Joy’s Epic Tony Robbins Breakthrough

I’m excited to share my Date with Destiny story – and my vulnerability – with you… This story is the result of me digesting and processing my experience. I hope it helps you in some way, whether it allows you to dig deeper into your own life or find strength in another’s vulnerability. By showing up and being vulnerable, I was able to undo a lifetime of programming and unlock my new life’s mission. And that’s precisely what I set out to do…

I signed up for Date with Destiny intent to find more clarity around my mission, my path, and on the sabotage that’s holding me back from making a breakthrough to where I truly want to be in life. With the considerable investment of time and money required, I knew I had to play ALL IN.

From the get go, I was determined to give my full 100%, and I’m so proud to say that I did just that! I was even lucky enough to experience a live intervention with Tony Robbins himself!

I’m eager to share this experience with you because it was so transformational for me. I believe that my story can help others realize that the prison we often put ourselves in is really just in our own mind… It simply doesn’t exist beyond our own self-sabotage.

Building Up to My Live Intervention

At this point during my Date with Destiny experience, Tony was transitioning from a discussion of the values we all have in life into an explanation of how these values can take us away from the goals we are trying to achieve if they are in the wrong position in our life. As a part of this topic, he was also teaching us about the power of the stories we hold on to.

These are stories that have meaning based on the dramas and traumas we’ve experienced in our lives. We identify with these stories at our core and we stay stuck in the past instead of moving on and realizing that really, “Hey, it’s just a story and I can choose a new story any time, any day.”

So, we were working through some really powerful stuff, and you could feel the energy percolating in the room – people were having really great ah-ha’s and breakthroughs. Tony was also teaching the different levels of consciousness that we go through when we spiritually develop as human beings. He showed us these different levels by asking participants to impersonate that level of consciousness in a really powerful way, which was very fun and very insightful.

Tony then asked us to identify the following for ourselves:

1. Which level of consciousness we believe we are at in this moment
2. Which level of consciousness the person that we are in a relationship with is at in this moment
3. Which level our significant other is at when we are in conflict
4. Which level we personally go down to when we’re having conflict with our significant other

As we went through this exercise, I was having real ah-ha moments about my myself and about the most important relationship in my life with my most beloved husband, Roy. So, I was seeing for myself, “Okay, so where am I? I believe I’m in level seven.” That’s a green consciousness, and then Roy is a level above me in everyday life, so the main level that we normally vibrate at is called flex and flow.

So, I could see that. And then, I could also see that when we go in conflict with each other, we can drop down to level three and four, three is anger, which is for me the main level that I drop down to, and for Roy it’s usually between three and four, which is either the angry level or the kind of dogmatic level.

As I was seeing this, Tony asks the crowd, “Would anybody like to do this exercise or share what they found for themselves?” And in that moment, it felt like a sort of magical hand kind of lifted me out of my chair, and I found myself standing there and actually being taken for this intervention.

The moments before my breakthrough

As you can imagine, I was really excited. I was also very nervous, and I was definitely also a little bit scared because I knew that if I really wanted to break through, I would have to again play all in. This was the time to show full vulnerability and absolutely no bullshitting because I wanted to make that huge breakthrough for myself. So, a huge part of me knew that this was such a chance, a gift that the universe had blessed me with, and I really wanted to make the most out of this.

We had been watching Tony perform interventions, and there was one in particular that stuck with me. A woman was so stuck in her story and so unwilling to let go of it… She was at that level of “stuckness” where we just cannot see out of it. You know the one 😉  The intervention progressed to the point where Tony was literally screaming at her and she was sobbing, it was quite dramatic. So, I had this fresh memory, and I was very keen to avoid that kind of drama. At the same time, I really desired the breakthrough more than anything else.

So, this is what was happening right before my breakthrough… There I was, standing across from Tony, who is a big guy, both physically huge and in personality.

As I stood there, I was also focusing on the primary question that I felt was driving my life up to this moment. I’d just zoned in on this the previous night with an exercise from Tony and unearthed the central question that I keep asking myself: How can I make this more beautiful?

And that kind of made sense to my conscious mind because that has been so much of what I do in life. I’ve worked in beauty, I’ve worked in fashion, and I’ve helped people (especially women) recognize their own beauty in many different ways. This question was sitting with me throughout the night…

At the same time, I was also worn down emotionally and physically. For some additional context, nights with Tony involve 2, 3, or at a maximum 4 hours of sleep. Tony’s workshop days go until 3 in the morning, and by the time you get home and unwind, you just don’t get much sleep. I was in this kind of raw state when I discovered that the primary question that I was ACTUALLY repeating to myself in my subconscious ever since I was a little girl was: “What is wrong with me?”

My Breakthrough

Despite the pain of discovering such a painful question inside of me, Tony’s humor really helped me laugh through it. He said,  “Of course, she wouldn’t say it, but actually what she’s saying is, ‘What the fuck is wrong with me?'” And this bluntness really gave me a laugh. I also shed a few tears because I realized: Wow, this driving value of significance is part of the problem of why I never felt complete.

I’ve never felt that I was good enough, because if you have the value of significance as your number one in life, that makes you compare everything that you do to something or someone who has more of that. As a result, you’ll never feel that you are ever successful enough. This really hit home with me.

I knew that this ambition that’s driving me is a good thing. But on the other hand, I never felt that it was enough. I realized that this primary question had been running my life. It was my mind program, literally. So I felt this incredible moment of liberation, transformation, and everything at the same time, which was incredibly beautiful and graceful.

This was my big “ah-ha moment” in the intervention! I also experienced Tony as an incredibly loving, supportive, and powerful partner to go through such a process with, because he reflects back to you in such a clear and powerful, even dominant way, which I enjoy because it allows me to let go of control and really see what is happening.

And, that, I believe, is what we actually all want, we want to hear the truth, and we want to be able to really own that. As Tony teaches, the truth shall set you free. When we’re able to speak such truth to ourselves and own such truth in front of 5,000 people, there’s not much to be left to feel scared about in life.

Beyond the Intervention: An Amazing Connective Moment

The most amazing thing actually happened after my intervention when I had hundreds of women and men come up to me and share that observing my intervention was so incredibly helpful and healing to them. They were able to see so much in themselves and so much in their partners, and they were able to recognize that whole dynamic.

The most healing element of these interactions is that they reaffirmed my power. I’m usually a little numb to people coming up to me after being on stage because I’m used to this at after our workshops and trainings. I figure that people are only approaching me and being nice because I’ve been up on stage leading them through a process! I love and appreciate every thank you and every piece of positivity, but with time, I’ve detached from it.

This is, of course, a result of my old programming. You see, I couldn’t even take it in at face value. But, at Tony’s a Date with Destiny, I was just Joy. Nobody knows who I am or what I do there – and nobody cares about that. What touched them most was my willingness to be that vulnerable and to be that honest, and to just go through the process. So their words have so much meaning and are bringing me so much joy, even now as I think about my experience. 

Stay tuned for even more insight from this experience and our recent experience at Tony Robbins Business Mastery retreat! Roy and I truly know that the best coaches have their own coaches – and, yes, that includes us! When you have a neutral third party to push you outside of your comfort level, amazing things happen.

Watch Robyn Benson and I discuss the power of vulnerability, live from Tony Robbins below!