Hi, just stumbled on the topic. Lot of interesting comments from Coz.

I was once talking to an NLP coach who told me some interesting things about Robbins:

His second book, Awaken The Giant Within was, according to the MLP teacher, a work of gross plagiarism, a rip off of an NLP textbook called "Turtles All The Way Down".

Robbins height (6'7") is a result of a genetic disorder. The man is literally a giant, from a medical perspective. His anti-medicine viewpoint means he refuses to take medicine for the condition (or didn't for a long time - he may have to these days, depending on how severe or advanced his condition is.)

At one time Robbins had a personal assistant who had previously been a nurse. She resigned in frustration at Robbins refusal to take medicine for his condition.

Robbins was sued for $2 million by one of the inventors of NLP, Bandler and Grinder. I cant remember which of the two sued him. Robbins decision to change NLP into his ownn version of it (NAC) may be a result of the lawsuit or his lack of ownership of the NLP name and product. (There have been wraglnes over righgts and ownwershio of NLP.)

The book Fit For Life, supposedly authored by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, was actually authored by Robbins himself. However, he was ripped off in the deal and was never credited as author.

As for me, I attended a number of Robbins seminars and briefly met him several times, as he hangs around afterwards to sign autographs and chat, etc. I found him to be sincere and to be fair, I think some of what he does is good: teaching about goal-setting, self-limiting beliefs, etc.

Apart from that, yes, he runs a commercial business which he wants to be successful. Success is his whole thing.

Beyond that, what I could gleam from his seminars is that he is almost an evangelist in terms of his stage presentation and I personally believe he is pushing a Christianity message, ultimately.

I also beoieve he is basically a hyperactive person athus his limited need for sleep and hius weakness for women and sex. He even seemed to have a slim, attractive blonde from the crowd waiting to go back stage with him after he had finished signing autographs at the end of one of the seminars I went to. I saw him making eye-contact, flirting and blowing kisses to her, etc, during the seminar. The atmosphere at times was almost sleazy.

FWIW, I did attend a LIVE Tony Robbins event within the last 6 months... it appeared to be one long, GREULING hypnotic induction.... and it was massively overstimulating, as well as massively weird... ear splitting PA, freezing cold room to accomodate Tony's metabolism.... smoke machines ! Some offstage guy mumbling sort-of subliminal commentary along with Tony's spiel... lots and lots of music, like listening to the radio wile driving to work.... Santana ! U2 !.... and Tony would make us sing along with it.....Jeez Louise it had to be the hokiest, corniest..... what word come to mind here ? TACKY!.... it was just plain tacky.... trapped in a room (to be fair... you could get an and leave whenever you wanted and the Tonypeople wouldn't hassle you..... and the Tonypeople are really nice folks... I found them sweet and likable and all veeery tranced out in the TonyTrance) with a hyperkinetic lunk of a guy who wanted us to call up our deeeeeepst feeeeeeelings of loooooove.... I think his deal is that he wants, he neeeds , he requires massive doses of loooove from everybody..... and he absolutely believes this theory the "motion is emotion"..... which starts from the precursor belief that "physiology is the mother of all attitudes"..... soooooooo you have to jump up and down and scream at the top of your lungs YES YES YES YES YES YES YES every fifteen minutes or so while strobe lights blast and smoke machines belch and the tacky music blasts and TONY TONY TONY TONY sings along through his headset microphone.... and I was thinking, this is what it would be like if you were trapped inside the brain of a 17 year old giant....

Quote
nutrino
FWIW, I did attend a LIVE Tony Robbins event within the last 6 months... it appeared to be one long, GREULING hypnotic induction.... and it was massively overstimulating, as well as massively weird... ear splitting PA, freezing cold room to accomodate Tony's metabolism.... smoke machines ! Some offstage guy mumbling sort-of subliminal commentary along with Tony's spiel... lots and lots of music, like listening to the radio wile driving to work.... Santana ! U2 !.... and Tony would make us sing along with it.....Jeez Louise it had to be the hokiest, corniest..... what word come to mind here ? TACKY!.... it was just plain tacky.... trapped in a room (to be fair... you could get an and leave whenever you wanted and the Tonypeople wouldn't hassle you..... and the Tonypeople are really nice folks... I found them sweet and likable and all veeery tranced out in the TonyTrance) with a hyperkinetic lunk of a guy who wanted us to call up our deeeeeepst feeeeeeelings of loooooove.... I think his deal is that he wants, he neeeds , he requires massive doses of loooove from everybody..... and he absolutely believes this theory the "motion is emotion"..... which starts from the precursor belief that "physiology is the mother of all attitudes"..... soooooooo you have to jump up and down and scream at the top of your lungs YES YES YES YES YES YES YES every fifteen minutes or so while strobe lights blast and smoke machines belch and the tacky music blasts and TONY TONY TONY TONY sings along through his headset microphone.... and I was thinking, this is what it would be like if you were trapped inside the brain of a 17 year old giant....

