Book review: Awaken the Giant Within, Anthony Robbins

Sadly I did not connect with this book; had I not already been exposed to Eckhardt Tolle's New Earth, or Robin Sharma's Monk who Sold his Ferrari, I may have taken a lot more from this book. There are ideas and concepts that I liked, but it did feel a bit dated (rightly so as it was published in 1992), but at times a bit 'preachy' too - especially towards the end.

I am also not too convinced about his credibility, in one chapter he says how down in the dumps he was and in the next how he had been helping people from an early age. There are also a couple of examples that seem questionable, e.g. telling someone to get over their chocolate addiction to eat chocolate solidly for 9 days with only 4 glasses of water - yes I understand the principle behind it of causing pain associated with the addiction, but surely you can't give such advice without medical considerations?

So, as much as I did not really enjoy this book, there were good parts to it, I really enjoyed the different stories and examples shared, it made the rest of the book less laborious. The use of language and metaphors was also great, as this directly impacts on how we think and feel. Understanding how people have different rules that they live by, which is not wrong, but just to help understand how some people tick, was also interesting.

Would I recommend this book? Probably not, I think there are some other great, more up to date books out there.