Awaken the Giant Within

 

Anthony Robbins is the embodiment of the personal transformation guru. In the United States at least he is a household name and it would be difficult not to have seen one of his television infomercials there. He has personally coached presidents, royalty, top sports stars, and corporate leaders, and has reached huge new audiences through a combination of legendary personal energy and marketing prowess. Other self-help titans like Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer are low key in comparison. Lots of people are willing to pay over

$1,000 to attend a Robbins weekend seminar, which features walks across hot coals and the hysteria normally seen at pop concerts or evangelical meetings.

Awaken the Giant Within begins with Robbins in a jet helicopter on his way to a sellout seminar. Below he spots the building where, a decade before, he was working as a janitor, and remembers the Robbins of that period: overweight, broke, and lonely. Now svelte, happily married, and a millionaire with a mansion by the sea, this is the moment Robbins realizes that he is living his dream.

Such details are part of the enjoyment of Awaken the Giant Within and Robbins knows that the best advertisement for his products is his life itself. But let’s go back to the beginning…

 

Robbins’s first book, written while still in his mid-20s, was Unlimited Power. Itself a bestseller, this laid the groundwork for its successor, revealing the source of many of Robbins’ methods: neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

As we saw in Chapter 2, NLP was pioneered by John Grinder and Richard Bandler and arose out of the study of how language, verbal and non-verbal, can affect the nervous system. Its premise is that we can control our nervous system so that our responses and actions, though seeming to be “natural,” are in fact programmed. Another key premise is that if we “model” the actions and behavior of successful people we can achieve at least the same results as they have.

Robbins’s genius has been to refine and market NLP to a general audience. His catchphrase “Change happens in an instant,” for example, comes directly from NLP, as do his points about linking our motivations to pain or pleasure.

 

The book gets the reader’s imagination going by the questions it asks, the possibilities it creates in your mind. Robbins is the master of unlimitedness, yet is careful to provide the practical steps and details for goal achievement. The book is 500 pages long. The following list covers some of the themes, all are of which are backed up by copious references, stories, and facts.

 

These are the key shaping forces in life. We can either let them control us or understand them to suit ourselves. Be careful what you link pleasure to: Some people equate pleasure with heroin, others with helping people. Do you want to be like Jimi Hendrix, minus the talent, or Mother Teresa? By linking massive pain or massive pleasure with an activity or thought, we change who we are.

 

Two men are chained to a wall in a prison. One commits suicide, the other goes on to tell people about the power of the human spirit.

Rather than the events of our lives shaping us, it is our beliefs about what those events mean that do so. Global beliefs (how we see the world and people in general),if changed, can alter virtually everything about the rest of our lives. All great leaders create a sense of certainty, never believing that their problems are permanent. The CIA has techniques to change a person’s core beliefs in a very short period. You can apply the same techniques to your own limiting beliefs.

 

All human progress occurs through questioning current limitations. We don’t need to have an answer prepared; ask a quality question and you will get a quality answer.

 

Use the power of words and enlarged vocabulary to transform thinking and action. Appreciate also that “leaders are readers”—reading allows us to make crucial distinctions based on others’ experience.

 

Determine exactly what you want to achieve and write it down, creating a future so amazing that you are compelled to realize it. You must “focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear.” Create a tenyear plan then work backwards; most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

 

Make decisions rather than wishes about what you are and take action. Figure out the hidden personal rules by which you currently live and create new ones that will drive you to live out your destiny.

 

Awaken the Giant Within is the popular bible of psycho-technology. Converts will feel that if everyone read and applied Robbins, the world would be a vastly more empowered, fulfilled, and happy place.

For some readers, however, Robbins’ world may seem too black and white. It shows you how to get out of any sort of negative state, hygienically removing the bad mood, depression, and so on. Other self-help writers like Thomas Moore and Robert Bly see great value in depression and even grief. It teaches us about ourselves, they say, and is part of a soulful existence.

Awaken the Giant Within is subtitled “How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Financial Destiny!” Can we really control our destiny? Are the goals that Robbins inspires people to dream up really unique to them? His own life might appear to be living fantasy, but does this mean that all our desires should be fulfilled too? The tools he provides to achieve anything we want are indeed impressive, but there is no caveat about the reasons for wanting them.

People can be turned off by the superman aura around the book and its conviction that the fantasy we might have about ourselves can be realized. To a critic, everything is about “achieving your goals.” Eric Fromm wrote about the “marketized individual,” the person who ends up as a mere reflection of the capitalist economy, pursuing self-improvement only to the extent that it may bring higher status.

 

To address these criticisms, it is true that some people may use Robbins’ mental technology to achieve banal materialistic ends, but what he actually says challenges the very hold of materialism in our lives. The core of his philosophy is defying the culture that surrounds us by refusing to be just another mole, burrowing away at our job so that we can keep in step. In his world, everyone should be amazing. And the book does have us question our idea of success: Is it, Robbins asks, a product of our deepest creativity and highest vision? His philosophy holds that pursuing a dream is the only way of keeping ourselves truly alive, and money is always secondary to that.

What Robbins does is get people to “step over the edge,” to change their beliefs about themselves, identify their core values, move on from jobs or relationships that do nothing for them, and reveal that their limitations are largely illusory.

 

The Robbins message has mass appeal because we all believe that there is much more to us than others recognize. The world is fond of putting our ideas in the “unreasonable, unrealistic” category. We are taught that we can’t do what our heart desires and after a while we accept it as fact. But Robbins’ truly successful person refuses to be reasonable.

Awaken the Giant Within has been called “plastic surgery for the mind,” meaning if you’re not happy with your identity, change it.

Though that idea will sound far-fetched or even distasteful to one person, the reassurance that it is possible can be a lifeline for another. Reinvention, let’s not forget, is the very basis of American culture, and Awaken the Giant Within could not have surfaced in any other place. Look on it as a sort of Statue of Liberty in words.

 

Born in 1y60, Robbins grew up in a low-rent suburb of Los Angeles, but was thrown out of home by his mother at age 17 for being “too intense.” He obtained a reputation as a super-salesman, selling tickets to other motivational speakers’ events. Claiming to have read over 700 personal growth books, he came across NLP in 1y83 and went on the road to promote his brand of it, promising to heal people of phobias in 15 minutes. He was a millionaire by age 24, lost his money, then regained it. These incidents and others are related in The Life Story of Anthony Robbins, by former Robbins associate Michael Bolduc.

Robbins is now America’s best-known “peak performance consultant” and has worked with IBM, AT&T, American Express, and the US Army, as well as professional sports teams and Olympic athletes. He has been a private coach to Bill Clinton (who apparently relied on Robbins for support during the Monica Lewinsky crisis),Andre Agassi, Mikhail Gorbachev, and he even had some sessions with Princess Diana.

The Anthony Robbins companies (dreamlife.com) run seminars and events around the world, including a “Mastery University.” His Foundation runs programs to help youth, the elderly, the homeless, and people in prison. Robbins lives in California with his wife and children.