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.
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