Tony Robbins documentary shows the world of motivational speaker

A NEW documentary shows the inside world of motivational speaker Tony Robbins, including footage of him swearing like a sailor with Tourette’s.

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins allowed a camera crew into his world for a week. The result are compelling stuff.

ANTHONY Robbins, the chiselled motivational speaker most synonymous with self-empowerment and no stranger to controversy, has finally let cameras behind the closed doors of his most successful seminar.

And boy, is it one outrageous — and genuinely surprising — work.

If you’re at all familiar with the human jawline that is Robbins, you’ll know he and his ilk are almost beckoning to be ridiculed.

After all, he’s is that guy from Shallow Hal who helped Jack Black long for more than a blonde bombshell using an overdose of trite slogans and cheesy platitudes.

Thanks to documentarian Joe Berlinger, we now know that Robbins is far more fascinating, and more noble, than his public persona suggests.

For six days and five nights we are granted unfettered access to the elaborate event, ‘Date With Destiny’, for the Netflix-produced documentary I Am Not Your Guru, witnessing Tony hard at work both on and behind stage as he and his committed red-and-blue-shirted staff strive to flag the most immediately at-risk attendees for immediate support, while ensuring everyone else reaches some version of a breakthrough.

The reddest flags receive one of Tony’s patented ‘interventions’, where he studies body language and uses practical psychology and swears like a sailor with Tourette’s.

It’s difficult not to buy into these interventions, as Robbins masterfully cuts through the human tendency to bullshit and seems to offer concrete advice that any psychologist wouldn’t dare broach until after a good six months.

Those at-risk attendees that made the cut include a suicidal young European man, a mother-daughter pair who have let their husband/father’s addiction control them for too long, and most spectacularly — a cult survivor named Dawn.

It’s through Dawn’s story that Robbins becomes more than a guy who might help you get that raise you’ve been too timid to demand, and someone with far nobler intentions than you’d expect.

Dawn’s early years in the Children of God saw her and her family commit unspeakable acts in the name of the lord, and while they all eventually escaped, have been sentenced to a life of unimaginable pain and regret.

Robbins embraces Dawn during her intervention.

Not only does Robbins cut through to the heart of her issue, but the man turns into a blubbering mess while offering what seems like such sincere concern and love for the girl that 10 minutes later she’s almost a new person. And he goes further than that and ensures the girl walks away with both support and opportunity.

Here we get the sense that Robbins is propelled by more than his method, but by an almost unhealthy propulsion to keep fixing, as if a bulging conduit for human pain not unlike John Coffey from The Green Mile, pulling what hurts from others despite the fact it takes as much out of him.

This guy means business.

Okay, so that might be overstating the man’s quantifiable power, but there’s no denying that this is one giant mutated muscle of energetic positivity who seems to provide a genuine framework for change that works for some of those who happen to dig frameworks.

While you might not be able to tell where his chest ends and his chin begins, and he may sound like the drunk love-child of Stallone and Cookie Monster, you definitely get the sense that this motivated man who came from great pain, and has built a super-persona not only to deal with that pain, but to genuinely help others in similar positions.

And if you don’t buy into his lasting mark on the world, don’t worry, the documentary could easily be viewed as the perfect document of the modern self-empowerment cult, and of a fascinating man who not only believes in the product he’s peddling, but perhaps would collapse into pieces if he didn’t.

Can you tell where his chest ends and his chin begins?

I Am Not Your Guru is currently screening on Netflix Australia.

Originally published as Tony Robbins documentary shows the world of motivational speaker