. When you do a behavior that meets three or more of those needs, you get addicted to it. Smoking, for example, can meet certainty (comfort), variety (state change), significance (used to be "cool"), and connection (shared activity). When you meet three needs with one behavior, you get addicted. You can get addicted to positive things the same way -- exercise, growing your business, relationships.
Tony Robbins: There is a fear that everybody has at some moment: that they're not enough. And if you're not enough, you feel like you won't be loved. To be worthless and unloved is like psychological death. So people drug themselves, eat, do anything not to feel that. Your choices on changing it: you could take on a new project, build something -- but to do that you take risks, and risks mean you could fail, which might look like you're worthless, which might look like you're not worthy of love. So subconsciously we come up with these ways to adapt.
Tony Robbins: You don't stop doing something -- you replace it. What you're replacing it with has to actually change your biochemistry. Running meets your need for certainty (you feel good after), variety (different state), significance (you're improving), connection (to yourself, to nature, to God), growth, and contribution. It meets five or six needs. The antidepressants met one need -- certainty -- and numbed everything else. No variety, no significance, no connection, no growth, no contribution. One need versus five or six. That's the difference.
Tony Robbins: Here's the chemistry of transformation. Five elements. First: satiation -- you've done the same thing so many times it's not wrong but you're bored. Second: dissatisfaction -- it's actually not feeling good anymore. Third: threshold -- where the pain is so consistent you go "it's been painful in the past, it's painful now, it's going to be painful forever -- I'm done." Fourth: insight -- you get clarity about what's really true. "It's not my partner, it's not my job, it's me -- what's going on in me?" Fifth: the window opens. But that window only stays open briefly. If you don't act on the insight, it closes and you start the cycle over. You've got to jump through while it's open.
Theo Von: Shame is one of the biggest sicknesses of our being. It feels like a vague, overwhelming thing. But it's like one of the biggest things holding people back.
Tony Robbins: Shame is one of the most negative emotions because it shrinks everything in you and puts you in such a negative state that your energy drops. Think of it this way: where your energy is really low, you do very little to change things, everything seems impossible, you don't respond to people at the same level. When you're in high energy -- excited about your future, present, working on yourself, running -- same problem happens and you can laugh at it, crack a joke. Your energy level with certain emotions increases, with others goes through the floor. When you beat yourself up, your energy goes down, and then it's harder to change, which creates more shame: "I said I was going to change, I didn't -- what's wrong with me?" Then you start building a story that something is wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. You don't need to be fixed. You have some patterns, some habits in the way you use your mind and your body. If we change those habits, you'll have a different experience.
Tony Robbins: [the red/brown exercise] Look around this room right now and notice everything you can see that's brown. Now close your eyes. Tell me everything you saw that was red. Now open your eyes and look for red. Did you find more red? Of course -- because you were looking for it. Once you develop a belief, you find what supports it. You will find evidence for things that aren't even there, to make the belief feel true. If you think you're messed up, you're going to find and color yourself that way. Train yourself to look for something different. That's why I do priming. That's why immersion works.
Theo Von: Sometimes I have a tough time feeling proud of myself. I feel like there's a disconnect -- like it doesn't even land on me. If I feel proud of myself, it'll go against some script I've always had written inside of me.
Tony Robbins: What emotion would you feel if you saw "I'm proud of you" written on the wall?
Theo Von: I think I'd feel ashamed of myself for even thinking it.
Tony Robbins: Everybody has what I call an emotional home. You know how there are places that flood every two or three years, and people rebuild there -- they rebuild, it happens again. Part of you says "why don't you move?" Because it's home. It's what they know. We have an emotional home. Certain emotions got built in our youth. I had four fathers, my mother was pretty intense. If I didn't reprogram myself I wouldn't be sitting here with you today, because my emotional home was not good feelings -- it's what I was used to. Even though it didn't feel good, you go there because it's what you know.
Theo Von: It almost feels like I was deserting myself if I felt good about myself. Like I know those feelings of not feeling good about myself so well... I don't want to leave them alone because we always had each other. If I leave them, I'd be letting them down. They're like brothers.
Tony Robbins: They are your home. I really appreciate your vulnerability because people watching are seeing that -- it allows them to be vulnerable too. But let me tell you something: those are not your friends. You're not going to abandon those parts of yourself. You're going to find these other parts of yourself that need to be in charge. It's not that you can't have negative emotions or fears or feelings -- but the ones that don't support you, you've got to break that pattern. The way you break the pattern first is you get a new experience. If I got you to actually feel proud of yourself -- without those feelings, no sense of loss -- and I did that with you for days, you'd never go back. Because your brain would go "I'm not going back to that." It'd be like having a friend who beats the hell out of you every single day and thinking you'd be letting him down if you didn't let him beat you.
