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Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina  Brian Tracy is one of my long-term favorites too. I also like Stephen Covey, Denis Waitley, Jim Rohn, and Earl Nightingale. Tony Robbins is good too, but his material includes a lot of rah-rah fluff and not nearly as much actionable substance as someone like Brian Tracy, who packs in the good ideas more densely and concisely. Tony is better at selling his ideas to convince you they'll work and you may feel better while listening, but my results were better when I applied ideas from more straightforward authors/speakers. When I first encountered Tony's material, I learned to feel happy and excited while I was dead broke, and I remained dead broke. Other people's material didn't get me as pumped, but they helped me make realistic changes so I wasn't broke anymore. Personally I'd rather have a great result than a great feeling about a lousy result. Tony Robbins, however, is a much better speaker than most -- and very motivational. |
I had the exact same thing occur. When I started listening to Tony Robbins, as he was one of the first personal development speakers I had come across back in the day, I started getting an extremely optimistic view towards life. I used to be extremely pessimistic, but it wasn't by my choosing, I just felt like a victim. The more I listened to him, the better I felt. He could really pick you up after a depressing day. I was practicing the things he was teaching in the programs, for example his 'state changes' and changing the view you have of your reality.
But then... about a month or two later I realized I had gotten NOWHERE. My reality still sucked. I was still broke, I had no new friends, I had the same negative people in my life, and I also had a bit of social phobia. I was thinking very positively, but nothing seemed to change.
Then I picked up a Brian Tracy audio program, the Psychology of Achievement. Immediately I took responsibility for my life, and I set some goals and started working towards them like a madman. From being unemployed and completely broke, I had gotten a job. My social phobia had disappeared as I forced myself to interact with people at work and the more I did, the more relaxed I became. I also started speeding through and finishing some of my personal projects which I had at the time. I then saw Tony Robbins for what he was, a scam artist. A VERY good motivational speaker, an attractive guy, seems to have his life together, yes. But it wears off quickly after you try to take some of his garbled advice and put it to use, if you can even extract it from his shoddily put together programs.
Don't get me wrong, I listen to every self help speaker with no judgments at the beginning. It's not like I turned on Tony Robbins and went "Okay lets see what this ******* has to say!" I really did give everyone a chance, but after a while it was clear what was working and what wasn't.
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Originally Posted by Jamie Just wanted to add to this, and I feel very strongly about this point, is that the number one person you want to listen to, is ALWAYS yourself. |
I completely agree. I used to listen to one person's entire program, and at the end I would go "I liked what he said in this part, but... do I REALLY have to do this crazy chant?" Something like that would always happen, until I realized that no ONE man was right, you just grab what you can and add it into your inventory of knowledge.
OH, I had to add this to my bash on Tony. Hah, in one program or video, I forgot... He would tell the listener to do a repeated chant that went "I will lead, not follow!" Irony, eh? I think that was one of the things that made me go "What a dick."