Tony Robbins and the Buddha Share an Essential Teaching

Compare Tony Robbins’s Neuro-Associative Conditioning to the Buddha’s Right Effort and Six Rs Method 

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In his programs, Tony Robbins teaches the three steps for lasting change using Neuro-Associative Conditioning:
(1) creating strong emotional leverage for change
(2) interrupting old patterns, and
(3) conditioning new behaviors so they become automatic.

He supports his approach with the science of Neuro-Associative Conditioning. These steps emphasize awareness of what is not serving you, breaking unhelpful habits, and reinforcing new ones until they stick (see YouTube link below).

 “Right Effort” in Buddhism defines a process for self-directed neuro-associative conditioning. It involves four steps known as the “Four Right Efforts”:
(1) recognizing unwholesome mental states
(2) abandoning them when they arise
(3) cultivating wholesome states
(4) maintaining wholesome states as long as possible

The practice of Right Effort parallels Robbins’s underlying structure of recognizing (awareness), interrupting (abandoning unwholesome states), and conditioning (cultivating and maintaining wholesome states). In the TWIM approach to meditation, the Six Rs method operationalizes the Four Right Efforts into six actions:

1. Recognize distractions
2. Release the distraction
3. Relax stress in body and mind
4. Re-smile means to smile again and feel the effects of smiling
5. Return to the object of meditation (such as experiencing the feeling of loving-kindness)
6. Repeat this process whenever a distraction moves your attention completely away from the object of meditation.

This framework provides meditators with a step-by-step method for disrupting habitual reactive tendencies. The process simultaneously builds seven conditions known as the Seven Factors of Awakening. The end goal goes beyond Robbins’s conditioning to change behavior by cultivating open awareness and spontaneity. The Factors are:

1. Mindfulness (observing the movements of mind’s attention from one state to another)
2. Discernment (differentiation of wholesome from unwholesome states, thoughts, feelings, moods, and intentions)
3. Effort (degree of exertion or energy)
4. Joy (gladness, delight, bliss)
5. Calm  (tranquility and stillness)
6. Collectedness (steadiness or unification of attention)
7. Equanimity (composure, and evenness)

In this video (9 minutes): Tony Robbins describes about how 3-steps of neuro-associative conditioning  changes behavior. Notice the general similarities to the Four Right Efforts and the Six Rs method.

In the next video (8 minutes 30 seconds), watch Delson Armstrong explain how the actions of the Six Rs Method works in meditation and active daily life.  Link HERE

— Blog by Scott A Jordan see bio Link HERE