Tony Robbins is impressive in so many ways. He’s tall and full of energy. One thing that everyone who attended his seminars consistently tell me is how impressed they are that he just keeps going from early morning till midnight 2-3 days in a row, almost without breaks. Wow, an amazing display of energy.
He also does tons of good for tons of people, I’m sure. I was through some of his books and tapes on my path, and they definitely got me started down a path that was good for me.
The problem is that he keeps you in a state of being wrong or not quite good enough, and needing to be fixed. Conveniently, he has the cure.
You see, most, if not all of us, are raised to believe that there’s something wrong with us, raised to hate certain parts of ourselves. This is because parents typically scold their kids when they misbehave (message: you’re not okay, not worth loving, when you do this), or they use fear (dad will get really angry if you do this again) or guilt (mommy will be sad if you do this). So we learn that part of us is bad, and when that part is in control, we’re not okay, not worth loving.
Tony hatches on to that belief and promises the fix. Want to lose weight? Tony has the cure. Want to be stronger? Tony has the recipe. Want to be more successful, have more money? Tony can help.
So you need to buy the next tape, the next book, the next seminar. And of course most of his products ends with getting you to connected with everything you hate about yourself before he starts the infomercial to get you to buy the next product.
One several of the tapes he says “I don’t want to be anybody’s guru. I don’t want to create a dependency.” Those exact words.
But trust me, he does. And his CPA does, too.
He wants you to stay in the mindset that there’s something wrong with you, and only if you live up to the standards that your ego has settled on for you, will you ever obtain freedom and happiness. But have you noticed that happiness is always just around the corner? It’s never here, now, is it? When you try to obtain freedom and happiness through external means such as your body or your bank account, you will never succeed. All you will succeed in is the transfer of large sums of money from your bank account to Tony’s as you buy product after product in futile attempts to get there.
The truth is that happiness and peace and freedom is yours. Now. It’s always there, it’s just that your mind is so busy telling you you need to do this and get that and there’s all these reasons you’re not quite there yet.
Ignore those voices. They’re lying.
{ 2 comments }
hey lars! great post.
i’ve been wondering and grumbling about these self-help gurus for some time.
i got on the "improve myself kick" (which isn’t a bad thing!) about…3 or 4 years ago now. i was working in sales (as i still) and really not making enough money (to survive). a manager suggested a few books and i loved the really great ones. some of the others are "okay" but one author in particular really gets my blood boiling: jeffery gittomer. i’m not sure if he’s like the tony robins of sales or what but he always has a new product for people to buy. he spouts off platitudes about this and that and why "you suck" and he’s "right." for a guy selling books, he’s doing pretty well BUT i feel like it’s never really advice that a person didn’t know already or is actually applicable in sales now…what was he selling back before computers or something? i think he’s been a "sales author" for longer than he was working in acutally sales…
anyway, i still really like _think and grow rich_ by neapolean hill. good stuff to think about. i’ve also listened (friend gave me the mp3s) to brian tracy. he’s along the same lines of mr. hill w/ thought etc being really powerful in shaping actions and choices…
cheers!
I’m actually a huge fan of Tony’s, and I believe a lot of his techniques actually work. But I agree with you that a key to life is learning the mental skills to being at peace and happy with life as it is, studies prove external changes have very little long-term effect on your happiness or sense of well being.
That said, being complacent and non-active is dangerous and unethical when there are so many problems in the world that need to be worked on by caring, capable people. So we still need the most powerful get-things-done tools available.
I think the real short-coming to Tony’s stuff (and to most self-help) is that it’s a huge dump of strategies all at once from a book, tape or seminar, you get all pumped up, but then there’s no follow-through. Life coaching can help with that, but it’s expensive. I think the future is in things like http://www.goaltribe.com that gives you a step-by-step long-term process that keeps you motivated and linked to ‘allies’ that hold you accountable and help you succeed.
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