How Anthony Robbins Awakened The Giant Within Me

I love to read books by others who have faced adversity and devised their own way of dealing with it; to learn how they found the courage to get through it; about the people who inspired them in their crisis times, and the advice they might give me that could suit my situation, too. For that reason, I owe my confident and positive state to Anthony Robbins, the American author, coach and speaker who is known primarily for his seminars, and self-help books, including Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within.

Having grown up in a working-class family in California, Robbins dropped out of high school at 17 years old and began promoting seminars for the motivational speaker, Jim Rohn. He also learned to fire-walk and incorporated it into his seminars. Robbins released his first book, Unlimited Power in 1988. It was a bestseller and helped to establish him as a leading self-help guru. Awaken the Giant Within followed three years later, which cemented his reputation as a self-help expert, successful businessman and coach to celebrities.

Robbin's key ideas that he imparts to his audience includes the following:

• The power of belief: Our beliefs have a profound impact on our lives and Robbins teaches how to change personal beliefs to achieve desired goals'.
• The importance of action: Robbins sees action as essential for success. Readers of his books and seminar participants are taught how to take 'massive action' towards achieving goals, even when they feel afraid or uncertain.
• The power of the subconscious mind: Our subconscious mind is a powerful force that can help us to achieve our goals. Robbins demonstrates how to tap into the power of the subconscious to achieve what we desire more easily.

Personally, when I was urged to read Robbins' books, I never dreamt for a moment that one of his books would completely change my life and make me want to empower others, too!

It all started when it felt as though I was in my darkest hours, trying to cope with some taxing family issues. Up until that point, I had suffered some trauma in my young life which had never been resolved and had left me feeling depressed, worthless and with much self-loathing. I was constantly negative, expecting the worst to happen in my life. Then I read Awaken the Giant Within, a fantastic masterpiece of self-empowerment. It is not for the squeamish, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to newcomers until after they have read much lighter stuff, like Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, by Susan Jeffers. That would be a good preparation for Robbins' remarkable work.

Packed full of explanations, suggestions, exercises and challenges, Awaken the Giant Within has too many goodies in its 512 pages to single out any one item, being a genuine self-help blockbuster. But the chapter that certainly made a huge difference to my life was No.13 (The 10-Day Mental Challenge) where he points out how our HABITS, the things we do and think daily, rob us of a life. We get into patterns of behaviour, he says, that keep us stuck and in negative thoughts and unproductive grooves. Then he gave a 10-day challenge to help rid ourselves of the thoughts and actions that hold us back.

Readers were required to not think any negative or 'unresourceful' thoughts for just 10 days, which didn't sound like a long time. Unaware of my own chronic state of negativity, I thought to myself, “That’s easy. I can do that!”, and set about proving that I could. As I was to gradually discover, the difficulty was totally underestimated, especially when all my life had been controlled by negative thoughts about myself and my pain.

During the 10 days, I tried many times to have positive thoughts, stopping and starting over, without much luck. The end result was exactly 15 minutes of positivity, that's the most I could manage at a time, as I sank rapidly back into my moroseness and self-critical thoughts. It was a real wake-up call for me, because it suddenly dawned on me how difficult it had been to achieve anything, if all I had for company were negative thoughts! How could I tell myself anything of substance, if I thought so lowly of who I was, and what I was capable of?

I couldn't even last a whole hour or day of being positive. The negativity just kept creeping back into my thoughts when I wasn't even conscious of it, which shows how much we have been conditioned to see doom and gloom and forget the good things. I saw myself as unworthy of love and undeserving of the good things in life and it took an awful lot of tries to finally achieve the 10 day challenge. In fact, it took me three months, but my perseverance in trying to be positive paid off. I faced my issues squarely, forgave the people who caused my trauma and actually changed my habits. I felt proud and much happier as positive wholesome thoughts gradually replaced the negative ones and wonderful things started happening to me. It has been magical watching my positivity open doors I hadn’t thought possible over the years.

With constant practice since then, I have gone completely the opposite way: I find it hard now to think negative thoughts about me or my life. I revel in positivity while the quality of my life has improved dramatically, hence the constant smile of joy on my face. Not only that, I am achieving far more, I have stopped worrying about life, despite my life threatening illness, fully accepting that ANY situation is only ever TEMPORARY. No need to worry about it. This keeps my stress levels to a minimum, and I feel much much better about my own progress.

Thanks to Anthony Robbins, I went on to read 78 more self-help books by some great authors over the following year, in my quest for greater self-awareness and understanding. The thousands of articles I have written since then is the end product of all that reading and research. I am now a very knowledgeable, confident woman who bears little relation to what she was like 25 years ago.

I am thrilled someone recommended Robbins' books to me, because not only has he helped millions of people to achieve their goals, he has literally changed my life, perspectives and aspirations in the most dramatic, emphatic and unexpected way.

RELATED POST: Savouring a Personal Feat With The Booker Prize Winners