‘There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.’
Nine o’clock on a Thursday night and seven thousand people are chanting ‘YES! YES! YES!’ in an East London car park. It’s pitch black and the ground is damp. Our bare feet are going numb on the cold, hard concrete.
A drum pounds in the distance and we keep step with the beat. It feels as if we’re on our way to a ritual killing. Maybe our own. We’ve already signed waivers warning us about potential ‘serious injury, including burns or other physical or mental damage’ . . . and we’ve spent the past half-hour being told how to avoid hospitalization.
The crowd keeps pushing me forwards until the drumming stops and a hush fills the air. Our fate glimmers grey and red in front of us: lanes of burning coals, which we are to walk over. I want to run away but I don’t. I have spent hours preparing to do this. To put my feet on those hot coals.
Two men wearing bandanas tip a wheelbarrow of burning embers on top of the existing coals. Red sparks fly into the night sky. A figure appears out of the darkness and grabs my elbow, pulling me forwards.
‘Are you ready?’ he shouts in my ear.
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ shout the throng behind me. A crowd cheering at the gallows.
No, No, No! shouts a voice inside my head.
But ‘no’ is not an option.
We’ve been told that once you overcome the fear of walking on thousand-degree coals, you can ‘conquer the other fires of your life with ease’.
And that’s what I want. A life without fear. A life as the best me. The Outstanding Me.
I take a deep breath and let out a roar – a primal, warrior sound. Then I take a step . . .
My transition from naked-yoga hippie to potential cult-member came much more quickly than even Helen – or I – had expected when Daisy asked me to go with her to a Tony Robbins event.
‘When you walk over the fire, it’s like . . .’ She looked up to the heavens for the right words. ‘It’s like one of those moments that just changes everything.’
She spoke with the fervour of someone who had discovered God and sex on the same day, which I soon found out was how all fans of Tony’s talked. Even the men. Perhaps especially the men.
According to his website, Tony’s Unleash the Power Within seminar would help me ‘discover how to identify what it is you really want, permanently break through any barriers that might be holding you back, dramatically increase your energy and mental clarity, and infuse passion into your life’.
Daisy had already gone to two of his events – one in Palm Springs and the other in London the year before.
‘Go on, get a ticket, he’s only in London once a year,’ she said.
‘How much is it?’
‘It’s totally worth it,’ she said.
‘Yeah but how much?’
It turned out that tickets started at £500 and went up to £1,200 – but £500 for four days that promised to ‘Revolutionize your body, your emotions, your finances and your relationships’ was a bargain, surely. And given that Tony’s book Awaken the Giant Within was 500-odd pages, I figured this was the quicker way to get a Tony fix – and, let’s face it, time is money.
The credit card came out again.
I met Daisy at the entrance to the ExCeL Conference Centre in Docklands. The Tube had been packed and I was hungover and had a cold coming. I was not in the mood to be surrounded by perky women with perky hair and perky smiles, chatting to men who looked like they lived on protein shakes and sheer determination – but this seemed to be the demographic.
‘I need a coffee,’ I told Daisy.
‘You can get one after we register,’ she said, so excited she was literally bouncing. It was driving me crazy.
As we queued to register, volunteers in black t-shirts marked ‘Crew’ tried to high-five us. Anyone new to the Tony Robbins experience looked embarrassed and confused, while the old-timers, including Daisy, high-fived back.
‘Can we get a coffee now?’ I asked, once we’d signed in and got our wristbands and workbooks.
‘Why don’t we get a good seat first and then you can go out and get one?’
I rolled my eyes and followed Daisy towards the sound of booming electro-pop coming from the main arena. More high-fiving from strangers. The smiles were getting manic, the music louder and louder.
We snaked past a bank of what looked like telephone kiosks. Each had a sign with a language: Russian, Chinese, Polish, Spanish, Hebrew . . .
‘That’s where the translators go,’ shouted Daisy. We were told later that Tony’s words were being translated into thirty-two different languages via headphones.
