I Attended Unleash the Power by Tony Robbins - a Review
The biggest investment I've made in my personal development journey.
Ever since I read the book Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins, my life changed.
It helped me recognise my inner belief systems and my negative patterns that I wasn’t aware of.
I realised that my inner narrative was holding me back because of the content I consumed. And that’s natural. We’ve normalised criticising everything and ourselves so much that most of us spend our entire lives never tapping into the powerhouse of our potential.
We don’t even know ourselves enough to know our potential (that’s why I talk about self-awareness so much on LinkedIn.)
What do you think when you’re scrolling? Probably that you’re less
pretty
rich
successful
Social media makes you compare.
Anyhoo, this was just one of the aspects.
Once I realised I could undo and rework what was holding me back, I believed I could do anything I thought of, and I did. Since then it feels like every win is a picture in motion that I have already visualised before.
I dreamt of quitting my corporate job to write full-time. Everyone thought it was a phase, but I did it in under a year.
Every day feels like a blessing since then because I realised,
The tools to feel amazing and be a winner exist inside us.
So, I always wondered, if one book by Tony Robbins could make this impact, what would his seminar do?
Four years later, I was on a 17-hour long flight to New York City (my first time). Here’s my review of Unleash The Power Within (UPW)
Day 1: Discover your true identity
I entered this huge stadium that was freezing. If you don’t know it, Tony keeps the hall extremely cold because it helps you stay uncomfortable and perform better. I had my cap and gloves on all the time.
There was lots of dancing. Little did I know that in 4 days I’d have an average step count of 15-20k steps being stuck to one seat.
I was also cramped up in a seat and space so tiny.
Okay, enough with the rant.
Now, my eyes filled up when Tony entered the stadium. I mean, this is the guy who transformed my life. If I can even afford to spend to be in NYC for 12 days it’s because of him.
Tony is huge. So tall and big, with a powerful voice. His smile makes you smile. And even though I was far away, I felt he was speaking to me. His energy is something else. That one man has control over 16,000 folks like it’s nothing.
On this day, I learnt about
how our focus shapes our reality
being an effective leader
patterns that control you
on battling mental health issues like anxiety and depression on your own
how to attain clarity that leads to excellence
leading a fulfilling life
why do people do what they do
And when I say learnt, I don’t mean they were just lectures. This is the surface level, basically the headings in my notes lol. This was a 17-hour day (9 am-2 am) so there was lots of journalling and exercises with people around us.
Lots of hi-5s and hugs too!
The highlight of Day 1: Firewalk
When I got to know that we do the firewalk on the first day, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to do it. I don’t have it in me to do such stuff.
I don’t even want to do skydiving or bungee jumping because I’m too much of a chicken for it.
We spent the entire day discovering our patterns and shaping them and in the evening we learnt how you can take charge of your energy.
How your physiology defines your outcomes and how we can gain control of our physiology to attain our desired outcomes.
So basically, you have control over your life if you just control your physiology and energy.
In the evening, we learnt how can we tap into our individual quirks to take charge of our energy. We meditated several times to feel it, absorb it, and be strong enough to switch into it by just clenching our hands.
Little did I know that all this was a prep for what was going to start at 1 am 🔥
Many of these meditations and visualisations felt like minutes but lasted an hour!
Firewalk time
There was a 6ft long path with burning coal.
There were about 32 of these strips to accommodate everyone. They told us that the team would only let us walk if they felt you’re confident because a change in our state would change everything.
What is a state, you may ask? Think of something negative, something that makes you upset or angry, and talk. You’ll notice that your back rounds, your breath is shallow, and your voice is soft and muffled. Now - a change in our physiology changes how we feel, behave, and shape our reality. Science says that something as simple as straightening your back makes you feel more confident and calm.
We spent hours creating a really, really high state. A state mentally and physically that makes you feel more confident than ever before.
Honestly… I felt myself losing my state.
Suddenly a loser behaviour got in me. I was the only kid in playschool who kept standing in a race and started crying instead of running. And then I realised I’m not that anymore. I clenched my fist, got my state back (this is what we learnt the last few hours), and walked confidently - this showed me that we can quickly change our state whenever we want to.
And then my feet felt like I’ve burnt them! Even though they sprayed fire extinguishers on my feet in case any tiny pieces of coal were stuck between my toes.
I thought of all the remarks I’d get from friends and family for being stupid,
“What else did you think would happen on burning coal?! Of course you’ll burn your feet!
It was 2 am and I didn’t know if my friend’s house would have any aloe vera gel. I also didn’t want to trouble anyone so I just went to the first aid booth. Dipped my feet in freezing water, in the freezing weather. It was cute how the nurse said I was really anxious and was helping me calm down and I had to explain that I’m from a tropical country and I’m simply freezing with my feet in ice-cold water and weather.
My feet were fine. Not even a tiny burn or redness.
In all honesty, they did hurt while walking when I reached home. You know, while walking from my bed to the washroom. But when I woke up, my body felt nothing.
The power of conquering your mind doesn’t get clearer than this.
Hey, see my firewalk victory photo:
Day 2: Create unstoppable momentum
This is the day Tony doesn’t come but a range of speakers do. My favourite was hands down Joseph McClendon III. He’s probably one of the best speakers I have EVER come across, even if I count the folks I see online.
His humour, storytelling, energy, and how he roasts the crowd and Tony is amazing. He keeps you glued to what he’s talking about and gives me the tough-love guy vibe.
There were other speakers too but Joe stole the show for me.
Now that we had tapped into our inner patterns yesterday and learned to get in an ideal state, today was about lasting change.
Here’s a snapshot of my journal:
We also worked on goals across areas like wealth, work, personal, health, relationships, etc. How we want to be and how to get there. The worksheet below helped:
Again, this is just the gist of it but at least this day went on for only 9 hours.