How bizarre :?

What Robbins is doing here with the YES YES YES, is creating an "anchor" inside your brain to Tony Robbins. If you "play along" 100% with Robbins, then you are going to go into a hypomanic state at some point, and then Tony will permanently get linked deep inside your brain, along with the Peak Experience of the seminar.
He bombards the audience in so many ways, as different things work for different people. Just the idea of having some guy mumbling "subliminals" is enough to put many people into a Trance.

The Tony stuff about your deepest feelings of love, is a total utter fraud. He wants people to think he is this "needy" Love-Slob.
Its simply more Love-Bombing, to reach out to the most loving and vulnerable in the audience, as those are the easy targets.
You will see how much Tony Robbins needs your love, when you try to get your money back from his salespeople. Tony does not need your love, he needs the cash from your credit line.

Always remember, everything Tony Robbins does is a performance act. Every word, every gesture, every emotion, has been practiced for many years.
His goal is to get deep inside your psyche at these events, and to reach as many people as possible, he has to approach people from all modalities at once.

Also, the Tonypeople seem like nice enough folks, but just try to get your $30k back from one of Tony's salespeople, and then things will become somewhat different.
The Tonypeople are of 2 breeds. One breed are "volunteers" who have paid their own flight and hotel to work for Tony for free like slaves. Those are the happy Tonyslaves. (for now, until they wake up in 5 years).

The other ones are his highly trained salespeople, who are without exception sociopathic. They will clean-out your grandma's retirement fund, and not bat an eyelash. They will convince a single mom to put a second mortgage on her home to get the 50k to attend Robbins courses, and could not care less about the woman losing her home. They are trained to take every penny you have in the world, and every cent you can borrow. Once you are cleaned out, then you no longer exist.

Check out this website, and he tells of what happen later on if you get suckered into going to Mastery University.
[www.tony-robbins.org]

I must be abnormal.... Tony's presentation had zero effect on me except for making me want to get out of there. It did not seem humanly possible to stay in that room for four days while large spikes of profundity were being pounded into your brain by an mental-industrial apparatus... the entire shebang struck me as more nutty sci-fi than Jonestown... well, boy was it nutty... he had the lights turned off so there was this huge ass ballroom with nearly 3000 people in it and he expected us to lie down in the darkness... now go figure this, we're packed in there like sardines and there only enough room to sit up straight and we're told to lie down flat on our backs.... like, where already ? Anyway, I'm starving, bored to tears, and have a headache from hours of pop music combined with Tony exhortations, and the lights go out, I'm slithered under a row of seats, and old guy is lying across the three or four seats inches from my face, right above me, and Tony launches into this endless hypnotic love-courage-firewalk rap that is supposed to be archored to my clenched right fist that I have pressed into my heart chakra.... ooooh it is so boring, so going on forever, and I can't take it any more so I dig into my stash of candy bars and lie there eating granola bars while I'm tuning his hypnosis out....and I'm thinking to myself, when was last bored so horribly with such self indulgent blather, ah right, EST training.... they must all go to the same church or something... anyway, either before or after this he did some "therapy" with a mexican woman who wasn't happy with her marriage, all projected on the super big brother screen on the wall behind El Tony... and the guy next to her rips a fart which her microphone picks up and amplifies through the PA system and Tony asks in his most serious voice "DID YOU FART ????" And then starts doing some "fart anchoring"... for days afterwards whenever I farted I would hear a faint imaginary "YES YES YES" in the backgound..... now thats's devious !

