Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about a Tony Robbins Event – Unleash the Power Within Recap

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw my stories from the Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within event. And if you didn’t already know where I was, you’d probably think I’d lost it and had joined a cult (you don’t often see 15,000 sober people dancing like crazy at 11am and chanting in unison). Luckily for all of us, Tony uses his incredibly powerful speaking and coaching skills for good.

If you don’t know, Tony Robbins is one of the best coaches and motivational speakers in the world. He’s been in the room with world leaders ranging from Gorbachev to Bill Clinton to Princess Diana, as well as a whole roster of celebrities and business leaders. These days, 12 hours of his time in private coaching will run you a casual million dollars.

Luckily for us, he still does tons of live events a year (I truly don’t know how the man does it), and luckily for me, I was able to get a ticket to this year’s Unleash the Power Within in Los Angeles. 

I’d been a Tony Robbins fan for a few years now – his work was an incredible resource during my quarter-life-crisis a couple years ago, and I’d always want to see him in person, and man am I glad I did. A ticket to UPW is usually around $1200-$1500, but I got mine during a black friday sale for $550 (for a 4 day 8am-12am conference) and it was worth every penny.

(image via Tony Robbins)

OVERALL EXPERIENCE

Going into the event, I really didn’t know what to expect. I had watched the Netflix documentary “I Am Not Your Guru” about Tony’s Date with Destiny event, which if you’ve seen, you know is intense. I knew it would be an intense 4 days, physically and emotionally, but I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what the hell we’d be doing in a convention center for 14-16 hours a day, for 4 days.

And honestly, I still can’t really tell you. It is a TIME WARP in there. Hours go by and you feel like it’s been 20 minutes. Tony is SUCH a powerful and captivating speaker, with nuggets of knowledge coming out of his mouth every second, you want to take notes on everything (no joke I had 50 pages of hand written notes which i condensed into 8 pages typed). And they constantly have you dancing and jumping around to keep you awake and “in state”. Truly have never danced so much in my life. The energy of 15,000 people in a room in a peak state is an incredible experience in it of itself.

In the 4 days we covered SO much (way more than I can or should try to summarize but I’ll link free resources for that info below) – ranging from how to live in a peak state, to the psychology behind human behavior and why we do what do, to how to interrupt those patterns to make lasting change. We covered all aspects of life – career, finances, physical health, relationships. We did everything from journaling, to talking in groups, to hour-long meditations and visualizations that often including screaming and chanting. There were moments where I felt completely drained and exhausted, and moments where I’ve never felt more alive and at home in my body.

MY FAVORITE MOMENT

Day 3 of the conference was absolutely incredible. I’m not exaggerating when I say I was on my feet – jumping, dancing, crying – for probably 6 hours straight. The most insane energy I’ve ever felt in a room.

We went through an exercise diving into our values and goals, and then dug into our “beliefs”. Our beliefs shape our world view, but most of the time, we never consciously chose these beliefs. They were ingrained in us at a young age, and much of the time our beliefs old us back from what we truly want. Tony’s example was that he used to believe he was too young and too uneducated to start his coaching business. 

We all journaled about our limiting beliefs – the stories in our head that hold us back. It was kind of crazy how many limiting beliefs poured out of me when I started journaling. We narrowed it down to our 3 most limiting, most toxic beliefs, and then of course, shared them with a total stranger. So why not continue by sharing with even more strangers on the internet? Mine were:

1. I’m not enough as I am. In order to be fully loved, I need to be different than who I truly am – smarter, funnier, skinnier, prettier, etc. I need to be whatever the other person wants me to be.
2. My self worth (worthiness of love & connection as Brene Brown would say) depends on what other people think of me. It depends on the people I love (family, friends, authority figures) and even people I just know socially, approving of and praising me for what I’m doing with my life (the job i have, the relationship i have, how i look physically).
3. I don’t have what it takes to be an entrepreneur and to be completely self-employed in the health and wellness space. I’m not a doctor, I’m not extroverted enough, I’m not good at sales, etc.

So we talked through that, and yeah on paper, intellectually, sure – I can see how these beliefs are BULLSHIT, and how they hold me back in life.

BUT THEN Tony takes it to the next level. He’s all about using your physiology to change your psychology. So went through the most intense exercise where (in a room of 15,000 people) – he turns off all the lights, and you just hear his voice talking you through a visualization. We’re prompted to think about these limiting beliefs – to think about all the pain they’ve caused us to date – all the missed opportunities, broken relationships, etc. – and FEEL ALL THAT PAIN in your body. From there he continues to compound it – now imagine its 5 years down the line and you haven’t changed – what has it cost you? What has holding onto these beliefs cost you? Picture your life and feel all the pain.