I enjoyed Joe’s exercises a lot because
Today was lighter, it was more about sustaining change and figuring out what is holding us back from attaining our best goals
I was super comfy sitting in the front row of my section so my extra-long legs at least had space
I danced a lot more because I was comfortable
I MADE A FRIEND - and this made all the difference. It made three days so full of laughter for me!
.
Day 3: Transformation day!!!
Today was THE day.
It started super early.
Everyone already told us about how intense it’ll be.
What I liked was learning about 3 principles of mastery:
Models
Total immersion
Spaced repetition
But this was only the beginning.
We did priming, Tony’s morning routine that he recommends to set a tone for the day. Personally, I won’t be doing it because it’s similar to my existing routine and I think mine is a tad bit better. It includes:
Bhastrika Pranayama (not sure if anybody there knew its that lol)
gratitude
visualisation
It’s about 10-15 minutes.
Now my routine includes (in this order):
gratitude journaling
kapalbhatti pranayama (similar to the one in priming, without raising arms)
anulom vilom pranayama (alternate nostril breathing)
AUM chanting
10min meditation via Headspace app
reciting affirmations
This day was intense because now that we know our fears and patterns and have learnt about lasting change, it was time to dig deeper into this one last time.
I’m only mentioning the highlight of my day as the day itself was 14 hours long.
The most powerful part for me:
We visualised how life will be if we hold on to our 3 inner beliefs that are holding us back. How life will be in a decade, 2 decades, 3 decades, and four.
This is easy to read but this was long and the pain was… unbearable. The visuals I got were scary because, in the final one, I could see myself lying down in sadness. All because of the notions I’d created in my mind.
People were open to express this as our eyes were closed and the room was dark.
It was scary because people screamed, and screamed so much. Many cried. My friend next to me was sobbing.
I screamed for the first time in my life and just accepted that I’m not the screaming kind I’m more of a silent kind (don’t use your gutter brain with this sentence haha).
This may have taken about an hour after which we reframed these thoughts. And then we did the same visualisation and I felt like my body was lit up. I am meant to win, to fly, to attain everything I set my heart to.
I felt liberated from the tangle my thoughts had created.
I felt such a powerful state of body and mind in a weird sense of confidence I wish I had all my life.
What was disappointing was that Tony left at 4 PM…
Day 4: Vitality
If I hadn’t paid $900 for this event I wouldn’t attend day 4 for sure.
It’s about health but I’ve been studying health and working out + eating healthy for a decade, so I kinda didn’t learn something new. It was also really America-focused especially when they advocate celery juice so much. I drink lauki (bottle guard) and cucumber juice every other day.
Also, it was a bit too fear-based, typical America. Don’t eat wheat, sugar, flour, outside food, milk, and everything else. Ultimately the only thing you should have is vegetables.
I didn’t resonate with it at all.
I also think our Indian cuisine doesn’t contain so much packaged food hence it wasn’t relatable for me.
After listening to all that I went out for fun drinks with my school friends in Manhattan.
Is it worth it?
I’ll wrap this up with a quick pros and cons list.
Cons
It’s expensive! I luckily stayed with a friend but otherwise, after paying $900 for a ticket I would’ve paid over $300/n for a hotel which would bring up my costs. A ticket from India is also pricey and the daily public transport + Uber wasn’t cheap either ($10 by train, $45 in Uber for late nights - one way)
I expected more time from Tony. It was a bit disappointing that on day 3, he just left, and we watched his videos instead.
The venue had overpriced and unhealthy food. I didn’t want to put fried shit in my body so I chose to miss an hour and eat a good meal instead. One day 1 I was appalled they didn’t give a lunch break. But when they did on the other days, every place was full because imagine making 16,000 people leave at the same time to grab a meal!
The upsells on day 3 were crazy, and day 4 was full of them too! I’m also shocked at so many people who have debt but spend $15000 like it's nothing. Until this seminar, I didn’t know some people don’t pay their credit card fees or only pay the bare minimum. But I learned later that not paying fees, piling up interest and debt, and not having savings are very normal in the U.S.
Pros
You learn by doing which is what makes it stay. I’m a big fan of reading and executing but this taught me that correct instructions by experts make a big difference. Making you do the right way is a different game altogether.
The techniques we learnt are groundbreaking. It’s the amount of self-awareness and reflection one learns in 2 years of reading compared to these 3 days.
The people are lovely and everyone speaks to everyone when they see your ID card which indicates you’re a UPW participant. I always had a buddy to walk to and from the train station because of this.
The volunteers are so full of energy! When you enter in the morning everyone gives you high energy goooood morninggggg ☀️
You dig deep into your subconscious
“Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional” - this is one of the many quotes Tony said that stuck by me.
Because they make you change your state so frequently, you keep realising how it really does make a difference for everything else.
you dig deeper into the innermost roadblocks that have been holding you back all your life and will continue to unless you are aware of them and work on them
I had a lot of aha moments thinking of my negative patterns. For instance, even though I am aware of the concept of negativity bias I still give in to it in real life and that weighs me down. It’s something I’m still working on.
Overall, I think it was worth it and transformative. The firewalk on day 1 sets the tone for everything because you no longer question the process. You surrender.
Finally
I’ve tried to condense and make it valuable as much as I could. These days were extremely long so there’s probably 10x more information that I absorbed and is hard to pen down and still make it readable!
This isn’t my best piece of ‘writing’ because I procrastinated on this one for so long that I reached a point to just let it all out.
I hope you gained something from reading this. All the best with 2025!
Love,
N
"Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional"
That's a tattoo for the soul to remember
Good one!