Oh, one other thing about the Robbins seminars:

When I went through UPW, I found that it was only a rehash of what was already written in his books. Perhaps the same thing applies to his "University".

So, buy the books for $14 a piece and save $30k, guys! :wink:

Here is some current advertising from Tony Robbins. Its a piece written by the directors of the film "Little Miss Sunshine" who went to see Robbins, and wrote a piece that is basically "supportive" of Robbins.
But what is interesting, is that although they appear to be unaware of Robbins is really doing to people, they do point to many aspects of the LGAT, which are being used by many people these days. I will highlight[/color:ba2b3760de] the parts that point to the current LGAT experience.

What is interesting is that Robbins and his people are being very blatant about some of the obvious LGAT aspects, and trying to "spin" what is going on into something positive. This also serves to DISTRACT people from the other things he is doing to them and their minds and emotions.
Robbins calls this INFLUENCE, and that is literally the only thing he is about, INFLUENCING people without their awareness, to buy his products and services. Even though this account is written by a "fan" it does point to the very disturbing aspects of these types of events of programmed Mass Hysteria.
It reminds one of the programmed hysteria in the mass rallies in 1930 Germany.


[www.tonyrobbins.com]

Tony Influences Major Motion Picture

In addition to his own powerful events, Tony participates in several Learning Annex-sponsored events throughout the year, sharing the stage with other financial experts like Donald Trump and Suze Orman. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, directors of the hit indie film “Little Miss Sunshine,” recently attended one such event in Los Angeles and were inspired to write about Tony’s seminar in Fox Searchlight’s “Weekend Read.”

[[color=red:ba2b3760de]Don't[/color:ba2b3760de]] *Catch Tony at the next Learning Annex Real Estate & Wealth Expo on October 21 in Chicago!


Fox Searchlight Pictures Weekend Read
from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

One of our main characters in “Little Miss Sunshine” is Richard Hoover (played by Greg Kinnear) who aspires to be motivational speaker. He has driven his family to the edge of financial ruin [/color:ba2b3760de]as he seeks to market his own Nine Step program for success (with such pearls of wisdom as “Refuse to lose,” and “You’ve got to trust to be trusted”). In researching the role we thought we should experience someone who Richard would like to emulate. Tony Robbins happened to be speaking in Los Angeles while we were in pre-production so we called up his “people” to see if they could arrange for us to see him speak.

We had no idea whether we would be allowed to sit in on his lecture. It was the lead-off speech of a sold-out three day Real Estate Wealth Expo sponsored by the Learning Annex. Two days before the event, Tony’s office called and said we were “in.” We drove to the LA Convention Center and made our way through the gridlock to the backstage entrance. Tony’s assistant ushered us into the main exhibit hall crammed[/color:ba2b3760de] with over 46,000 go-getters. There was a main stage set up at the back of the hall and endless rows of folding chairs spread out across an area the size of two football fields[/color:ba2b3760de]. You can imagine the looks we got as we were brought out from the back and seated in the first row directly in front of the stage.

The lights dimmed and a warm-up guy ran onstage to welcome the crowd. Twenty-five girls danced down the aisles dressed in tight black tank tops with “FUN” written in white block letters across their chests. The guy on stage kept challenging the crowd to scream louder while the “FUN” girls handed out twenty-dollar bills to the audience members who showed the most enthusiasm. [/color:ba2b3760de]This was the mother lode for us, the ultimate chance to observe a world we otherwise might never witness. We glanced at each other in awe as we looked out at the sea of exuberant faces[/color:ba2b3760de]. It was at this point that we noticed the JumboTron TV screens[/color:ba2b3760de] placed throughout the hall and the live video cameras [/color:ba2b3760de]surrounding us. There we were, our image two stories high, the only people not cheering, jumping, or screaming.[/color:ba2b3760de]

Suddenly [/color:ba2b3760de]Tony was on the stage and the crowd reached new heights of hysteria[/color:ba2b3760de]. He quickly took control [/color:ba2b3760de]of the room like a professional athlete in a championship game. (To his credit he immediately pointed out to the crowd that, “FUN” girls [/color:ba2b3760de]aside, money and wealth [/color:ba2b3760de]were not the chief components of success.) [notice how Robbins always claims the OPPOSITE of the truth of what he is selling? Its an "in-joke" for himself and the NLPers, and meant to confuse disarm the credulous masses with Programmed Confusion, which is a Eriksonian hypnotic technique...Editor][/color:ba2b3760de]

