41. Hero's guru

One of the most inspiring, impactful sessions you may have seen at SXSW was Tim Ballard, talking about Operation Underground Railroad at The Line (find out about it here). Aside from the incredible story of his organisation, Ballard spoke a lot about Tony Robbins, and the influence the motivational legend has had on him.

Ballard was so enthusiastic about Robbins, that you the listener might have gone home and bought the book. If you did, this is what you would have found.

Robbins is all about the potential of people to be extraordinary, in effect, that everybody has the potential to have the impact on the world of Tim  Ballard. The book is big, and dense, lots of words, lots of examples and stories. It's not just the information you need, but an attempt to persuade you to act on them, to catch you up in the flow his ideas. Unfortunately some of the stories in the first half are a bit dated, there are references to young Donald Trump, Billy Joel, and economic events of the 80s.

Nevertheless the big ideas are persuasive, in effect the tools you need to change how you think about things, to stop yourself from unhelpful behaviours and start new, dynamic productive activity. The effect of the volume of words is to persuade you by the time you're halfway through, to start acting on them. You'll make decisions to benefit yourself, and stop doing things that are bad for you.

At least thats what happened to me. Let's see if the effects last...