Imagine you’re at the starting line of the 100m dash. You have trained hard and have had your best-ever track times during practice earlier this year. You are in a position to earn two distinctions – becoming number one and beating your personal record. While waiting for the gunshot to start your sprint, your inner voice questions, “Am I ready to do this?”
This fear-invoking inner voice is what can make your sales pitch implode and break down or cause you to slur your words when talking to a potential love-interest. It also works in more subtle ways making you procrastinate important office tasks and set easy exercise goals for yourself which stifle your performance in the long run. Self-help and business coach, Tony Robbins, says, “The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.” Pointing out that in our daily life, we manifest mental obstacles for ourselves such as the fear of rejection, of failure and that of the unknown.
Six and a Half Feet Tall
Technically at 6’7”, Tony Robbins has built a giant reputation in the fields of personal excellence, leadership and in business. Over his forty-year coaching career, he has had the privilege of working with esteemed personalities from past generations including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, to those in the spotlight today such as Serena Williams, Oprah, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian and Hugh Jackman, Marc Benioff and Pitbull. His events and programs have impacted over 50 million people on how to shed self-limiting beliefs and become better versions of themselves.
The proposed idea is simple: unprecedented growth is possible when working on the fringes of the comfort zone. Situations of discomfort cause stress, but also build endurance and what Tony Robbins refers to as “Emotional Fitness”. According to him, Emotional Fitness is defined as a resilience that can be learned and practised. It is common to all successful people and is the will to face any obstacle and then turn it into a catalyst for growth and advancement.
Through training, professional sportsmen and women build strength and endurance to develop the fitness needed to handle the physical requirement of their sport. But 80% of success is reportedly attributed to emotional fitness and only 20% to the actual task-oriented skill. Untapped, this 80% keeps professionals from becoming a Lionel Messi in football or a Novak Djokovic in tennis. The sports analogy is easy to digest, but the question then becomes, “At which gym must we sign up in order to develop Emotional Fitness?”
Three and a Half Days Long
Unleash the Power Within (UPW) is an interactive event hosted by Tony Robbins which is targeted at individuals striving to find purpose and fulfilment in the many areas of their life from improving health, reaching financial freedom, building stronger and deeper relationships in their work and personal lives. As everyone needs development in all areas of their lives, albeit each to a different extent, the program is potentially useful to anyone.
Usually held in the UK, US and Australia, the event attracts 12,000 to 15,000 participants flying in from at least 40 different countries and the material translated to as many as 15 languages simultaneously to accommodate them. It is a gruelling three-and-a-half-day marathon of accelerated learning, techniques for high-level retention and activities that keep participants energized during the 12+ hours that the program goes on for each day.
Highlights include participants walking on a 10 ft bed of hot coals in a mind-over-matter exercise where, unless you are a retired fire-walker, you would consider it quite a feat. The positive psychological shift it generates helps attendees see previously unattainable goals through fresh eyes. Another is introducing the idea of 6 basic human needs which control us (namely certainty, uncertainty, significance, love, growth and contribution), discovering the primary need for yourself as well as learning to identify it in others makes meaningful interpersonal communication possible. Tony Robbins also speaks about the routines and rituals used by the world’s most successful to condition their own minds.
Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees Around
Owing to this year’s pandemic, the program has shifted to the virtual sphere utilizing game engine technology powered by the CANVAS platform from Immersive Design Studios, through which Unleash The Power Within Live Virtual 360 Interactive Experience was first held in July 2020. Meeting the requirement of a global audience accustomed to living in lockdown, the main requirements to participants, aside from the cost of registration, is a good WiFi connection. It allows Tony Robbins to be the focal point with 360 degrees of virtual participants around him. Other parts of the program include access to an exclusive Facebook support group and a ten-day challenge for personal growth.
“Tony Robbins is a life strategist,” says Shuvo Hridayesh, CEO of Success Zante, a leading training and self-development events provider in the country. He expanded to say that Tony Robbins shows his participants “different ways of managing their mental state” and “helps individuals wherever they are in their lives.” It is said to be designed to help participants unlock and unleash the forces inside that can help them break through any limit and create the quality of life they desire. This is the opportunity, which Success Zante wants to offer Sri Lanka working in partnership with Success Resources, one of the world’s largest education platforms.
More information and tickets/logins for this event are available through the UPW website. You can also reach out to the Success Zante team via phone on +94773508894 or social media. The popular virtual version is at a fraction of the cost of taking part at the event physically and, unsurprisingly, has drawn in large crowds online. As the login ID will work on a single computer, up to four friends can get together to share the cost of participation – effectively cutting down the investment each one puts up. The ability to change one’s mind and condition it to achieve the same positive results repeatedly is the practical application of the program’s principles. If the mindset does not change, then, as the CEO Whisperer himself would say, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”