One trademark of his seminars is the constant back and forth with an audience[/color:ba2b3760de], like a one-on-one conversation. There just happened to be 46,000 of us on one end of the dialogue[/color:ba2b3760de]. He had the crowd leaping from their seats, raising their hands, greeting their fellow attendees, and jumping -- lots of jumping -- to an infectious beat.[/color:ba2b3760de] At first we were a little intimidated, but between the JumboTron screens and being in Tony’s direct line of sight, we realized there was [b:ba2b3760de][u:ba2b3760de]no way for us to passively observe as we had intended[/u:ba2b3760de].[/b:ba2b3760de][/color:ba2b3760de] So up we went, letting go of any coolness we came in with. The truth is, by giving in and getting lost in the experience [/color:ba2b3760de]we were able to better understand this phenomenon. And as in Richard Hoover’s Nine Step program for success, Tony demonstrated that “You’ve got to move to be moved.” (That’s Step 6.)

*“Little Miss Sunshine” is playing in theaters now.

There are some interesting comments showing up in the comments section of the Stockwatch coverage of Tony Robbins libel lawsuit.

Here is a link to the full Stockwatch coverage, and there appear to be more new comments in many of the articles.
[www.google.com]

Tony Robbins will not permit any criticism of him by his customers in his webforums, so the only place for people to post, are places like that.

Every year, the criticisms of Tony Robbins get much much worse. He is getting worse every year, more ruthless, and much more vicious and exploitative and cynical.


Here are a few recent excerpts from only ONE article, in case they are disappeared....I wonder what new info lies in all the other articles comments?

[www.stockwatch.com]

I just returned from a visit to Namale-Tony Robbins resort. There were 15 couples at the resort along with Tony and his wife "Sage." At the time of my visit he was taping an infommerical with his wife. Tony passed by the guests at his resort hundreds of time in his golf cart neglecting to even say "HI" or "Thank you for coming to my resort!" In my opinion he is a self-centered, egotistical man. He was all about himself and his taping. If he was so kind and down to earth he would have at least greeted the guests who are making him a TON of money. The resort was an A+ but I give Mr. Robbins an F for hospitality. I would NEVER attend one of his phony seminars!!!
Posted by Lillian @ 2006-09-21 06:52
---------------------------------

I know someone Tony personally "tried" to destroyed... why? Because he did something the public would acknowledge as inappropriate, and tried to destroy the person because he was AFRAID it would be brought out. What did he do? He turned it around and attacked.
The same skills and knowledge he has to help people.. believe me he uses it negatively when it serves him. Interesting thing though, his popularity and/or appeal has diminished. In fact, he can't manage to write a book that he's been talking about publishing.
I think the messenger is slacking and frankly, you destroy someone, it comes back to you, somehow, someway... sometimes timely, and sometimes very slowly. A gift can be lost if not used right, and I believe this true in his case.
Posted by Karma @ 2006-09-21 12:17

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He's an asshole... behind the scenes... if you were there you'd agree 100%. Fake, insecure and total bullshitter. And ooooooooooh does he get nasty if he thinks someone will find out. Eventually the same people who praise him will see what he is.... guarantee it.
Posted by concepion @ 2006-09-21 13:50

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Surfing the net wanted and my 2 cents would be -- don't bother with focussing on this man... he's totally into himself and what serves him (i.e., hitting on women at seminar, not acknoledging others who volunteer time, not even posting at his own website). I smarted up years ago and chalked it up to a life lesson. The old adage wolf in sheep's clothing certainly fits this man. Great at what he does but horrible person who can't fix himself. He might be a big man but the real side of him is very very small. And to the poster Karma who shared comments about their friend, yes he is very insecure. He attacked because of his fear.
As for not saying hello to guests at Namale. At his paying events he will make time. Time to show that he is caring, sensitive towards others, etc. It does get wearing but he has a gift of being "ON" when he wants too. As for his private time forget it. You saw the real man right there. He didn't have to be on so he wasn't. You just caught a peek.
I don't know this new trophy woman he's with (and don't care too) but I did know Becky. She was great. The way he went about moving on was a complete devasted to her and her kids.
Posted by Former Security @ 2006-09-25 09:39

Ok this happened back in the early 90s's when I knew a guy that had invested in his franchise for personal development. Well Tony's and his crew had sold them to bunch of suckers who were hungry for this crap. They used all the persuasive tricks mentioned in these posts to get these folks to buy the franchises. My friend shared with me how they put him a trance and started anchoring him to spending money on the products. It took him awhile to figure it out but he did with some professional help.

