I hate Tony Robbins
The first time I saw him, he struck me as a charlatan who fed off the suffering and despair of others. A mercenary speaker. An infomercial preacher that for 3 payments of $9.99, would change your life in an instant.
When I saw his 2016 documentary, it seemed like the perfect scam: 2,500 humans paying $5,000 to spend five days in an auditorium to have a "date with their destiny." That's twelve million dollars. For five days of conferences, and just one speaker.
The twist was that it resembled more a rock concert than a self-help conference. The lights, the screens, the cameras, the smoke machines, the big speakers. His formula combined the producer of Michael Jackson's concerts with the DJ that chooses the songs in the mini-breaks at baseball stadiums. He knows exactly when to play We Will Rock You or We Are the Champions.
Something hit very hard when you saw this production juxtaposed with true human suffering.
Like the Brazilian blonde who was born into a cult named Children of God, who, in order to express her love for Him, had to have sex with all the members of the community. Beginning at age six.
Poor desperate people who pay that amount of money to listen to cheap, banal and cliché phrases like “you have the power” and “you have to face your fears”.
The really sad part was that Tony ended up being the last chance for the twenty suicidals who on average show-up to these events.
Better to watch something else on Netflix.
A few years later, however, I ran into him again. The YouTube algorithm put me in front of a 20-minute video that brought me out of the depression/desperation I had been dwelling on for the past few months. I had received advice from many places to no avail and this video was the only guidance that really shook me up. It was simple but profound. He said: Take care of your body, take care of your mind, take care of your spirit.
Your emotions are physical: So get up and exercise.
Where you put your attention, you put your life: So be careful of what you see, hear and read.
There is nothing more important than your soul: So begin by saying thank you.
Maybe it was his deep voice or his commanding presence, maybe his endless list of achievements and famous clients, or his business numbers that he kept bragging about. Or maybe it was the security with which he transmitted his formula and I no longer had the strength or the self-adopted moral superiority from a few years ago to disqualify him one more time.
Okay. Let's follow this cheap, banal and cliché advice. – I said to myself
So every morning, on my commute to the office, I would play his signature 15 minute meditation. 30 quick breaths, preferably moving the hands up and down like a crazy man in a gym, and then connecting to what I feel grateful about.
The first few times I felt like him: a charlatan; Or like me: a wimp who had nothing left in his arsenal and withdrew into his car to try and save himself. A fool who believed that closing his eyes and saying thanks for his breakfast or the love of his friends was really going to change things.
The first rule of self-help is to stop believing that you don't need it.
If I had continued on that trajectory, I would have reached 70 behaving as if I had all the answers and as if my sufferings came because the world conspired against me. Like a charlatan.
My aversion to that documentary, to all the Deepak Chopras and Eckhart Tolles, and to all self-help in general, only came from my arrogance and my assumed but incomplete completeness.
If I am disgusted and ashamed to see 2,000 people jump like crazy, it is not because they are desperate souls, but because we all are. And by dancing, like in concerts, you not only change your neurochemistry, but you stop thinking that everything is about you. No one is watching if you dance well, no one is patrolling the arena to check if you know the lyrics. It's just you judging yourself with the conditioning you learned in your family and your culture.
Yes, we all need to dance and jump more.
I spent a year or two – still do, actually – listening to Tom Bilyeu, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Vishen Lakhiani, Wim Hof, Joe Dispenza, David Goggins.
I collected phrases in a note on my cell phone called: Tony.
- You don’t want uncertainty so you stay in your control zone. And so, you don’t grow.
- If you are not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything creative.
- Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. Success is something you attract by the person you become.
- I thought that circumstances reigned your life. But it is philosophy.
- To do something you haven’t done, you have to become someone you have never been.
In our culture we despise the people we aspire to be. The rich, the skinny girls on Instagram, the neighbor's cars. How are you going to become someone you despise?
In our culture, we believe that we should not ask for help. As if we can really expect to be 100% self-sufficient.
In our culture, no one tells you what's behind their success. We truly believe that the successful people just appeared out of nowhere.
In our culture, it's all about getting to the top. But this confuses us even more.
Because after decades of helping people get to the top, or consulting people who've already made it, Tony shares that what almost everyone realizes, is that in the promised golden chest at the end of the road, there is nothing.
Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.
We spend our lives climbing escalators reclined against walls, but we never ask ourselves which wall we want to climb in the first place.
I can't help but feel a little embarrassed for writing this somewhat cheap, banal and cliché essay. But that is exactly what it is all about. This was taught to me by the teacher whom I have never met.
And just because I now love myself, I've stopped hating him.