Regarding Scientology, I had the impression that they usually portray themselves to those they’re trying to recruit as being like a self-help community (“we’re like therapists or Tony Robbins, except that our techniques actually work!”) before they start sucking you into the crazy?
I’m sure that whatever it is that Tony Robbins preaches is less crazy than the Xenu story. (Although Scientology doesn’t seem any crazier than the crazier versions of mainstream religions...)
I’m sure that whatever it is that Tony Robbins preaches is less crazy than the Xenu story.
Here’s a video in which he lays out what he sees as the critical elements of human motivation and action. Pay extra attention to the slides—there’s more stuff there than he talks about.
(It’s a much more up-to-date and compact model than what he wrote in ATGW, by the way.)
I got through 11:00 of that video. If that giant is inside me I do not want him woken up. I want that sucker in a permanent vegetative state.
Many years ago I had a friend who is a television news anchor person. The video camera flattens you from three dimensions to two, and it also filters the amount of non-verbal communication you can project onto the storage media. To have energy and charisma on the replay, a person has to project something approaching mania at record time. I shudder to think what it would be like to sit down in the front row of the Robbins talk when he was performing for that video. He comes across as manic, and the most probable explanation for that is amphetamines.
The transcript might read rational, but that is video of a maniac.
A bit of context: that’s not how he normally speaks.
There’s another video (not publicly available, it’s from a guest speech he did at one of Brendon Burchard’s programs) where he gives the backstory on that talk. He was actually extremely nervous about giving that talk, for a couple different reasons. One, he felt it was a big honor and opportunity, two, he wanted to try to cram a lot of dense information into a twenty minute spot, and three, he got a bad introduction.
Specifically, he said the intro was something like, “Oh, and now here’s Tony Robbins to motivate us”, said in a sneering/dismissive tone… and he immediately felt some pressure to get the audience on his side—a kind of pressure that he hasn’t had to deal with in a public speaking engagement for quite some time. (Since normally he speaks to stadiums full of people who paid to come see him—vs. an invited talk to a group where a lot of people—perhaps most of the audience—sees him as a shallow “motivator”.)
IOW, the only drug you’re seeing there is him feeling cornered and wanting to prove something—plus the time pressure of wanting to condense material he usually spends days on into twenty minutes. His normal way of speaking is a lot less fast paced, if still emotionally intense.
One of his time management programs that I bought over a decade ago had some interesting example schedules in it, that showed what he does to prepare for his time on stage (for programs where he’s speaking all day) -- including nutrition, exercise, and renewal activities. It was impressive and well-thought out, but nothing that would require drugs.
One of Tony Robbins’ books has been really helpful to me. Admittedly the effects mostly faded after the beginning, but applying his techniques put me into a rather blissful state for a day or two and also allowed for a period of maybe two weeks to a month during which I did not procrastinate. I also suspect I got a lingering boost to my happiness setpoint even after that. This are much better results than I’ve had from any previous mind-hacking technique I’ve used.
Fortunately I think I’ve been managing to figure out some of the reasons why those techniques stopped working, and have been on an upswing, mood and productivity-wise, again. “Getting sucked into the crazy” is definitely not a term I’d use when referring to his stuff. His stuff is something that’s awesome, that works, and which I’d say everyone should read. (I already bought my mom an extra copy, though she didn’t get much out of it.)
You need to apply some filtering to pick out the actual techniques out of the hype, and possibly consciously suppress instinctive reactions of “the style of this text is so horrible it can’t be right”, but it’s great if you can do that.
I will post a summary of the most useful techniques at LW at some point—I’m still in the process of gathering long-term data, which is why I haven’t done so yet. Though I blogged about the mood-improving questions some time back.
You need to apply some filtering to pick out the actual techniques out of the hype
It’s not so much hype as lack of precision. Robbins tends to specify procedures in huge “steps” like, “step 1: cultivate a great life”. (I exaggerate, but not by that much.) He also seems to think that inspiring anecdotes are the best kind of evidence, which is why I had trouble taking most of ATGW seriously enough to really do much from it when I first bought it (like a decade or more ago).
Recently I re-read it, and noticed that there’s actually a lot of good stuff in there, it’s just stuff I never paid any attention to until I’d stumbled on similar ideas myself.
It’s sort of like that saying commonly (but falsely) attributed to Mark Twain:
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
Tony seems to have learned a lot in the years since I started doing this sort of thing. ;-)
It’s not so much hype as lack of precision. Robbins tends to specify procedures in huge “steps” like, “step 1: cultivate a great life”. (I exaggerate, but not by that much.)
That’s odd—I didn’t get that at all, and I found that he had a lot of advice about various concrete techniques. Off the top of my head: pattern interrupts, morning questions, evening questions, setback questions, smiling, re-imagining negative memories, gathering references, changing your mental vocabulary.