He keeps going to 10 year, 20 years, and everyone is losing it. Sobbing. Screaming. The most guttural sounds of raw pain I’ve ever heard. During the exercise I felt the pain of this dark future so viscerally, I can still feel it on a very real level just thinking about it. I was sobbing by the end, but one of the most striking moments was only a couple minutes into this exercise, people were already screaming out in pain. To know that so many people walk around with that level of pain just below the surface is heart breaking, and was a reminder to be kind, because we really have no idea what people are dealing with. 

After going through this pain exercise for probably 30-45 minutes, he finally flips the script, and starts prompting us to to release those beliefs and start visualizing vividly the life we will have in 5, 10, 20 years if we let those beliefs go – to feel in your body all the joy you will feel. With the lights and the music and the yelling sounds of pure joy, the room went insane in the best way. After that we wrote our new empowering beliefs to replace our limiting beliefs, and practiced saying them, screaming them even over and over. The whole thing was incredibly healing and very spiritual. I also felt extremely high for the rest of the night off pure emotion and adrenaline.

MY BIGGEST TAKE AWAYS

Summarizing all the valuable insights from this event is seriously HARD – there were so many, and if you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly a concise writer – but I’m trying. Here are some of my top takeaways:

• You gotta let go of the bullshit limiting beliefs in your head. As I mentioned above, the exercise on limiting beliefs was incredibly powerful. It opened my eyes that if I want to get serious about what I want – working for myself full time in health and wellness – I HAVE to let that go.
• You’re going to have get over your fears to reach your goals. Tony talks about the 6 human needs alot, and how your top 2 needs will shape your life. If the needs you value most don’t align with your goals, you’re never going to achieve them. Example, if you value “certainty” (think security, comfort, etc.) the most highly, but you say you want to quit your job to start your own business, that’s a big internal conflict that you’re going to have to work through to get what you want.
• Your excuses are really just fears. I’m tired. I don’t have the energy. I don’t have the time. I’m need to take another class on this first. It’s a bullshit coming from a fear of failure that holds me back from really going for it.
• You are in control of your mind. Don’t negotiate with it. Don’t play into stories and excuses of why you can’t do something. As Tony says, “when I say go, we fucking go”.
• You really do know what you want. During journaling and visualization exercises about our ideal future – where we see ourselves in 2, 5, 10 years – the ideas poured out of me. I know EXACTLY what I want, so know it’s just a matter of seeing the future everyday, and fighting to make it a reality.
• Your state is everything. Keeping your energy and your state HIGH is so incredibly important. And the great news about that is YOU are completely in control of that. I saw over and over during the conference how gratitude and visualization meditations (and even just dancing) could completely shift my mood and energy. And just as easily, our negative thoughts can bring us down. Our mind really does control everything, and I can make the choice to life a beautiful, high-energy state everyday.
• You are responsible for your life. You are 100% responsible for your life. Nothing is happening to you. If you don’t like something, change it.

FAVORITE NUGGETS

Like I said, you basically want to write down and memorize every sentence out of Tony’s mouth – these are some of top quotes from the weekend that I’m committing to memory.

• Energy is the #1 factor to creating an extraordinary life – ideas are worthless without energy to execute
• Emotion is created by motion  – shift your physiology to shift your mind
• Unhappiness = life doesn’t match your blueprint (expectations)
• Trade your expectations for appreciation
• Progress and contribution are the only things that will truly fulfill you
• Everything you want is because of how you think it will make you feel – what you really want is feelings
• Ultimate failure = success without fulfillment
• If you’re not growing, you’re dying (if your business isn’t growing, it’s dying; if your relationship isn’t growing, its dying)
• Shift your belief to see that life is happening FOR YOU not TO YOU
• Fear is the ONLY reason we don’t do something – the rest are excuses (fear of failure, fear of rejection)
• Everything we do is to avoid pain and seek pleasure, but people will do much more to avoid pain than to get pleasure- your fears will always win. People will give up their dream to meet their needs.
• You’re WHY comes first, HOW comes second
• Your WHY is what will make you work harder, get up early, stay up late
• Get laser focused – make your goal clear & compelling – you should be PULLED towards your future
• It doesn’t matter what you do once a month, it matters what you do every single day
• Making a decision means cutting off all other possibilities – burn the boats

(image via Tony Robbins)

TIPS FOR ATTENDING A UPW EVENT

If you’re planning to attend a UPW event, here are my best tips & things I wish I knew. The days are LONG and intense so be ready!

