Motivational Book – Awaken the Giant within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Life by Anthony Robbins

Anthony Robbins is unlike most motivational writers in two ways. First, he treats training the mind and body as a technological challenge rather than moral imperative. Second, he somehow manages to be both an inspirational role model and the most annoying guy on the planet.

Best quote: “If you can’t, you must. If you must, you can.”

In my 1960 edition of Napoleon Hill’s and W. Clement Stone’s “Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude” the final chapter is titled “Awaken The Sleeping Giant Within You”.

Some 30 years later, Anthony Robbins had turned his life around from Janitor to one of the world’s most recognisable names in personal motivation and success.

It seems fitting that his best selling book Awaken The Giant Within picks up where Hill and Stone finished their book.

(1) Raise your standards, (2) Change your limiting beliefs and (3) Change your strategy. These are the 3 steps Tony Robbins outlines in this big book with big ideas on how to strive to be the best you can be.

Robbins provides significant supporting research from a range of thought leaders across a range of disciplines to focus on five areas of mastery – specifically, Emotional mastery, Physical mastery, Relationship mastery, Financial mastery and Time Mastery.

This is a significant and no nonsense approach to taking control of your life, your goals, your character and your results, and trying to summarise the work in a blog post just wouldn’t do the book justice.

Awaken The Giant Within is certainly one of the most significant personal development books I have read, and is full of practical tips on how to take personal accountability for the choices we make and how to react to the situations life presents to us.

While I personally don’t agree with some of Robbins’ ideas on diet, or some of his more confrontational examples he draws on from his seminars (at times there’s a real ‘hype’ focus that can be a bit distracting), there are many examples of inescapable truths within the book that are well worth visiting and taking intentional action on.

It’s a big read with 500 plus pages, but that certainly shouldn’t sway you away from a chapter by chapter approach. Stop at the end of each chapter and ask how this relates to your own life so far, what you have learned or relearned, what you will do about what you have learned and what you expect to happen when you take intentional action. By approaching this internationally acclaimed book in this way, you will certainly gain value.