Tony Robbins: Write down the positive emotions you feel in an average week -- at least once a week. Then write the negative emotions you feel at least once a week. Which list is more powerful?
Theo Von: The negative list is more powerful.
Tony Robbins: That's true for most people. What's an emotion -- one or two -- that if it became the dominant emotion in your life, it would get rid of those negatives and they'd have no power over you?
Theo Von: Probably love.
Tony Robbins: There you go. That's your core, brother. That's all you really want. It's probably why you do this podcast. It's probably why you make people laugh. I do what I do because I love people. I was so unhappy myself and I got out of it. I feed 100 million people a year. I've done a billion meals in the last eight years. Not because I'm a good person -- but because when I was 11, somebody came and fed us on Thanksgiving when we had no food, and it made me believe strangers care. So I fell in love with people. That's why I do it. We all really want love, but we're afraid we're not enough.
Tony Robbins: Stop saying the phrase "it's hard for me to feel proud of myself." Every time you say it, you're rewiring it back into your body. It's a story. There's an old phrase -- tell a lie big enough, loud enough, long enough, and sooner or later people believe it. How many times do you think you've said that? You've said it a lot. It's like having a new story is hard. Your success feels embarrassing -- some people call it impostor syndrome. It's just fear that you're not enough. We all have that fear. I'm 63 years old, I feel it at times -- but I've built up enough pattern over 40 years that the new pattern is now dominant. It's like a muscle. Everyone has the muscle. If you use it, it grows. If you don't, you lose it. But it never disappears. If you demand it, push it beyond what it's comfortable with, it responds. That's what you're doing right now.
Tony Robbins: Suffering is triggered reliably by three words: lost, less, never. If you think something you did caused you to lose something, to have less of something, or to never have love or respect or freedom -- that's the neurological signature of suffering. Most people trigger it about themselves. Your mind is not you. If I said "I want to kill this motherf***er" -- have you had that thought? You don't do it. That thought's been around since the Bible. You're not the thought. You're the one who chooses whether to act on it. Your body is like a cable TV -- one channel brings comedy, another horror, another drama. The pattern of how you use your body determines which channel you're tuned into. Change your body, change your channel, change your life.
Tony Robbins: For changes to last, they have to become your identity. If you see Lance Armstrong get told he has cancer in his lungs, his brain, and his testicles -- and he's a biker -- you know what his core belief is: "I always find the way." That belief made him healthy. The thermostat metaphor: if your set point is 68 degrees and you drop to 59, your brain goes "you're a 68-degree person, what are you doing?" and the heaters kick on -- you get drive, you change things. But if you go up to 99, your brain goes "you're a 68-degree person, not a 99-degree person" and the air conditioning kicks on and you start to sabotage yourself back to where you believe you are. You're not a smoker anymore -- you don't think "what brand is it?" You say no. Why? Because it's not your identity. Make the change your identity and it lasts.
Tony Robbins: You are in the midst of transforming your identity. You're in the middle of it right now and you're doing a beautiful job. Your own instincts have led you to a place of real progress. You're not there yet -- not where you want to be. And by the way, when you get wherever "there" is, it won't be enough. You'll want more. Because we're all supposed to keep growing. That's what makes us happy.
Tony Robbins: Let me give you three things. Whatever you're feeling -- pissed off, sad, frustrated, excited -- there are only three things that made you feel that way. First: what you're doing with your body. A depressed person -- you could describe them without seeing them. Shoulders down and forward, head down, breathing shallow, voice quiet and slow. Change those physical patterns and you change the biochemistry. Better than a drug, because you're not dependent on anything. Second: what you focus on. Whatever you focus on you feel, even if it's not true. Third: the language you use. Words change meaning. "We have nutritious snacks" versus "we have delicious snacks" -- one word changes your biochemistry. The words you say to yourself change what you even perceive. Change all three together, radically, again and again, and you change your life.
Tony Robbins: We go through 18-20 year cycles as a culture. Springtime -- optimism, growth. Summer -- things get tested, conflict within. Fall -- everything's easy, too easy. Then Winter. We're in Winter right now. Winter makes things look much worse than they are. But here's the good news about Winter: it forges the next generation. 70% of the Fortune 1000 were developed during a recession or depression. I started my business when interest rates were 18%. When you do well in hard seasons, you do well in all seasons. Create a compelling future. No war is forever. No pandemic is forever. Don't get addicted to the story. Have a plan for yourself. Winter gets rid of the weak -- and the strong not only survive, they find a way to thrive.
Tony Robbins: Those emotions you felt -- you're going to feel them a lot less as you keep on this track. Pretty soon there won't be something you identify with. It'll be like cigarettes -- you'll be like "I don't miss them." You're not going to miss those negative emotions. You just go visit them if you need to. But you won't need to.
Theo Von: Thank you for taking time to help us learn about that. I think a lot of my listeners are really similar to me, and I'm grateful for that.
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