Unleash the Power Within with Tony Robbins

My first post is dedicated to one of the earliest and biggest influencers of my adult life (after my dad, of course 🙂) – Tony Robbins and my experience from his 4-day event Unleash the Power Within (UPW). Some people who don’t know his work have judgements or beliefs against him, but for me Tony played such a huge role that I can’t even start describing all of the positive influence I gained. I also plan to write separate posts about learnings from his books and programs.

Backstory

I got introduced to his work at 19 when I was a broke student selling furniture online part-time and became obsessed with his teaching: I read all of the books, dug up all kinds of audio programs and videos from darkest corners of the internet, and most importantly started implementing his exercises. Within a few months of doing so I actually became one of the top closers and did a sales training 😄.

One of my goals was to attend his live seminars, which started manifesting late 2016 when I finally went to UPW in San Jose. There was no specific agenda in mind (life was pretty great at that moment), neither did I expect to learn anything new that I haven’t already read or listened or watched (that’s what I love about Tony – all of his material is available on the Internet, especially now, yet people pay thousands to spend some time with him). However I often have a nagging feeling that there’s something more out there and  I was still dying to see and hear Tony live, so I kept an open mind going in hoping that something new might come up for me.

The Start

The experience of UPW is somewhat surreal looking back. It started at 7AM outside of SAP stadium with over 10,500 attendees lining up around its perimeters waiting for doors to open, while watching program crew burn wood logs in preparation of us all walking on coals.

Emotion comes with motion

What you see right away is the amount of energy Tony and his team create is absolute magic. The production is outstanding: music, lighting, sound, body movements, voice – the way Tony works the crowd – I’ve never seen anything like that. He captures your attention, it’s a total emersion. You really get what he means by “Emotion comes with motion”: the way you move, the way you sit or stand or do anything determines how you feel. Our brain and body connection is engrained in us, so the brain knows when our shoulders are down, head is down, eyes down, body closed off and curved in, we feel sad. And when our shoulders are up, head up, eyes up, arms up, open body curving out, smile – our brain knows we feel happy. So we dance, cheer, hug, jump, strike winning poses, scream with joy throughout the day to maintain high energy and our brain associates these movements with as if something amazing is happening, as if we’re winning. And you literally start feeling that way. This is only one of the prep items, Tony explains how our mental state is everything in producing the results you want. The “firewalk” at the end of the day has a lot more meaning than just walking over hot coals; it’s the psychological win of the mind over body. I did not get a single blister! It was an insane experience finishing up the day at 2AM.

I couldn’t sleep much after but we were all back in the morning at 7AM again, not even tired! Everyone was buzzing.

Deep Work

If you’re truly committed to making a breakthrough in any area of your life, you need to do some deep work and be 100% honest with yourself. Understanding 6 basic human needs and how their order of priority can drive your life makes it clear why we’re doing what we’re doing and choices we make even if we don’t like them. Writing down limiting beliefs and how they prevent us from having the life we want requires facing yourself with all of the ugliness that we go through life hiding from others and ourselves. It’s really eye-opening that we’ve been conditioned to be a certain way without us even realizing it. We learned how to associate pain with them, break the pattern of telling ourselves that in our head over and over while catching ourselves at it, and then replace it with an empowering belief instead which we trained our mind to associate with intense pleasure.

Some of these were very intense and emotional. Tony guided us through a journey of living 2 separate lives and how each of them will turn out. We all cried visualizing the one we continue today on cruise control: people of all ages, races, sexes, circumstances; grown-up men and women, some of them so accomplished and strong cried; there were celebrities in the crowd, they also cried. Imagine over 10,000 people sobbing. That really creates a strong impression. And then we live through the life of our wildest dreams and up to our true potential as if it already happened. My brain went on overdrive here (I imagined living in California, alongside the best of the best, working on meaningful projects that impact other people’s lives, among so many many MANY other things), and so did 10,500 others’ around me. The energy was going through the roof, the amount of dancing and cheering, and tears of joy, and love, and hugs, and celebration of life was trapped in the stadium that we all shared together. The point was to play this full out.  This was the real deal. (For those who don’t know I still attribute my move to San Francisco to this 3-hour exercise).

I probably don’t even make justice describing it with words. I also leave out a lot of other things that I either forgot or just think it’s best experienced live.

Not So Serious

There was a lot of fun stuff too, like we got to party with Pitbull, make silly moves and breathing exercises with Wim Hof, then sitting there for 5 minutes without any air in lungs (this is quite amazing – you should try it! Video was also recorded at “my” event, Wim Hof breathing technique), we meditated, we joked around. And did I mention walking on coals? We learned how to breathe, what to eat, what to drink to stay healthy mentally and physically, feel and look great. We got to meet some people who are so high on life you won’t believe they’re 20 years older than you thought.

And most importantly, we got to share so much with those sitting around us and meet amazing, kind, driven, unstoppable people. One might think everyone who goes in there is troubled or has issues, when in fact, 1) we all do, we just don’t admit or confront them, and 2) 99% people who do this kind of work are actually having great lives but just want more and are ready to do more.

Wrap Up

What I gained is enormous amount of energy and belief in myself. I found a new goal, new inspiration that pulled me in. I met some of the most incredible people. I raised myself up a step higher than I came in.

Would I do it again or recommend to others? Absolutely. And when time is right, I will pursue his masterpiece program where real work happens – Date with Destiny. (There is a Netflix documentary about it called “I’m Not Your Guru” that gives a small glimpse into what’s happening there).

 

Questions? Comments? Please leave below. I’m happy to connect!

Resources

I thought I’d include some of entertaining links related to this in one place here.

• Oprah Winfrey walking on fire (she wasn’t there with me)
• Gerard Butler shares his experience (he was there with me, yes, I saw him, no, I didn’t talk to him: we were asked to respect everyone’s experience regardless of who they are)
• Wim Hof breathing technique (Video was also recorded at “my” event)