notes from liguria, italy

Ten Minutes Before the World Gets In

By Margherita Patrone - Sept 12, 2026 - 4 min read - Issue #11

I love Tony Robbins.I know that sentence alone will make some people roll their eyes.And I am completely fine with that.I first read Awaken the Giant Within when I was 20, and more than fifteen years later, I still find myself coming back to some of his ideas.Not all of them.But many of them.There is something about his conviction that we can actively participate in shaping our lives that has always resonated with me.One of the practices I keep returning to takes ten minutes.Tony calls it priming.But what interests me is not really whether you like Tony Robbins.What interests me is this:How can ten minutes of breathing, gratitude and visualisation change the way we experience exactly the same morning?Because underneath something that sounds very “self-development” are several ideas I find fascinating from a behavioural perspective.Attention.Physiological state.Salience.Mental simulation.And perhaps most importantly, the way our current state changes what we notice and how we interpret what happens next.The cloudSome mornings I wake up feeling completely clear.Others, I am already somewhere inside my head.Something I need to do.Something somebody said.A decision I need to make.An email I haven't answered.One thought leads to another and suddenly I am inside what I can only describe as a cloud.Nothing terrible has necessarily happened.But my state has changed.And once I am inside that cloud, everything begins to look slightly different.A small problem feels bigger.An ambiguous message sounds more negative.Something uncertain suddenly feels threatening.The facts may be exactly the same.But I am not experiencing them in the same way.This is perhaps one of the things about human behaviour that fascinates me most.We like to imagine that we are calmly observing reality and then responding to it.But we are never entirely neutral observers.We bring our mood.Our expectations.Our fears.Our energy.Our previous experiences.Our current state.And all of these things influence what we notice and what we make it mean.That is why I find priming so useful.It doesn't necessarily change anything around me.It interrupts the state I happened to wake up in.It gives me ten minutes to step outside the cloud.### What happens in those ten minutes?The routine is incredibly simple.Tony divides it very precisely.You start with one minute of breathing.Three sets of 30 strong breaths, pausing briefly between each set.Then you spend 30 seconds with your hands over your heart, breathing and focusing your attention there.I like that the practice begins with the body rather than with thinking.Because when I am stuck inside my thoughts, my instinct is normally to solve thoughts with more thoughts.Analyse more.Understand more.Replay the conversation again.Try to work everything out.Instead, the first minute and a half asks you to do something completely different.Breathe.Change your physiology first.Research on deliberate breathing suggests that breathing patterns can influence physiological regulation and autonomic activity.That does not mean Tony's exact breathing sequence has somehow been scientifically proven.It hasn't.But the broader idea is interesting:sometimes changing how we feel does not have to begin with another thought.Sometimes it can begin with the body.Three minutes of gratitudeNext come three minutes of gratitude.You choose three things you are genuinely grateful for.Roughly one minute for each.But you don't simply list them.You go back into the moment.What did you see?Who was there?What did it feel like?Tony often encourages people to include something very small.A smile.The sun on your face.A conversation.Someone being unexpectedly kind.Something that made you laugh.I love this part because of what it does to attention.When I am inside that cloud, my mind becomes extraordinarily efficient at identifying what is wrong.The problem.The uncertainty.The thing I haven't done.The conversation I need to have.For three minutes, I deliberately ask it to perform a different search.What is already good?Gratitude doesn't make the difficult thing disappear.It doesn't mean pretending everything is wonderful.It simply changes which information gets priority for a moment.And human attention is anything but neutral.Negative information tends to be particularly effective at capturing us.One criticism can occupy more mental space than ten compliments.One difficult email can suddenly become the defining event of an otherwise perfectly good morning.Gratitude, to me, is a small counterweight.Not:Ignore the bad.But:Don't forget that this exists too.And there is evidence that gratitude practices can produce modest improvements in wellbeing.Modest is the word I particularly like.Not magic.Not transformation in three minutes.A small effect.Repeated.Which is perhaps how many meaningful changes in life actually happen.Then comes the strange partFor the next one minute and thirty seconds, Tony asks you to imagine a coloured light coming down through your body.Healing whatever needs healing.Your body.Your thoughts.Your emotions.Your worries.Strengthening whatever needs strengthening.You can interpret that however you want.Spiritually.Symbolically.Or simply as visualisation.Then, for another one minute and thirty seconds, you extend that light outward.To your family.The people you love.Your friends.Your colleagues.People you might meet that day.Even strangers.This may sound like the least behavioural-science part of the whole exercise.And yet it is one of my favourites.Because stress makes our world very small.My problem.My deadline.My worry.My decision.My insecurity.Suddenly everything revolves around whatever happens to be occupying my mind.Then, for three minutes, the perspective changes.I think about my family.The people I love.How much I want good things for them.How fortunate I am to have them.Something larger than whatever was