Well as it turned out most of these folks were not successful at selling it like Tony and were losing lots of money. So the guy I knew felt like he had been manipulated and wanted to talk with a lawyer about it. So I introduced to him a one MEAN ASS attorney I know who will take NO QUARTER with anyone he's in a legal battle with. Back then all Tony's franshise materials were all video, audio and workbook stuff.

To make a long story short...Tony got sued in a Class Action lawsuit and this lawyer had to depose him at his offices in Calif. This attorney whose got a big ego himself told me that he'd never met a guy who was so full of himself then Tony. Trust me coming from that lawyer that's saying a lot. Well it turned out that Tony and his company settled the lawsuite I believe and payed everyone off. The lawyer said he wanted to go to court and catch Tony doing his stick in the courtroom. Unfortunately that never happened. Maybe Tony convinced him to a settlement but I think it had all to do with $$$ as it usually does.

I did get to see all the videos this guy had and all I can say is he's pretty persuasive and knows all the NLP persuasion strategies. That was in the early 90's ... he's probably much more versed in the LGAT now which is really scary!

I read several of Tony Robbins books, bought many items off ebay and gotten them from the library and the Tony Robbins stories you describe here just do not mirror my experiences. In fact, they're so alien that I have trouble believing they're real.

First off, I do not believe that the science behind the criticism of LGAT is valid science. There is nothing wrong or harmful about having a large group experience. That is scientific fact. A charismatic call to change the world for the better can change the world for the better. So all discussion of the "Large Group" aspect of Large Group Experiences is Bad Science. In fact, large group activities are a whole lot of fun with lots of positive outcomes. Seeing plays, movies, sporting events, political rallies are all Large Group events. Getting together with people who believe what you believe and having a lot of fun is exhilarating! So in descriptions on this site about Large Group events, no dividing line is made between positive group experiences and negative. It's as if one is lumping the Lyman Family in with an extended biological family. It's not mind control in the scientific sense and trying to shoe-horn that definition onto it is junk science. By this logic, and I mean by the logic that I've seen while researching skeptical reviews of LGAT experiences, anyone who is charismatic and who tries to rally people in public or tries to sell something charismatically is using these techniques. Simply not happening. Simply a lie made up with pseudo science pasted on it. Why would a site like this resort to weird pseudoscience?

I purchased Tony Robbins material in 2002 and since that time no salesman has ever called me. Never. Not one. Every email that I've received from Tony Robbins's company has been no different than the kinds of emails I get from any company I do business with: Thanks for buying, did you read this piece, there's a discount here, would you like to fly here for this event, Tony's going to be on Larry King, etc. I've heard from other Tony Robbins readers that some local franchisees have put on the hard-sell, but every time someone posts those kinds of critical messages to Tony Robbin's bulletin board, volunteers track down the numbers and find out what franchise was hassling customers to get them reprimanded by the US branch. Nobody puts up with hard-sell tactics and certainly not Tony Robbins fans.

The Open-Source nature of the Tony Robbins bulletin boards, where he is openly criticized by people who actively modify the messages in his books, changed my opinion of the whole thing. No one on that board respects him so much that they don't give him crap about stuff they disagree with. Here is one important thread:

How much of what Tony says do you agree with?
[www2.anthonyrobbins.com]


Those posts that disagree with Tony using science, politeness and decency are not moderated, deleted, or changed. The above thread is months old. Just about every day someone counters Tony's older discussions of things like his Alkaline Diet, "green" drink, crystals or other techniques. This give and take, this philosophical arguing and reasoning that goes on between the serious Tony Robbins readers. "I believe this, but don't believe that, show me the proof" almost Socratic discussions which are things that DEFINE groups as NOT cult-like. If there's nonstop philosophical arguing then there's no central belief system. Nothing is lock-step.