Once we got into the main arena it was a scrum. People were running to get to seats as close to the stage as possible. Daisy grabbed my hand and pulled me forwards, darting towards the area marked Gold.
‘Is this OK?’ shouted Daisy over the music. She’d got two seats on the edge of a block. ‘This way we can dance in the aisles and we have a good view of the screens.’
On stage, crew members were dancing and clapping to ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by the Black Eyed Peas. They looked to be a cross between children’s television presenters and IT managers on an office night out. In the audience multiple Daisies were bouncing up and down like cheerleaders. This was too much.
‘I’m going to get a coffee.’
When I got back Daisy was dancing with a man wearing a paisley cravat. I sat next to a woman who was sitting with folded arms. I smiled but she didn’t smile back. I looked at my phone and ate a chocolate muffin and thought about how ridiculous this all was and how much I hated it.
Then Rihanna started playing and I got up to dance. I’m a sucker for Rihanna.
A couple of songs later, the big moment – and the big man – arrived, bursting on stage dressed in black t-shirt and long black shorts, with a wireless microphone across his face. With his Hollywood tan, white teeth and lantern jaw, he looked like something that a Mills & Boon writer would dream up. And just to add to the effect, his chiselled face was blown up to God-like proportions on massive screens behind him.
The audience exploded.
It was like the Beatles and the Messiah had landed in Docklands on a Thursday lunch time.
Seven and a half thousand people jumped up and down as music blared and lights flashed on and off. People were high-fiving each other. Daisy hit me so hard my palms stung. I turned to the woman on my other side.
Her hands remained crossed on her chest.
I had a choice – I could either sit with Mrs Misery for the next four days or go with the madness.
‘Are you ready?’ yelled Tony, with a voice so deep it sounded like it came from the centre of the earth.
‘YES!!’ I screamed back, along with everyone else.
‘Who wants an amazing, extraordinary quality of life? Life on YOUR terms? SAY AYE!!!!!!!”
‘AYE!’
And then he was off . . . firing words like a sexy motivational machine gun from 1pm to 9pm. No tea breaks, no lunch, just one inspiring slogan after another: ‘Love is oxygen for the soul!’ ‘Energy is life!’ ‘Trade expectations for appreciation!’
Tony’s message is that anything is possible if we just get our minds and bodies into the right state. He says we are all defined by our limiting beliefs and if we get rid of them, then ‘The Impossible just gets done’.
To prove the point, he told the story of an eighty-four-year-old nun who ran triathlons: ‘It’s not your chronology that counts – it’s your psychology!’ he shouted and I found myself scribbling that down. It seemed important.
Then he pulled out a woman from the audience who said she was depressed. He asked her if she was depressed while having sex and she smiled. Apparently not. And then, and before we knew it, the depressed woman was faking an orgasm in front of seven thousand people while Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’ blasted from the stereo.
She beamed! So did we! Her depression was gone!
Tony explained why this woman was depressed – and it wasn’t because of her chemical make-up or her life experiences – it was because she liked being depressed! According to Tony – who was fast becoming the love of my life – there are six human needs that drive absolutely everything we do.
The first need is for Certainty/Comfort – this is our need to feel in control and secure. The second is the opposite: our need for Variety and Uncertainty. The third need is Significance. We all need to feel important and unique. Tony explained that some of us get a feeling of significance from our work, some achieve it by having a flash car or by getting a thousand Twitter followers. Tony said that you can even get significance by committing crimes – sounds strange but if you hold a knife up to someone you are suddenly very important in their eyes. Need four is Love and Connection. Need five is Growth – ‘If you’re not growing, you’re dying,’ according to Tony – whether that’s growing your business, your relationships, your education, etc. And the final need is for Contribution – ‘Life’s not about me; it’s about we,’ says Tony.
Any time we find ourselves in a seemingly undesirable situation it will be because it actually satisfies some of these needs. The depressed woman admitted that her condition allowed her comfort and security because it gave her a reason to stay in bed and not push herself. It also gave her significance because she became special when she talked about her illness. Finally, it gave her love and connection because it meant her family had to look after her.