1. Be ready to go deep. It’s so true that you will get out of the event what you put in. Be vulnerable, don’t hold back, just go for it. I’d also recommend doing some self-work before hand. Tony goes deep really fast, so it’s helpful to be somewhat used to that, have a good understand of where you’re at emotionally. I started diving deep into personal development a few years ago, and have been going to therapy for the past year, so having that understanding of my emotional landscape allowed me to get a lot more out of the event. 
2. It’s okay to show up late – every blog / FB post I read told me to get there early to get a seat – its the most important thing! So the first day I did that, got there at 8am when doors opened even though Tony didn’t come on until 12:30. So when we ended up going past midnight, I had been in that convention center over 16 hours. And I was dying. The thing is, your tickets have sections, so yes you may get a little better of a seat, but not worth it IMO.
3. Go at your own pace – after day 1, I realized I would not survive the weekend with days that long. I made the decision to prioritize my sleep and completely let myself off the hook from the schedule. I decided to go at my pace, to get as much out of the conference as I could with good energy. The next few days I slept in, took my time and had a good breakfast in the morning, and rolled in around 10. My seats were fine and I didn’t feel like I missed anything. I also left early a couple nights to sleep when I felt like I needed it. Also, crave out time for yourself to PROCESS. There is so much information happening – take some alone time to let in sink in.
4. Go alone  – or at least, sit alone. This conference is all about getting very deep and real with yourself, and releasing your old bullshit. You really need to be ready to show up and go full out, which can be hard to do if you’re with someone you know and worrying about their experience or what they think of yours. There’s a beauty and freedom in being surrounded by strangers.
5. Bring MEALS – you will rarely get breaks (we got a couple dinner breaks) so definitely bring snacks but also bring real meals! The first day I had plenty of snacks (calorie wise) but I swear there’s something mental about not eating actual food. The rest of the conference I brought in huge whole foods salads to have as a late lunch and then some light snacks (Perfect Keto bars) for the evening. 
6. Bonus points – be fat adapted before you go. Ideally I would have been in ketosis before I went (definitely will be if i go again), but the fact that my body is already fat-adapted from going in and out of ketosis was a game changer. Here’s the thing, most people are burning sugar (carbs) for their energy. And the thing about burning glucose for energy? You burn it FAST. Your blood sugar spikes and then comes right back down within 1.5-2 hours, meaning you need MORE glucose (sugar) to feel like a human again. One of my favorite analogies is burning carbs is like throwing twigs on a fire (you’ll get a quick flame, but it dies out quick, and you need to keep adding more twigs), whereas burning fat is like burning a whole log (slow, steady burning) – and when you’re doing 14-16 hour days without meal breaks, that is what you want.

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO / THINGS I DIDN’T LOVE

I do have to say, this conference is definitely NOT for everyone. You really have to be in the right headspace and be ready to “play full out”. You will do a lot of weird and silly activities. You’ll be jumping and dancing and yelling constantly. You will not look cool and will probably feel embarrassed at times. If you’re not ready to let go of what you look like in the moment to really go for it, you’d be wasting your money. But if you ARE ready do that – 100% go for it.

And the one thing I’ll say I didn’t love is all the upselling, but I get it. There are several speakers / presentations that end with a sales pitch to another conference or coaching. And MAN are they good at sales. Like really good at sales. Again, I get it. The one thing I’m not into is pushing financing on people – if you can not very easily and comfortably afford a 10K conference, my god PLEASE do not do it.

RESOURCES

If you’re interested in attending one of his seminars, 100% DO IT. But i’d also recommend digging into his work and taking advantage of all the free resources before hand.

• Awaken the Giant Within – $10 for 600 pages that summarizes his whole philosophy. 1000% worth it
• Podcasts
  • Why We Do What Do – overview of Tony’s 6 human needs – a must listen
  • Tony Interview with Tim Ferris – great long-form interview that touches on achievement vs fulfillment
  • Are You With the Right Person – a real “intervention” conversation that includes looking at relationships from the perspective of hiring someone for a job
  • The #1 Decision You Will Ever Make – more “intervention” conversations – talking about choosing not to live in suffering
• Tony Robbins Youtube
• Date with Destiny Documentary 

Have any of you attended a Tony Robbins event or read his work? What was your experience like?