worrying me five minutes earlier.The problem is still there.But I am no longer standing quite so close to it.And sometimes distance changes everything.Three to ThriveThe final three minutes are what Tony calls Three to Thrive.You choose three outcomes you deeply want.And you spend roughly a minute on each.But rather than thinking about wanting them, you imagine them already achieved.What does it look like?Where are you?Who is around you?How do you feel?What becomes possible now that it has happened?This is probably where some people begin to become uncomfortable.Visualisation.Manifestation.The law of attraction.I understand.I love the world of self-development, but I also work in research.So I cannot help wanting to ask:What is actually happening here?And the research around positive visualisation is more nuanced than the self-development world sometimes makes it sound.Simply fantasising about a desired future is not necessarily enough.Some research has even suggested that positive fantasies can reduce effort when they give us the emotional reward of success before we have done anything to achieve it.That distinction matters.I do not believe that imagining something intensely means I can then wait for the universe to deliver it.You still have to do the work.Make the call.Write the page.Exercise.Take the risk.Have the conversation.Start.But there is something I find incredibly useful about spending three minutes reminding myself:Where am I actually going?Because without that reminder, it is surprisingly easy to spend an entire day responding to where everybody else wants you to go.### State changes what we seeThis is perhaps the part of Tony's work that has stayed with me most.The idea of state.The same person can approach exactly the same situation very differently depending on the state they are in.When I feel overwhelmed, everything looks complicated.When I feel defensive, everything sounds more critical.When I feel afraid, everything looks risky.When I feel calm and strong, I can often see options that were invisible to me ten minutes earlier.The situation hasn't necessarily changed.My state has.And state influences behaviour.It affects the email I send.The conversation I have.The risk I take.The interpretation I make.Whether I react immediately or pause.Whether I see a problem or an opportunity.That is why these ten minutes matter to me.Not because priming magically changes the world.But because it changes the person who is about to respond to it.Attention is never really emptyThere is another reason I find this particularly interesting.Anyone working in brands, advertising, marketing or behavioural science knows how valuable attention is.Entire industries compete for it.Brands spend enormous amounts trying to become the thing we notice.Platforms optimise their products around keeping us engaged.Algorithms learn which information is most effective at pulling us back in.And yet we don't always protect our own attention with the same seriousness.Think about the first ten minutes of an average morning.An email.WhatsApp.LinkedIn.The news.A Slack notification.Someone needs something.Someone somewhere has achieved something.Something terrible has happened in the world.Before we have properly entered our own day, dozens of other people can already have entered our minds.And perhaps that is what I love most about priming.For ten minutes, I decide first.Before the inbox.Before the news.Before somebody else's priorities.Before the algorithms.I decide what deserves my attention.Ten minutes is almost nothingTony has a line about priming:“If you don't have ten minutes for your life, you don't have a life.”It sounds dramatic.But I understand what he means.Ten minutes is tiny.I can lose ten minutes scrolling without noticing.I can spend ten minutes replaying an annoying conversation.I can spend ten minutes imagining every possible outcome of something that hasn't happened.And those things influence my state too.The difference is that I didn't choose them.We spend a lot of time talking about time management.Perhaps we should think a little more about state management.Because ten minutes won't change everything.But ten intentional minutes might change what happens in the next hour.And then perhaps the next decision.And then the next conversation.And maybe that is enough.Before the world gets inI don't think everyone needs to wake up tomorrow and start doing Tony Robbins' priming.Maybe your version looks completely different.Meditation.Prayer.Journalling.Coffee outside.A walk.Stretching.Looking at the sea.Sitting quietly before anybody needs anything from you.What matters to me is the space.A small gap between waking up and allowing the rest of the world in.For me, it is ten minutes.One minute breathing.Thirty seconds with my hands on my heart.Three minutes remembering three things I am grateful for.One and a half minutes imagining light moving through me.One and a half minutes sending it towards the people around me.Three minutes seeing the three things I want as if they have already happened.And then I start my day.Sometimes it feels profound.Sometimes my mind wanders through half of it.Sometimes I still finish with exactly the same problem I had when I started.That isn't really the point.The point is that, for a moment, I stepped outside the cloud.I remembered what is good.I remembered who matters.I remembered where I am going.And I chose what deserved my attention before the rest of the world had the opportunity to choose it for me.So this week, I want to leave you with a very simple experiment.Tomorrow morning, before reaching for your phone, give yourself ten minutes.You don't even have to call it priming.Just notice what happens when, before responding to everything around you, you deliberately choose your state first.Before the rest of the world gets access to your mind each morning, what do you want to put there?A Saturday morning note, written somewhere between London and Liguria.Until next Saturday,
Margherita