Book Review: Awaken the Giant Within Audiobook by Tony Robbins
First things first, the audiobook isn’t the full book or anything close to it. The standard book is 544 pages, while the audiobook is a little over an hour and a half. The fact that it was abridged really wasn’t obvious.
We can split what he offers into two main categories: motivational speaking and his system itself. The motivational aspect of his speaking is very subjective, so I’ll leave it to you to evaluate yourself. You can find videos of his on Youtube and you should know within a few minutes whether you like his style.
Instead I’ll focus on reviewing his system. The first key aspect Robbins focuses on what he calls neuro-associations; that is what experiences we link pleasure and pain to. While we may be able to maintain a habit using willpower in the short-term, Robbins believes that in order to maintain it over the long term we need to change our neuro-associations to link please to actions that are good for us and pain to actions that are bad for us.
He argues that we can attach positive or negative neuro-associations to an action by making the advantages or disadvantages as salient as possible. The images on packs of cigarettes are a good example of that principle in action, as would be looking the scans of people who have lung cancer. In addition, we can reward ourselves for success (though he doesn’t discuss the possibility of punishing yourself for failure). This seems like a plausible method for affecting change and one that seems worthwhile experimenting with, although I’ve never experienced much motivation from rewarding myself as it doesn’t really feel like the action is connected to the reward.
The second key aspect of his system is to draw a distinction between decisions and preferences. Most of the time when we say that we’ve decided to do something, such as going to the gym, we’re only just saying that we were prefer that to happen. We haven’t really decided that we WILL do what we’ve said, come what may.
Robbins see the ability to make decisions that we are strongly committed to as key to success. For that reason he recommends practising using our “decision muscles” to strengthen them, so that they are ready when needed. This seems like good advice. Personally, I think it’s important to be honest with yourself about when you have a preference and when you’ve actually made a decision in Robbin’s sense. After all, committed decisions take energy and have a cost as sometimes you’ll commit to something that is a mistake, so it’s important to be selective about what you are truly committed to as otherwise you may end up committed to nothing at all.
There are lots more elements to his system, but those two particular ones are at the core and seemed to be the most distinctive aspects of this book. It’s hard to review such a system without having tried it, but my current position is as follows: I could see myself listening to another one of his audiobooks, although it isn’t really a priority for me.
Book Review: Awaken the Giant Within Audiobook by Tony Robbins
First things first, the audiobook isn’t the full book or anything close to it. The standard book is 544 pages, while the audiobook is a little over an hour and a half. The fact that it was abridged really wasn’t obvious.
We can split what he offers into two main categories: motivational speaking and his system itself. The motivational aspect of his speaking is very subjective, so I’ll leave it to you to evaluate yourself. You can find videos of his on Youtube and you should know within a few minutes whether you like his style.
Instead I’ll focus on reviewing his system. The first key aspect Robbins focuses on what he calls neuro-associations; that is what experiences we link pleasure and pain to. While we may be able to maintain a habit using willpower in the short-term, Robbins believes that in order to maintain it over the long term we need to change our neuro-associations to link please to actions that are good for us and pain to actions that are bad for us.
He argues that we can attach positive or negative neuro-associations to an action by making the advantages or disadvantages as salient as possible. The images on packs of cigarettes are a good example of that principle in action, as would be looking the scans of people who have lung cancer. In addition, we can reward ourselves for success (though he doesn’t discuss the possibility of punishing yourself for failure). This seems like a plausible method for affecting change and one that seems worthwhile experimenting with, although I’ve never experienced much motivation from rewarding myself as it doesn’t really feel like the action is connected to the reward.
The second key aspect of his system is to draw a distinction between decisions and preferences. Most of the time when we say that we’ve decided to do something, such as going to the gym, we’re only just saying that we were prefer that to happen. We haven’t really decided that we WILL do what we’ve said, come what may.
Robbins see the ability to make decisions that we are strongly committed to as key to success. For that reason he recommends practising using our “decision muscles” to strengthen them, so that they are ready when needed. This seems like good advice. Personally, I think it’s important to be honest with yourself about when you have a preference and when you’ve actually made a decision in Robbin’s sense. After all, committed decisions take energy and have a cost as sometimes you’ll commit to something that is a mistake, so it’s important to be selective about what you are truly committed to as otherwise you may end up committed to nothing at all.
There are lots more elements to his system, but those two particular ones are at the core and seemed to be the most distinctive aspects of this book. It’s hard to review such a system without having tried it, but my current position is as follows: I could see myself listening to another one of his audiobooks, although it isn’t really a priority for me.