Posted by:
Finally Free!
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Date: March 12, 2014 04:26PM
My wife and brother-in-law went to one of his 3 or 4 day seminars... (my brother-in-law has been to several). In my unprofessional opinion he is a non-religious cult leader, based in self help, rather than religious salvation.
Let me explain. Basically, it's all a money making scam. He wants you to buy his books, his products and most importantly more seminars. He uses the same techniques that any good cult leader does:
- Claims that "I don't make any money off these products, look at all my charitable work"... Meanwhile he has numerous homes, resorts, and a substantial amount of wealth, that continues to grow. While he does have a non-profit or two, I find it hard to believe that he's not making money off of the books, shirts, conferences, etc.
- Gets you to perform amazing feats, but "only with the right mind set" and under his specific guidance. Most famously is the fire walk. This is done on the first day of the basic seminar. He makes sure that everyone can see the giant tree's being burned all day long in the parking lot, everyone can feel the heat. He teaches that you can only do the fire walk with the right mind set, that he's going to teach you. My own relatives have stated that while they were doing the firewalk they once felt their mind slipping from the "mind set" (or whatever he calls it) and their feet started getting warm, so they refocused and things got better. Doing about 2 seconds of research on firewalking reveals this is totally bunk. While there is some danger involved, it's pretty darn safe. He was forced to add a bucket of water to step into at the end of each charcoal path because someone got a burning coal stuck between their toes and ended up with a severe burn... to bad, maybe if he had just kept his mind in the right state he wouldn't have been burned.
- He's every charismatic and quirky enough to have such a large following. He has a story for everything to help people succeed. He's and "expert" polo player (the story, when you get down to it is that he bought that status) He's made his millions from nothing, etc.
- He has disciples that he brings on stage to talk about how Tony's plan has basically saved them and brought them millions.
- He uses known low level brain washing techniques during his seminars. Part is to keep the rooms he has his seminars in very uncomfortably cold (but don't worry, he sells sweaters and polo's in the lobby, oh and all profits from the sale of those go directly to non profits! Please, pull my other leg)... He also uses "Nero Linguistic programing". Using specific speech patterns and other methods to bend people to his will. He even tells people he's doing this, but due to the methodology it doesn't matter, it still works.
- Most telling of all, when my brother-in-law and wife got back, they immediately attempted to "convert" my sister and I. The goal being to go to his week long seminar in his exclusive resort in some foreign country, complete with high price tag and quasi-dangerous unforgettable experience. When my sister and I both balked at the huge price tag, they already had the Tony Robbin's prepared answer, "Money's not the problem, you are. We should overcome any obstacle including money to get there"... Um, no, we live paycheck to paycheck, we can't afford several thousand dollars to go to a resort for a week... If we could, I'd rather have a vacation rather than sitting in a cold room and be forced via peer pressure to do something dangerous in a foreign country.
- Weeks later, when the programing finally wore off, my wife finally realized that he had nothing of any real substance in his seminar. He worked really hard to build her up but there weren't any tools to sustain it herself, it was all fluff in an attempt to get her to purchase the next, longer and more expensive seminar, which would have, by all accounts, been more of the same fluff.
To me, the only difference between him and Joseph Smith is that Tony Robbins doesn't claim to get his power from God and Tony has had the good sense to marry every woman he sees, and has a better PR department, so he gets to fully reap the benefits of his cult while he's alive.