About 4 years ago I ordered the Anthony Robbins cd's "Unlimited Power" off an infomercial. I was not in the best place in my life and his infomercial spoke to my heart. They came in the mail a week later, and I listened to the first cd and never opened the rest of them!! One of my issues (heehee, yes, I said one of them) is that I am an all or nothing type of person. Now, this is sometimes a good thing. If it is something I really want to do I always work my hardest when given a task, stay until the last person when working an event, never missing anything when going to a seminar-not even going to the bathroom, doing extra tasks when working, when cleaning the house I will spend hours to create the WOW factor. But, the negative side to this is that I also am terrible at doing a little at a time, the day to day stuff. If I can't make it to a class for a valid reason, I will skip more of them, when cheating on my diet I go for broke, and if I can only clean the house a little bit I won’t do it until it gets out of hand and the WOW factor can be reached again. The little things that go unnoticed are something I really need to work on. (I guess I just realized as I am writing this that I need recognition for things and if they go unnoticed I do not have the same drive, ...interesting.) So the reason I did not do the other Tony CD's is because in CD #1 Tony says to do them for 30 consecutive days so they will become a habit. Well, some things got in the way and I had to skip a few days here and there so my "ALL" rule was broken and so was my focus. I always said I was going to get to them when I had 30 consecutive days. Now, of course I can just shoot myself because I really think this would have helped me BIG TIME during those days. But hey, never regret, just learn right.
After living in Belgium for about a year I saw the CD's in a box and looked up Tony's website and found out he was coming to Chicago for a live event. I just knew I HAD to go. I told Will all excited: "Tony is coming, Tony is coming can I go"? Will kindly reminded me that Tony going to Chicago does NOT mean Tony is "COMING" when we live in Belgium :-). My mind was set and since Will did not feel the desire to spend the money (does he ever?:-) I took my girlfriend Nele and we went to Chicago last October.
Most of you know I went to this event but most of you do not know how much of an impact it had on my life so far. I loved it so much and I have made some major changes in my life mentally as well as physically.
Mentally, it really taught me sooo much about myself and the way my mind works, my human needs and how they drive me, my priorities, my dreams, my relationships, my past beliefs and my goals for the future.
Physically, I have become almost a complete vegetarian (well, I still eat fish, I think this is technically called pescatarian?) but I do make exceptions once in a while since my decision to not eat meat, including chicken is mostly health based, not so much based on principle. So an occasional treat is allowed in my book: Watch out Shorter's Ribs in Tracy, we are coming on vacation! We also stopped eating most dairy (which was easy since the kids are lactose intolerant), and we eat loads of leafy greens daily.
Needless to say, I was the first to sign up for the seminar when I heard Tony Robbins was coming to Rome, Italy. I put myself on the volunteer list to work the event. I was accepted and it was such an amazing experience. I would recommend everybody to go to one of Tony's live events.
For those of you who don’t know what Robbins does and think I have been absorbed by a strange cult (which a lot of my Belgian friends think :-) here is the scoop in a nutshell:
Tony Robbins is NOT a guru. He avoids this term because it comes with the presupposition that people are dependent upon HIM to create their change in life. We are all responsible for our own change.
He helps to coach people on how to find out what they really want AND how to achieve this more quickly and more easily with his techniques. Yes, he believes in positive thinking like "The Secret" BUT he says the secret is only step one of the process. We have to put it into action. We can be positive and say that there are no weeds in our yard a million times, but unless we find a way to get a mower and work in the yard to get rid of these weeds, this positive thinking will get us nowhere and we will not be having people over for a barbeque any time soon :-).
Knowledge alone does not equal power. Knowledge + Action = Power.
I believe everybody can use a coach, including top executives, grad students, homemakers or even the president. We all have areas in our lives we could use some guidance. He also uses NLP (neuro linguistic programming) a specific technique to help people get over certain limiting beliefs or fears (like fear of flying, phobias, helping people to stop smoking, relationship issues, weight loss..)but he does not really go into that as much in the seminar, more focus is on getting yourself out of your past and into your future!
So basically, a man who tries to find out what makes you happy and then helps you find any possible way to get to that happy place !! What a crazy person right. I would NOT go see him, what a psycho cult of happy, positive, motivated people! :-)
Anyhoo, I had a wonderful experience. I know I already went to the same seminar, but I learned just as much if not more this time. Every time you go you learn something different because you are in a different state. I was worried I was going to be too busy working that I was going to miss the entire event and would miss the lessons Tony was teaching, but it is so strange, I learned just as much this time if not more.
The volunteers were wonderful. Just imagine 150 positive upbeat motivated people all wanting to pay it forward!
We had a person in our group called Alex who has MS. He could barely walk and when he spoke it was very hard to understand him. He comes to all the Tony Robbins events to crew because he feels this seminar changed his outlook on life and he is a much happier person now. He was such an inspiration to all of us, because this guy never let his disability get in the way of any chore. We all worked with him over the course of the 4 day seminar and gotten to know him and how hard he worked. The third day into the seminar, somebody stole his backpack with his computer inside! The whole crew was just devastated, especially since it was Alex and we all decided to pitch in the money and we bought him a new backpack with money in it for a new computer. We gave it to him on the last day and he started crying (actually, we all were!). After the thanx and hugs he proceeded to tell us his "Welcome to Italy" story.
Upon his arrival to Italy he was picked up by the local police because they thought he was mentally disabled and unable to travel by himself. He tried numerous times to tell them that he does this 3 times a year and that he travels around the world to volunteer with Tony Robbins, but they laughed at him and said it was illegal for him to travel alone in Italy. They took his passport, took him to the police station, called the embassy and ridiculed him. Finally after the embassy confirmed his story (three hours later) they sent him to the event in a taxi. Alex arrived 5 hours late to the crew meeting but never told anybody why. He worked his butt off and NEVER used his story to get extra sympathy.
My faith in the goodness of humanity was restored :-)
I came back ranting and raving and Will is now going with me to the next event!!!
I am sooo glad I was part of this, even though I worked from 7am until 2am EVERY DAY and slept about 4 hours a night. What I got back was so much more. As I said in one of my last blogs, I have been identifying with so many clichés lately, so here it goes again: "the more you give, the more you get!!!"
I can not end my blog without
Little child of mine say what?
Chloe asked me if I got my book signed by Tony and I told her there was no opportunity for me to get it but I had something better: I told her "Tony held my hand and kissed it!!!!" She thought about it for a few seconds and responded with a pouty face: " I'd much rather have an autograph then a kiss on YOUR hand!
When Will and the kids picked me up from the airport after coming home from the seminar I was going off talking about how wonderful it was and about Alex who got his computer stolen when Lainey taps my shoulder and asks me in the sweetest, caring voice while stroking my arm:" Can we turn on the music now or are you not done with all your stories?" I am glad my daughter sensed I needed to get this stuff off my chest even though she couldn't care less :-)
Until the next time,
Lesley