Wow! This made a lot of sense. Tony explained that we all prioritize these needs differently. For some of us, certainty will be key; for others, the desire to feel special and significant will be the most important.
We were told to talk to somebody we didn’t know about the needs we prioritized.
‘For me it’s security and love!’ said a Norwegian accountant in the row behind me. ‘I have been in the same job since university. I married my girlfriend from school. It is very safe but very boring.’
‘We are opposites!’ I said, excited by this lightbulb moment with a stranger. ‘I value uncertainty and significance, which is why I am a freelance writer who never has savings or a plan and am constantly looking to feel good enough through my career!’
We grinned at each other.
The music changed and we all danced again.
Daisy was air-guitaring in the aisles with a muscle-man who looked like he belonged on the cover of Men’s Health and I did the mashed potato with the Norwegian accountant.
Then we were taught how to get into a ‘peak state’ by thinking of the best moments of our lives, the moments we felt strongest and most at peace.
I thought of sunny beaches, getting my degree even though I’d been in and out of hospital because of the cancer scare – and the fact that I was an actual paid journalist.
Each time we had these thoughts we were told to ‘make a move’, so every time we made that move in the future, these memories would come flooding back.
I pumped my fist in the air, again and again and again.
The theme from Chariots of Fire blared from the speakers, then ‘Life Will Never Be the Same Again’ – and that felt right. Life would never be the same again! It really wouldn’t be! I wanted a life of orgasms and triathlons! Until I was a hundred!
By the end of the first day I was in the aisles with the others, dancing, shouting, roaring. The Norwegian accountant was now wild-eyed and wet with sweat. ‘I think I am in love!’ I shout. ‘Me too!’ he replied. We both looked up at the screen, at Tony. Our God.
F**k It had been replaced by F**K YEAH!!
Poor John didn’t stand a chance.
And so it went for four days.
Every moment of Tony’s life was spun into motivational gold. His terrible childhood, his abusive mother, the fathers that came and went . . . they all helped him become who he is today – which was rich and successful. And we were in no doubt as to how rich and successful Tony was because he kept telling us.
Every story was littered with sports cars speeding down the Californian coast or involved him hopping on private jets to visit his private resort on Fiji where he hung out with the most powerful people in the world. But somehow he said it in a way that made us feel that we too could get the cars, the jets, the houses. If we just followed his daily routine of workouts, strict diet, morning meditation . . . we too could be like Tony.
He firmly believed that we were all capable of greatness, and before long we did too. As the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ blared from the speakers we scribbled down notes of what we wanted from our lives and, just as Susan Jeffers recommended with affirmations, I wrote my desires in the present tense – as if they were already real:
I have £100,000 in my bank account! I am writing a great book! I have happiness, freedom, love! I go on flights all the time, travel regularly, love a hot handsome man who is kind and tall – a man who allows me my freedom. I have a lean body, great wardrobe, lots of blow-dries! Sheila, Helen and Mum are happy! And I am happy! I am bursting with energy and productivity! And I have braces to fix my teeth.
I was back to my initial vision of Perfect Me – skinny, rich, good teeth. All F**K It zen was gone.
This was why I read self-help books – this was what I wanted. I didn’t want an ordinary life; I wanted an extraordinary life! And so did everyone around me. It felt so good to be with people who all wanted the same things as me. To be better. To be happier. To be their best selves.
‘I have a PhD in results, motherfuckers!’ Tony shouted and we all cheered back.
Day Three – dubbed Transformation Day – was the big one. Tony explained that there are two reasons we make changes in life: either because we are in so much pain we have no choice or because the potential rewards are so great we can’t say no. In order to make changes we needed to focus on the benefits we’d get from the change and also scare ourselves witless with the thought of what would happen if we didn’t change.
First we were asked to identify our limiting beliefs, the beliefs that shaped our world and stopped us from getting what we wanted. As sad music played, I wrote down my two most persistent and limiting of beliefs: men don’t like me and I’m crap with money.
