Last week in one of my classes, the professor showed us a video of Tony Robbins, in which he is lecturing the rest of the world about how to be happy and successful. The title of the video is “Why we do what we do and how we can do it better”; he gives a 20 minute speech that is suppose to motivate and inspire the audience. For those who don’t know him, Tony Robbins is a self-help author; he is the author of several self help books on enhancing relationships, overcoming fear and other similar issues.
After watching this video, I started thinking how the self-help industry has been affecting our society. I am not against people learning from media; in fact, media has a substantial part in our learning. However, I have no support for self-help books, shows or lectures, whatsoever. It’s not just that I believe they are completely worthless, I feel it also pushes people to stop thinking for their problems and coming up with their own solutions. After all, I know myself better than Tony Robbins’ generalized comments. It should also be noted that Robbins is not licensed in any psychological sciences; so, what really makes Robbins superior than the rest of us? He wrote a book on how to make a marriage last a lifetime, and then he divorced his wife and got married to his girlfriend who is half his age. I don’t want to make any judgmental comments about his personal life, but as he’s not a trained professional, who would want help on marriage from a divorced person? Tony Robbins is just an example of the rapidly growing self help industry. There are self help books about anything in bookstores. On TV there are reality shows that people join to face their challenges and the so-called experts on life help them get better. Maybe there are people that find these books, shows or seminars helpful and inspiring; however, I just believe the industry manipulates people’s problems and makes it even worse by not giving them a chance to be strong enough to figure it out by themselves.
I like your post. It is common today that everyone strives for the same things and wants to be the same person. I think this is in large part to social norms in society developed through media. I think that Babson tries to stray away from this by emphasizing the importance of having a competitive advantage (being different) in the business world. Also by sponsoring Spike Lee to come to Babson last week. As he spoke he rediculed the books that you mentioned and said there is no true formula for success.
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