HOW TO GET WHAT YOU REALLY WANT by ANTHONY ROBBINS

HOW TO GET WHAT YOU REALLY WANT 

"All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you 

up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one 

side of your being and so distorts you." 

tIAlKTCD 1JADTA 0 I 1 V C 

RAINER MARIA R1LKE 

"Gimme my first attack."* Elvis Presley always called for his first hit this way, fulfilling a bizarre daily 

ritual designed to make sure the King of Heartbreak Hotel got to sleep after a strenuous night 

performing. Elvis's assistant would open the first envelope and give him "the usual": a rainbow-colored 

assortment of barbiturates (Amytal,Carbrital, Nembutal or Seconal), Quaaludes, Valium, and Placidyl, 

followed by three shots of Demerol injected just below his bare shoulder blades. 

Before he went to sleep, Elvis's kitchen staff, which was on duty around the clock, would go to work. It 

then became a race to see how much food the King could consume before falling asleep. Typically, 

he'd eat three cheeseburgers and six or seven banana splits before nodding off the pills into his mouth, and carefully pour water down his throat. Elvis was rarely able to ask for the 

third attack. Instead, as a matter of routine, an aide would administer the dosage and let him continue 

to sleep until mid-afternoon, when the bloated

up his nose before taking to the stage again. 

On the day of his death, Elvis remained lucid and saved all of the "attacks" for one fatal dose. Why 

would a man, so universally adored by fans and seeming to have it all, regularly abuse his body and 

then take his own life in such a horrific way? According to David Stanley, Elvis's half brother, it was 

because he much preferred being drugged and numb to being conscious and miserable. 

Unfortunately it's not difficult to think of other famous figures—people at the top of their professions in 

the arts and business—who also brought about their own demise, either directly or indirectly. Think of 

writers like Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath, actors like William Holden and Freddie Prinze, singers 

like Mama Cass Elliot and Janis Joplin. What do these people have in common? First, they're no longer 

here, and we all experienced the loss. Second, they were allsold a bill of goods that said, "Someday, 

someone, somehow, something . . . and then I'll behappy." But when they achieved success, when 

they arrived on Easy Street and got a firsthand lookat the American Dream, they found that happiness 

still eluded them. So they continued to chase it, keeping the pain of existence at bay by drinking, 

smoking, overeating, until finally they got the oblivion

. They never discovered the true

source of happiness.

What these people demonstrated is something all too familiar to so many people: 1) They didn't know 

what they really wanted out of life, so they distracted themselves with a variety of artificial mood 

alterants. 2) They developed not just neurological pathways, but expressways to pain. And their 

habits were driving them down these highways On a regular basis. Despite achieving the levels of 

success they'd once only dreamed of, and despite being surrounded by the love and admiration of 

millions of fans, they had far more references for pain. They became quite adept at generating it 

quickly and easily because they'd made virtual trunk lines to it. 3) They didn't know how to make 

themselves feel good. They had to turn to some outside force to help them deal with the present. 4) 

They never learned the nuts and bolts of how to consciously direct the focus of their own minds. They 

allowed the pain and pleasure of their environments to control them rather than taking control 

themselves. Now, contrast these stories with a letter I received recently from a woman who utilized 

my work to utterly

and completely change the quality of her life: 

Dear Tony, 

I had been severely abused my entire life from infancy until the death of my second husband. As a 

result of the abuse and severe trauma, I developed a mental illness known as Multiple Personality 

Disorder with forty-nine different personalities. None of my personalities knew about the others, or 

what had happened in each of their lives. 

The only relief I had in forty-nine years of living as a multiple was in the form of self-destructive 

behavior. I know it sounds strange, but self-mutilation used to give relief. After one of my many 

attempts at suicide, 1 was sent to the hospital and put under a doctor's care. In order to integrate the 

personalities, I had to go back to the original trauma that created each personality. That trauma had 

to be remembered, relived, and felt. Each of my alters handled a specific function, a selective ability to 

remember, and usually a single emotional tone. I worked with an expert in the field of MPD, and he 

helped me to integrate all forty-nine personalities into one. What kept me going through all of the 

different processes we used was feeling that many of my people were very unhappy and my life had 

become so chaotic (one alter did not know what the other was doing, and we found ourselves in all 

kinds of situations and places that when I switched, I had no memory of). We thought that by 

becoming one we would be happy—the ultimate goal. That was my misconception. What a shocker! I 

lived a year of hell. I found myself very unhappy and grieving for each of my personalities. I missed 

each of my people and sometimes wanted them back the way they were. This was very difficult, and I 

made three more attempts at suicide that year, and again was admitted to a hospital. 

During the past year, I happened to see your program on TV and ordered your thirty-day tape series. 

PersonalPower. I listened to them over and over, grasping at anything that I could use. My 

breakthrough came when I started to listen to your monthly POWERTALKs. I learned things from you 

as a single being that I never learned as a multiple. I learned for the first time in fifty years that 

happiness comes from within. As a single being I now have the memories of the horrors that each of 

the forty-nine endured. When these memories come up I can look at them, and if they became 

overbearing, I can now change my point of focus as I learned from you, and not in a dissociative way 

as I had done before. No longer do I have to put myself in an amnesiac trance and switch to another 

person. I am learning more and more about myself, and am learning how to live as a single being. I 

know that I have a long way to go and a lot of exploring to do. I am sorting out my goals and planning 

how to get there, for now, I have begun to lose weight and plan to be at goal weight for Christmas (a 

nice gift to me). I also know thatI would like to have a healthy, nonabusive relationship with a man. 

Previous to my hospital admittance, I worked full-time for IBM and had four businesses. Today, I am 

running a new business and am enjoying the increased sales I have been able to realize since my 

release from the hospital. I am getting to know my children and grandchildren, but most importantly, 

I'm getting to know me." 

Sincerely, 

Elizabeth Pietrzak