Tony asked us to close our eyes and imagine what would happen if we held on to these beliefs in five, ten, fifteen years from now? An image came to me instantly: I was standing by a bathroom mirror. My skin looked ashen. My hair was grey and limp. I opened the bathroom cabinet to take pills, antidepressants, and I closed it again. I was wearing a white shapeless nightdress. I was a spinster in my fifties but I looked much older. The bathroom was in a rented flat I could hardly afford. I was broke and alone. I pictured myself putting on make-up and plastering on a smile as I went to visit my friends in their family homes, alive with love and noise and people. I fake-smiled as I sat at their kitchen table and told them that I was fine before asking about them and listening for hours. Then I returned to my flat, alone, irrelevant, invisible.
The vision was so real it was a shock. This was what my life would be if I carried on the way I had until now. I started to cry and so did everyone around me.
A woman to my right was wailing as if she’d just lost her child. A man behind me was sobbing. Edvard Munch’s The Scream was being reenacted by seven thousand people in a conference hall in London’s Docklands. It went on for an eternity as Tony urged us to feel the horror. We did.
Then the music changed. Something lighter came on, something that sounded like fairy dust being sprinkled on the stadium. This was our cue to change our emotions.
We were then asked to identify the opposite of our limiting beliefs and shout them at the top of our voice. ‘I am great with money!’ I bellowed. ‘Men love me!’ I yelled less loudly, in case the (good-looking) man two seats down thought I was weird. We were then to visualize what life would be like if we lived according to these new beliefs.
I closed my eyes. I was in the bathroom again, looking at the mirror. But it was a different mirror and a different bathroom. This time I was smiling and humming to myself as I put my make-up on; I was wearing slim black trousers and a cream blouse. My hair was shiny. I glowed. A voice called to me from the living room and I walked into a room with big windows, a lush grey sofa and art on the walls. The voice was coming from a man, a kind-faced, dark-haired, smiling man who was sitting on the sofa.
‘Are you ready yet?’ he was asking.
‘Yes,’ I said as I leaned down to kiss him. He pulled me down onto the sofa and I laughed. We were going to see friends together. I pictured us skipping down the street. I imagined being healthy, energetic and productive. Someone alive and vibrant. It was bliss. I had seen the movie of my life – the disaster version and the fairy tale.
I wanted the fairy tale.
We all started high-fiving and hugging each other. We were gripping strongly now, like long-lost brothers and sisters. Men in ironed jeans and chinos embraced each other and held on tight, swaying, reluctant to let go. I squeezed Daisy and when I moved away I saw she had tears in her eyes. I did too. We were alive. Inspired. In love, with ourselves, with each other, with the world!
We ran around, sharing our visions.
‘I want to be more so I can do more!’ said a woman in purple leggings.
‘I want to bring Tony Robbins’ message to Putin – I think then we can have world peace!’ said a man with gelled black hair and an accent.
‘I want to have sex,’ said Daisy. ‘Lots and lots of sex!’
‘Me too!’ I said.
Then it was dark again and we stood with our eyes closed as the soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey reverberated through the arena. I opened my eyes and saw a sea of rapt faces – and for a second it frightened me. This is what it’s like to be in a cult.
We walked with bare feet towards the purple glow of a neighbouring Travelodge. Our shoes and socks had been left in the building, along with our old limiting beliefs. We were now marching, with rolled-up jeans, towards a new destiny.
My mind went blank the second I put my feet on the burning coals – until my last step, when I could feel heat. For half a second, I panicked as I remembered what I was doing but, by then, it was over. My feet were being hosed down by helpers.
I’d done it. I’d walked across a bed of hot coals.
It was so easy it was almost underwhelming. I couldn’t make sense of it but I didn’t need to. I left Tony on Sunday evening, feeling that I could not only walk on fire; I could walk on water. Possibly even fly.
This was the feeling I’d been waiting for my whole life – the feeling that I could do absolutely anything. Forget all the years of doubt and worry and loneliness. That was all behind me. I had crossed the fire. I was different.
My new life was going to start right now.
No more Old-Neurotic-Mildly-Depressed-Overweight Me.
Time for Perfect Me.