Tony Robbins is one of the world’s foremost personal development coaches. His classic books “Unlimited Power” and “Awaken the Giant Within” have achieved global recognition and are credited with transforming thousands of lives.

There is one famous anecdote which exemplifies the mystique of the Robbins success story. He is flying by private jet helicopter to host a seminar in a stadium full of adoring fans. Looking down, he sees a large traffic jam that he hopes won’t disrupt his seminar. Then he realizes the traffic jam is for him. Swooping over Glendale, he vaguely recognizes an office building. Then he realizes – this is the very place where he used to work as a janitor, broke and poor, just seven years before…

The unrelenting optimism of Tony Robbins’ books, infused with the 1980s “Californian Dream” idea that total life transformation is possible, make them a joy to read. But behind the panache and the hype, which techniques really work and why?

A full review of the Tony Robbins phenomenon, including detailed commentaries on his major works, can be found at   http://hubpages.com/hub/Tony-Robbins-Awaken-the-Giant-Within Many of his ideas boil down to a few key philosophical and practical principles, several rooted in the hotly debated field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Many of Tony’s insights are simply self-evident: the concentration of power, the importance of focus, and above all the power of decisions to change lives. Robbins has successfully distilled the most powerful insights from half a century of American prosperity teaching and packaged them in a lucid and effective format. Instead of grand and complex theories, the Robbins books may be described as simple and powerful. Fundamentals matter, and deserve repetition, precisely because they are the rock on which everything else can be built.

For example, Robbins revives the idea of the Ten Day Mental Challenge originally devised by Emmet Fox, a 1930s “New Thought” writer. He suggested that we should discipline ourselves to think only positive, empowering thoughts for ten consecutive days. Any backsliding, any over-dwelling on negativity, and we must start the experiment again. This almost childishly simplistic exercise turns out to be immensely challenging and a great struggle to undertake. It’s only in trying it that we realize the extent to which our minds have already been negatively conditioned. This is only one example of the insights that Tony Robbins offers in his classic works.

photo credit: Alan Light