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The Tony Robbins Podcast

The Truth About Happiness You Were Never Taught with Michael Singer

67 min episode · 3 min read
·
Michael Singer

Episode

67 min

Read time

3 min

Topics

Productivity, Psychology & Behavior, Philosophy & Wisdom

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • The happiness truth table: Happiness operates on four conditions: getting what you want opens you, not getting what you want disappoints you, getting what you don't want closes you, and avoiding what you don't want relieves you. This reveals two paths: fight to get what you want externally, or examine why you close internally. The spiritual path asks why your natural state isn't completely open regardless of external circumstances.
  • Low-hanging fruit practice: Begin spiritual work with trivial daily moments, not major life challenges. When weather bothers you, traffic lights turn red, or drivers go slow, notice yourself closing and practice relaxing instead of resisting. These small moments train your heart to stay open. People report life transformation simply by relaxing through minor irritations rather than tensing against them.
  • The storage mechanism: Every uncomfortable experience you resist gets stored inside you permanently until released. Like keeping spoiled food in a sick room to remember what not to eat, you store painful memories to avoid repeating them. This creates a fortress of blocked energy. Whatever you push away stays in your psyche, coming back up whenever reminded by similar situations or thoughts.
  • LIFO stack principle: Stored experiences follow last-in-first-out pattern. Recent suppressions surface first in thoughts and dreams, while deeper traumas remain blocked underneath. Stop adding new blockages by handling daily moments without resistance, and older stored material naturally begins rising. The shakti energy underneath pushes suppressed content upward, seeking release and freedom from your resistance.
  • Relaxation as spiritual tool: Relaxation functions like judo against resistance. Tensing muscles enables you to resist experiences; complete relaxation makes resistance impossible. When closing begins around your heart, deliberately relax shoulders, arms, and chest rather than thinking or judging. This physical release prevents psychological storage. Practice relaxing in the presence of difficult people or situations to learn staying open.

What It Covers

Michael Singer explains happiness as a permanent state of openness rather than getting what you want. He teaches that people block their natural joy by storing uncomfortable experiences inside themselves, creating resistance that prevents the flow of inner energy (shakti). True spirituality involves learning not to close when life unfolds differently than expected, starting with small daily moments.

Key Questions Answered

  • The happiness truth table: Happiness operates on four conditions: getting what you want opens you, not getting what you want disappoints you, getting what you don't want closes you, and avoiding what you don't want relieves you. This reveals two paths: fight to get what you want externally, or examine why you close internally. The spiritual path asks why your natural state isn't completely open regardless of external circumstances.
  • Low-hanging fruit practice: Begin spiritual work with trivial daily moments, not major life challenges. When weather bothers you, traffic lights turn red, or drivers go slow, notice yourself closing and practice relaxing instead of resisting. These small moments train your heart to stay open. People report life transformation simply by relaxing through minor irritations rather than tensing against them.
  • The storage mechanism: Every uncomfortable experience you resist gets stored inside you permanently until released. Like keeping spoiled food in a sick room to remember what not to eat, you store painful memories to avoid repeating them. This creates a fortress of blocked energy. Whatever you push away stays in your psyche, coming back up whenever reminded by similar situations or thoughts.
  • LIFO stack principle: Stored experiences follow last-in-first-out pattern. Recent suppressions surface first in thoughts and dreams, while deeper traumas remain blocked underneath. Stop adding new blockages by handling daily moments without resistance, and older stored material naturally begins rising. The shakti energy underneath pushes suppressed content upward, seeking release and freedom from your resistance.
  • Relaxation as spiritual tool: Relaxation functions like judo against resistance. Tensing muscles enables you to resist experiences; complete relaxation makes resistance impossible. When closing begins around your heart, deliberately relax shoulders, arms, and chest rather than thinking or judging. This physical release prevents psychological storage. Practice relaxing in the presence of difficult people or situations to learn staying open.
  • Consciousness expansion mechanics: As blocked energy releases, shakti pushes your awareness backward from identification with thoughts, emotions, and body. You begin experiencing yourself as the consciousness watching these phenomena rather than being them. This isn't becoming universal but recognizing you already sit in universal consciousness, merely staring at a tiny personal self like focusing on one photograph while sitting in an infinite room.

Notable Moment

Singer describes his arrest and six-year FBI investigation despite doing nothing wrong. When agents raided his company with guns, his immediate response was accepting this as the next unfolding moment and asking how to use it for spiritual growth. He consciously accepted potential jail time, having worked in maximum security prisons for thirty years, deciding to use any outcome to eliminate his ego completely.

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Episode Transcript

Some people say, find your passion in life. I say find out why you're not passionate about everything. The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Stop it. We have a really special treat. If you saw the untethered soul or read the book the untethered soul, Mickey Singer is just such a beautiful person, and he doesn't really go out and do things, and we're just so grateful. The world is not stealing your happiness. You are. You wake up every single morning, and you say, I'm back. Mickey, thank you for joining us. Hello, Mickey. Hi, dear. Hi, Sage. What a delight. I'm ecstatic to be with you. We are ecstatic to have you, Mickey. Mickey is a dear brother on the path and a dear friend and has the most beautiful mind and heart and wisdom and understanding. And every time that we've had the privilege to have you, it's just such an extraordinary gift. So Not a doubt. Thank you, Mickey. Thank you. We love you. Love you. Give it up for him. So it's all yours, Mickey. Thank you. What an honor. I've never been in Abu Dhabi. Now I'm there, but I didn't happen. So I love the fact that Tony, who's known for being so strong and so powerful and pushed through everything, as spiritual retreats. And I already know how spiritual he is. I've been to his house. I've been in his meditation room. What a beautiful soul. I want a tremendous amount that he and Sage are giving to the world, not just you all. But this particular seminar grouping is about happiness, joy, ecstasy, a life that's filled with enthusiasm. My view of what it means to be happy that I want for all of you is as follows. You wake up every single morning, and you say, I'm back. Alright? And every single moment of every single day when you brush your teeth, when you're eating breakfast, it's blowing you away. You are so enthused, so excited about absolutely everything. I get to take the garbage out today. Please, it's my turn. It was yours yesterday. No. I wanna do it again. Wash the dishes, go to work. I get to sell things. I get to do things. Every single thing is filled with enthusiasm, passion, joy. Some people say, find your passion in life. I say, find out why you're not passionate about everything. Imagine if every single thing made you as passionate as anything ever has, love, this special moments, every moment can be at that level. And people don't believe that, that every moment can be at that level. But what if terrible things happen? You enjoy at a deep level the sorrow, the pain of death, of sickness, of compassion, but it moves you so deeply that it's like I talk about, let's say you're driving on a road and you turn turn …

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