Tony Robbins Books - Reviewed

Self-help books don't come any more celebrated than this one. It's an acknowledged classic.

Tony Robbins is a motivational speaker who is larger than life and packed with sunny Californian optimism. Across the world, few can have missed his infomercials, seminars and firewalks.

This book is his definitive work and a must-buy for anyone who enjoys the sometimes cheese-laden self-help genre. It offers a tantalising glimpse that total life transformation is possible - epitomised in the opening story of multimillionaire Robbins, who is flying in his private helicopter to lead a sell-out seminar at a football stadium. As he swoops over Glendale in California, he spots a vaguely familiar building from the air. It's where he used to work, on the breadline, as a humble janitor.

I enjoyed this book for its optimistic spirit and its simple but eye-opening insights, such as "It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped". The opening chapters are exciting, fast-paced and compulsive reading - Tony Robbins really grips your attention by promising dramatic personal change. He demonstrates the vital power of focus, decisions and empowering beliefs, all the time using his trademark conversational style.

The central section of the book focuses on his theory of "Neuro-Associative Conditioning"; and this is where my attention wanders. I am not a devotee of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) approaches, so skipped a lot of the content here. Tony Robbins concludes with a detailed seven-day program to change your life. The closing chapters systematically apply all the concepts in the book to jump-start your emotional happiness, health and fitness, relationships, finances and time management. The tag-line of this book says it all - the aim is to "wake up and take control of your life".

Here are seven of the insights and soundbites from "Awaken the Giant Within" that have really helped me over the years:

1. Make a decision to never settle for less than you can be

2. Concentration is power - a concentrated effort is like a laser beam

3. Raise your standards and change your limiting beliefs

4. Lots of people know what they do. Few people do what they know

5. Ten years from now, who will you be?

6. It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped

7. Questions are the answer. Throw enough constructive questions at a problem and you'll get a solution.

Instead of allowing uncomfortable feelings such as fear, disappointment and frustration to weigh down on us, Robbins suggests treating these as a call to action. In his words, "Determination is the wake-up call to the human will". Much of his work focuses on controlling our mental attitude and staying resilient in the face of hardship. The most challenging portion is his "Ten Day Mental Challenge", where he adapts Emmet Fox's crazy but profound idea in the 1930s that we should go for over a week with a cheerful attitude and a systematic attempt to squash every negative thought and disempowering emotion! Every time you slip up, you have to start again. I've confess I've tried this and it is much more difficult than imagined!

I picked up my copy waiting for a flight at Miami airport way back in the summer of 1999 - it cost $12.00 and this investment has repaid itself many times over. The book is available in the UK today in a slimmer, green-jacketed volume for the bargain price of just £5.99 (amazon.co.uk). I recommend it unreservedly.

In summary, this book is an absorbing and enjoyable read with no preaching. It can restore your faith that purposeful action can turn any situation around.
There is a surfeit of recessionary gloom and negativity around these days. "Awaken the Giant Within" is a tremendously powerful antidote.

(c) WestOcean 2009

I still remember the very day that I first heard of Tony Robbins. As a student long ago in a galaxy far far away, in the days when Netscape and Windows 95 ruled the world, I visited a 19-year old friend at college. I had never seen him so motivated or enthusiastic about anything. To my amazement, he had a Bloomberg terminal and several stock trading screens in his room, which was no small investment in the mid-Nineties. What really caught my eye was his full set of Tony Robbins "Get the Edge" videos on his shelf, including a large motivational poster. At the time I was highly sceptical of self help books. I should have paid more attention. Within seven years, my friend was a multi-millionaire.

This piqued my curiosity. Had my friend got lucky, or was there some insight in the Robbins book that actually worked? So in the summer of 1999 I bought "Awaken the Giant Within" while delayed at the airport. This monster tome featured the toothy, grinning Mr Robbins on the front and the insatiably optimistic subtitle "How to take immediate control of your mental, emotional and physical destiny". I caught my plane, drifted through the first few chapters, but then left the book on my shelf for ten years.

Since then I've read the book. I'm no zealot, but I believe the book has strong virtues. I'm still not convinced by Bandler, Grindler and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) but much of the rest of the message holds true. This book is no religious text, but merely practical advice from a coach who understands the psychology of peak performance. If nothing else, I understood the connection between state, energy and mental attitude for the first time, and employed the magnetic power of goal-setting to deliver tangible results. So Awaken the Giant Within comes with my highest recommendation. It certainly hasn't made me a millionaire yet, but in many other ways it has been an immensely rewarding read.

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