Awaken the Giant by Tony Robbins

Awaken the Giant by Tony Robbins

"Awaken the Giant Within" is part-memoir, part philosophy and part training manual. The opening chapters are filled with ideas and the chapters link together to create a powerful effect of high energy. Of course, this pace can't be sustained, and some of the middle chapters are slow and focus on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP); placing the mind over/in control of the body. But, overall, the book remains a compelling and worthwhile read.

To begin, the book opens with a story of a total life transformation of the main character that sets up the rest of the novel’s contents. Anthony Robbins is on his way by private jet helicopter to speak in front of a capacity crowd in Orange County, California. He looks down at the streets and the bumper-to-bumper traffic, hoping whatever is happening doesn't delay people arriving at his speech. Then he realizes the crowds are for him. As he flies over Glendale, the millionaire speaker looks down from his jet helicopter and recognizes a building. Something jogs his memory. It's the office where he once worked as a janitor, broke, overweight and lonely. It had been only twelve years ago, but it seemed like it had been so much longer to him. The novel then continues on towards some NLP theory.

Next, the novel contains seven main lessons from Robbins that I will now list and further extrapolate on:

1) Concentration of Power: Most of us don’t realize that we command a large degree of power by just focusing our efforts on mastering a single aspect of our lives. Therefore, instead of trying to succeed at a large number of activities all at once we should instead focus on one at a time until we master the one at hand.

2) The Power of Decision: One single decision at the right or critical moment in our life could alter our life completely. It is important that we attempt to recognize