Tony was born on 29th February 1960, a birthday he should
only celebrate every leap year. He often talks about his mother having several
partners and he having several fathers during his upbringing. The Robbins family
often did not have much money and he has talked about charity being offered to
them on Thanks Giving.
Anthony Robbins has always been big in stature, but also big on goals too. By
his late teens he had already found himself studying NLP (Nero Linguistic
Programming) with John Grinder, one of the founders of NLP. He did this by just
pure determination and not excepting a no for an answer, so that John finally
agreed to show him the skills. Still in his late teens he developed his own
diamond method and became very popular in helping peoples' fears and phobias.
He was labelled the "Wonder Kid" and was even written about in the national
press and was earning some quite substantial money for someone of his age. But
with success came self destruction and soon after, Anthony Robbins found himself
sitting in a bachelor pad, overweight and where his biggest priority was to
watch general Hospital on TV.
He describes a friend coming around to his apartment and convincing him that he
was wasting his life away as the turning point at this stage. Anthony clearly
had the tools and skills; he just was choosing not to demand more from himself.
From this day he never looked back.
Robbins big break came in Canada, where on a local radio station he challenged
that he could cure anyone with a phobia or fear instantly. He was challenged by
a local Physiologist, who had a patient he had been working on for years and had
never been able to cure her.
That night on stage at a local hotel, many people had turned up to see this dual
between Robbins and the physiologist. So many, that the audience was forced to
stand around the walls. The patient had been afraid of snakes and nothing that
she had tried in the past had worked. Tony used his skills that he had learnt
with NLP and a bit of entertainment to, and sure enough within seconds, this
lady was quite happy to have snakes around her.
The publicly from this event sent Tony’s career forward at an incredible speed,
everyone wanted a piece of Robbins knowledge and skills. With one year Anthony
was a multimillionaire living in a castle above the cliffs of California. His
books became instant best sellers and his motivational tapes were sold over the
world and became the best selling motivational tapes ever. Tony was pretty much
elevated to superstar status.
He now found himself helping the rich and famous. Names that publicly support
Tony’s work are Michael Douglas, Andre Agassi, Quincy Jones and countless more.
He has also been associated with 2 presidents, Nelson Mandella and even Princess
Diana. Clearly a seriously impressive portfolio! But at his peak, Anthony was to
disappoint his fans by announcing his divorce from his wife of many years Becky.
Becky had appeared on many of his tapes, had a book dedicated to her, but
what really upset his followers was that his divorce seemed to contradict his
teachings in his books and tapes. He had often used his relationship with Becky
to show that people are different and that happy relationships can be formed and
can be lasting if you follow some of Anthony’s lessons.
Although some people never forgave Tony for these events, most people moved on
from this realising that Tony is just as human as everyone else and happiness
has to be the major factor of life. Becky apparently is still a friend with
Robbins and she still works at one of his companies.
Robbins used the lessons from his own divorce, to put into his seminars and
books to make him more popular than ever and now with his new wife is as active
as he ever was.
Now in his forties, he sleeps only a few hours a day, has relentless energy and
never accepts anything less than the best. Even after his seminars, which often
finish at the early hours of the morning, he still goes to work to find out what
he could have done better. Of course there are still those who criticise him and
what he teaches and even those who think he is a fraud. But you cannot deny that
Anthony Robbins has had an extraordinary life and like him or love him,
extremely successful.
