The greeters who manned the gates to the auditorium earlier in the day with high fives and bright smiles have morphed into gatekeepers of the Firewalk, arms beckoning toward the bridge of flames.
As best I can tell, a successful Firewalk depends not so much on yourstate of mind as on how thick the soles of your feet happen to be, so I watch from a safe distance. But I seem to be the only one hanging back. Most of the UPWers make it across, whooping as they go.
âI did it!â they cry when they get to the other side of the firepit. âI did it!â
Theyâve entered a Tony Robbins state of mind. But what exactly does this consist of?
It is, first and foremost, a superior mindâthe antidote to Alfred Adlerâs inferiority complex. Tony uses the word
power
rather than
superior
(weâre too sophisticated nowadays to frame our quests for self-improvement in terms of naked social positioning, the way we did at the dawn of the Culture of Personality), but everything about him is an exercise in superiority, from the way he occasionally addresses the audience as âgirls and boys,â to the stories he tells about his big houses and powerful friends, to the way he towersâliterallyâover the crowd. Hissuperhuman physical size is an important part of his brand; the title of his best-selling book,
Awaken the Giant Within
, says it all.
His intellect is impressive, too. Though he believes university educations are overrated (because they donât teach you about your emotions and your body, he says) and has been slow to write his next book (because no one reads anymore, according to Tony), heâs managed to assimilate the work of academic psychologists and package it into one hell of a show, with genuine insights the audience can make their own.
Part of Tonyâs genius lies in the unstated promise that heâll let the audience share his own journey from inferiority to superiority. He wasnât always so grand, he tells us. As a kid, he was a shrimp. Before he got in shape, he was overweight. And before he lived in a castle in Del Mar, California, he rented an apartment so small that he kept his dishes in the bathtub. The implication is that we can
all
get over whateverâs keeping us down, that even introverts can learn to walk on coals while belting out a lusty YES.
The second part of the Tony state of mind is good-heartedness. He wouldnât inspire so many people if he didnât make them feel that he truly cared about unleashing the power within each of them. When Tonyâs onstage, you get the sense that heâs singing, dancing, and emoting with every ounce of his energy and heart. There are moments, when thecrowd is on its feet, singing and dancing in unison, that you canât help but love him, the way many people loved Barack Obama with a kind of shocked delight when they first heard him talk about transcending red and blue. At one point, Tony talks about the different needs people haveâfor love, certainty, variety, and so on. He is motivated by love, he tells us, and we believe him.
But thereâs also this: throughout the seminar, he constantly tries to âupsellâ us. He and his sales team use the UPW event, whose attendees have already paid a goodly sum, to market multi-day seminars with even more alluring names and stiffer price tags: Date with Destiny, about $5,000; Mastery University, about $10,000; and the Platinum Partnership, which, for a cool $45,000 a year, buys you and eleven other Platinum Partners the right to go on exotic vacations with Tony.
During the afternoon break, Tony lingers onstage with his blond and sweetly beautiful wife, Sage, gazing into her eyes, caressing her hair, murmuring into her ear. Iâm happily married, but right now Ken is in New York and Iâm here in Atlanta, and even I feel lonely as I watch this spectacle. What would it be like if I were single or unhappily partnered? It would âarouse an
As best I can tell, a successful Firewalk depends not so much on yourstate of mind as on how thick the soles of your feet happen to be, so I watch from a safe distance. But I seem to be the only one hanging back. Most of the UPWers make it across, whooping as they go.
âI did it!â they cry when they get to the other side of the firepit. âI did it!â
Theyâve entered a Tony Robbins state of mind. But what exactly does this consist of?
It is, first and foremost, a superior mindâthe antidote to Alfred Adlerâs inferiority complex. Tony uses the word
power
rather than
superior
(weâre too sophisticated nowadays to frame our quests for self-improvement in terms of naked social positioning, the way we did at the dawn of the Culture of Personality), but everything about him is an exercise in superiority, from the way he occasionally addresses the audience as âgirls and boys,â to the stories he tells about his big houses and powerful friends, to the way he towersâliterallyâover the crowd. Hissuperhuman physical size is an important part of his brand; the title of his best-selling book,
Awaken the Giant Within
, says it all.
His intellect is impressive, too. Though he believes university educations are overrated (because they donât teach you about your emotions and your body, he says) and has been slow to write his next book (because no one reads anymore, according to Tony), heâs managed to assimilate the work of academic psychologists and package it into one hell of a show, with genuine insights the audience can make their own.
Part of Tonyâs genius lies in the unstated promise that heâll let the audience share his own journey from inferiority to superiority. He wasnât always so grand, he tells us. As a kid, he was a shrimp. Before he got in shape, he was overweight. And before he lived in a castle in Del Mar, California, he rented an apartment so small that he kept his dishes in the bathtub. The implication is that we can
all
get over whateverâs keeping us down, that even introverts can learn to walk on coals while belting out a lusty YES.
The second part of the Tony state of mind is good-heartedness. He wouldnât inspire so many people if he didnât make them feel that he truly cared about unleashing the power within each of them. When Tonyâs onstage, you get the sense that heâs singing, dancing, and emoting with every ounce of his energy and heart. There are moments, when thecrowd is on its feet, singing and dancing in unison, that you canât help but love him, the way many people loved Barack Obama with a kind of shocked delight when they first heard him talk about transcending red and blue. At one point, Tony talks about the different needs people haveâfor love, certainty, variety, and so on. He is motivated by love, he tells us, and we believe him.
But thereâs also this: throughout the seminar, he constantly tries to âupsellâ us. He and his sales team use the UPW event, whose attendees have already paid a goodly sum, to market multi-day seminars with even more alluring names and stiffer price tags: Date with Destiny, about $5,000; Mastery University, about $10,000; and the Platinum Partnership, which, for a cool $45,000 a year, buys you and eleven other Platinum Partners the right to go on exotic vacations with Tony.
During the afternoon break, Tony lingers onstage with his blond and sweetly beautiful wife, Sage, gazing into her eyes, caressing her hair, murmuring into her ear. Iâm happily married, but right now Ken is in New York and Iâm here in Atlanta, and even I feel lonely as I watch this spectacle. What would it be like if I were single or unhappily partnered? It would âarouse an
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