The Tony Robbins company continually pays for this board to exist. This directly calls into question the truthfulness of some of these posts I see above. They simply are not true. Tony is criticized every day on his own website and the company does nothing to stop it or counter it and in some senses, encourages these discussions. Cults are criticized every day on Tony Robbins' board. I was reminded of the Rick Ross site because there were warnings about Landmark over there and one Landmark proponent was like, "If you believe Rick Ross, read his forums." And I came over here, and found a lot of junk without logic like this foolish thread.

I started reading adn listening to Tony Robbins books and tapes from the library, for free, and got inspired. I was not where I wanted to be in my career and needed a jumpstart. I started looking for a book to change my mindset. I repaired relationships with my family. I got up earlier, exercised more, and got to bed earlier. I ate better. I volunteered more and donated money to causes I believed in. I stopped letting people's comments hurt me. I did this all, not through common sense, because that concept is a load of BS. If "Common Sense" worked then there wouldn't be a homeless person in America, you know? Sports teams know the value of coaches and trainers. Tony Robbins is no more and no less than a coach. His concepts are vague enough so that people can interpret them using their own histories, personalities, faith (or lack thereof, I'm an atheist scientist) and their line of business. It's not a one-size fits all solution, it's a high-level solution where you have to fill in your own details. No one tells you how to think, they make you do the thinking based on your experiences.

All together I spent about $200 on Tony Robbins material over 3 or 4 years. So, you know, 1/100th the cost of my car. I bought one expensive CD set, listened to it, loved it, was inspired, then sold it on ebay for almost 75% of what I paid for it. I never heard of anyone spending $30,000 on Tony Robbins material and the people I know online who are really, really into his stuff buy most of his cds used. No one I know is spending more than a few hundred dollars on his material and shows a year. I bought one of his books last week at a garage sale for $1. One Dollar. Oh yeah, that's culty all right, with that dollar I could have, um, well can you buy a small French fries for $1 where you live? The $1 used book is reality. The Thirty thousand dollar seminars- not reality. Pardon me if the scientist in me says, "Prove it." I doubt anyone can back up these kinds of "it happened to a friend of mine's friend" or "read this story I found on a newsgroup" tall tales.

And some of my online friends like to "Crew." Crew are the cause of most of the phony and hyperventilating controversy over Tony Robbins. The company has a plan for people who have been to an event before but either don't have enough money to go again or want to go again but DON'T WISH TO PAY ANYTHING to see the show. They give serious fans a chance to see the show for FREE. You tell me the problem with letting people who already paid once go again for free. Great! All one has to do is volunteer to run various processes (Crew) and you get in and get to do all the stuff FOR FREE! You give some of your time and you don't have to pay $700 for a ticket!!! Well, some posters here called them "TonySlaves" or make fun of them? Why? Jealous that people get free stuff? What's someone's problem that they have to invent irrational controversy? What do you personally gain from making fun of others? The volunteers got into the show for free. That's not slavery by definition, that's BARTER by definition. I did this in college all the time- In my city all the major theaters have usher programs. Ushers help patrons to their seats and help coordinate with the people putting on the plays and they get to see the play for free. I did this for three years on the local Shakespeare circuit. Far from being "slaves" volunteer help at live performances has a LONGSTANDING TRADITION of these kinds of volunteers. Were the above posters so culturally sheltered or uneducated they didn't know stage volunteers are traditional? The people who are critical of this are unreal! They turn a blind eye toward critical and rational thought and say volunteer must equal slave as some sort of tenet faith! Creepy!

Have you ever helped out at a homeless shelter? It was a royal pain. I doubt I made a difference in anyone's life because they were so messed up. But you know, I did it, sometimes just for me. That's what volunteering means people. You do it for you because you know you're getting more benefit than the people you're helping. I've been told the crewing experience is gives back much more than one gives.

Look at Tony Robbins company from a scientific perspective and it passes all criticisms with flying colors. I experienced no high pressure sales and spent maybe $200 in 4 years. Why did no one try high-pressure tactics with me if they're part of the system? What part of these posts are fact and what part are fantasy.

Ebicidic