Tony Robbins and Unleash the Power Within is upon Sydney. There is a huge amount of search engine traffic through WealthEsteem.org looking for comment and critique.

NigelW, another very smart person I know, made this comment on Personal Development Industry guru’s.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the whole “personal development” industry is just a bunch of P.T. Barnum style bunkum being peddled to people who are generally disillusioned with their lot in life and need something to “believe in”. It sometimes seems just one step above those dubious spam emails one gets promising to increase the size of one’s wedding tackle!!!

It seems to me that some people join the church, some people join a cult, some people believe in aliens and conspiracies and some people go along to personal development seminars . 🙂

I’ve been to a few introductory nights for various NLPesque practitioners (adam hudson and jamie mcintyre spring to mind). They all try to imitate TR right down to the tight black T shirt and head mike…but somehow just can’t pull it off (probably has something to do with Robbins being about half a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than the wannabes…)

Most of it just seems to be recycled, repackaged pop-psychology and common-sense presented as some kind of secret information that only the rich and successful know…

Maybe I’m having a cynical day, but people should just rent a funny video if they want to be entertained and feel good about themselves. The firewalking metaphor is the prime example of the shallowness that’s being promoted. Let Tony walk across a plate of sheet metal heated to just a paltry 100 degrees celius compared with the 300-400 degrees for the bed of coals and I’ll agree there’s something in this personal mastery stuff!

Glass half-empty signing off! 🙂

Sometimes it’s good to pause to consider.