Regarding Scientology, I had the impression that they usually portray themselves to those they’re trying to recruit as being like a self-help community (“we’re like therapists or Tony Robbins, except that our techniques actually work!”) before they start sucking you into the crazy?
Wait… did you just use Tony Robbins as the alternative to being sucked into the crazy?
I’m sure that whatever it is that Tony Robbins preaches is less crazy than the Xenu story. (Although Scientology doesn’t seem any crazier than the crazier versions of mainstream religions...)
Here’s a video in which he lays out what he sees as the critical elements of human motivation and action. Pay extra attention to the slides—there’s more stuff there than he talks about.
(It’s a much more up-to-date and compact model than what he wrote in ATGW, by the way.)
I got through 11:00 of that video. If that giant is inside me I do not want him woken up. I want that sucker in a permanent vegetative state.
Many years ago I had a friend who is a television news anchor person. The video camera flattens you from three dimensions to two, and it also filters the amount of non-verbal communication you can project onto the storage media. To have energy and charisma on the replay, a person has to project something approaching mania at record time. I shudder to think what it would be like to sit down in the front row of the Robbins talk when he was performing for that video. He comes across as manic, and the most probable explanation for that is amphetamines.
The transcript might read rational, but that is video of a maniac.
A bit of context: that’s not how he normally speaks.
There’s another video (not publicly available, it’s from a guest speech he did at one of Brendon Burchard’s programs) where he gives the backstory on that talk. He was actually extremely nervous about giving that talk, for a couple different reasons. One, he felt it was a big honor and opportunity, two, he wanted to try to cram a lot of dense information into a twenty minute spot, and three, he got a bad introduction.
Specifically, he said the intro was something like, “Oh, and now here’s Tony Robbins to motivate us”, said in a sneering/dismissive tone… and he immediately felt some pressure to get the audience on his side—a kind of pressure that he hasn’t had to deal with in a public speaking engagement for quite some time. (Since normally he speaks to stadiums full of people who paid to come see him—vs. an invited talk to a group where a lot of people—perhaps most of the audience—sees him as a shallow “motivator”.)
IOW, the only drug you’re seeing there is him feeling cornered and wanting to prove something—plus the time pressure of wanting to condense material he usually spends days on into twenty minutes. His normal way of speaking is a lot less fast paced, if still emotionally intense.
One of his time management programs that I bought over a decade ago had some interesting example schedules in it, that showed what he does to prepare for his time on stage (for programs where he’s speaking all day) -- including nutrition, exercise, and renewal activities. It was impressive and well-thought out, but nothing that would require drugs.
One of Tony Robbins’ books has been really helpful to me. Admittedly the effects mostly faded after the beginning, but applying his techniques put me into a rather blissful state for a day or two and also allowed for a period of maybe two weeks to a month during which I did not procrastinate. I also suspect I got a lingering boost to my happiness setpoint even after that. This are much better results than I’ve had from any previous mind-hacking technique I’ve used.
Fortunately I think I’ve been managing to figure out some of the reasons why those techniques stopped working, and have been on an upswing, mood and productivity-wise, again. “Getting sucked into the crazy” is definitely not a term I’d use when referring to his stuff. His stuff is something that’s awesome, that works, and which I’d say everyone should read. (I already bought my mom an extra copy, though she didn’t get much out of it.)
What book?
Awakening the Giant Within.
You need to apply some filtering to pick out the actual techniques out of the hype, and possibly consciously suppress instinctive reactions of “the style of this text is so horrible it can’t be right”, but it’s great if you can do that.
I will post a summary of the most useful techniques at LW at some point—I’m still in the process of gathering long-term data, which is why I haven’t done so yet. Though I blogged about the mood-improving questions some time back.
It’s not so much hype as lack of precision. Robbins tends to specify procedures in huge “steps” like, “step 1: cultivate a great life”. (I exaggerate, but not by that much.) He also seems to think that inspiring anecdotes are the best kind of evidence, which is why I had trouble taking most of ATGW seriously enough to really do much from it when I first bought it (like a decade or more ago).
Recently I re-read it, and noticed that there’s actually a lot of good stuff in there, it’s just stuff I never paid any attention to until I’d stumbled on similar ideas myself.
It’s sort of like that saying commonly (but falsely) attributed to Mark Twain:
Tony seems to have learned a lot in the years since I started doing this sort of thing. ;-)
That’s odd—I didn’t get that at all, and I found that he had a lot of advice about various concrete techniques. Off the top of my head: pattern interrupts, morning questions, evening questions, setback questions, smiling, re-imagining negative memories, gathering references, changing your mental vocabulary.
He does, but they’re mostly in the areas that I ignored on my first few readings of the book. ;-)
Well, there’s crazy, and then there’s crazy...