I have talked about the Peak Performance Life Coach Anthony Robbins at least a few times in the span of this website. This is not just because Robbins has a very interesting case of having Gigantism but also because I have been listening and reading his material for a few years now.

There is no doubt that Robbins is very good at what he does which is to facilitate and assist people in reaching their goals and having success in life. However I have always wondered how it was possible that Robbins would be able to achieve success so quickly. I have read the books about this guy and many people have tried to guess at how he was able to succeed so quickly.

In Robbins’ biographies, it documents that Robbins went from total financial ruin to making over $1 million a year in just one year after he decided one night to stop feeling sorry for himself and went for a physically demanding run. All of this was done when he was still in his early 20s. When he was just 19-20, he was already well known as a type of instant-fix psychiatrist.

Many people have wondered what could be the secret to Robbin’s success. Some claim that he understood the NLP principle of Modeling and applied that one step towards everything in his life. He would find the most successful people in the area he wanted to learn, figure out what they were doing, and emulate the characteristics of those successful people.

Others say that he was just at the right place and right time to start what we now would call the “Self Improvement” or “Personal Development” community in the 70s-80s. Of course the ideas for self improvement has been around forever since the time of Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, James Allen, etc but it was Anthony Robbins who would bring the idea of C.A.N.I. (Constant And Never ending Improvement) to the public’s awareness. He decided to take the platform of TV and broadcasted his face and message every night on those late night Informercials in the 80s. He became a national and international start with a very recognizable face.

Besides his drive towards succeeding, he also had a few key mentors and lucky breaks…

• His meeting and being trained by Grinder, one of the two original creators of NLP.
• His mentoring by one of the earliest people in the self help industry, Jim Rohn.
• His initial drive, motivation, and passion to read over 700 books.
• His chance meeting with Tolly Burkan gave him the idea to incorporate fire-walking into his seminars and programs. The firewalking is an analogy to express the idea that a person can use their mental state to resist pain and overcome their fears 
• His early wins in life like interviewing Howard Cossell and being able to be proactive in finding his role models.

I am not to take away Robbin’s own hard work in reaching where he was but it is clear that his meetings early on with some influential people in the Self Help community contributed to his fast rise to financial freedom and business success.

However I wanted to make an interesting argument in this post. It is that “I believe the main reason Anthony Robbins has been able to achieve the type of success he has enjoy at this magnitude for the last 3 decades is primarily because of his size/height”

Note: Now it is absolutely true that there are plenty of people in the USA and other countries who most people would consider “tall” or even “giants” but end up broke, a failure, and homeless. I know of even a 7′ 4″ homeless guy who lives on the streets of Portland, Oregon. Being tall does not immediately translate to professional and financial success. Winning the genetic lottery is note enough these days to gaurantee any type of success.

I once heard one self help guru say that for one to truly development into a person that attracts people, one of the 5 key things one must have or develop is presence. Being fully present is very important to develop deep, meaningful relationships with people and have a good communication between people.

When I look at the idea of presence, I can think of only a few things or characteristics which would be used to describe a person who has presence. The words would be magnetic, charming, intense, energy, passion, figure, size, height, gazing into the eyes, warm, etc.

Many people these days want to become “life coaches” which is sort of like therapy but only without the 10 years of medical school training. These jobs are relatively easy with the coach helping their clients figure out their life’s blueprint. It also makes the person who is a coach feel good about themselves since they are “helping other people”. The connection one person makes (as well as the positive emotions they get) in being able to help possibly solve the emotional and psychological issues of another person is very strong. It also helps that a coach is usually very well paid, around the $50/hr range for coaches who start out and that is just for a weekly phone call to their clients. In my opinion, the whole field of “life coaching” is filled with scams and frauds who claim that they are coaches but don’t even have their own lives in order. However, we are talking about one of the most famous, well paid, and most well known “coaches” in the world, if not the one person who actually started this entire sector of society.

I am not going to question at the educational or credentials of Anthony Robbins since coaching has almost always focused on results. Robbins himself only has a High School education but he claims that he has read close to 1000 books in his lifetime to answer one fundamental question which is “What is the difference between the person who succeeds in life and the person who does not?” I guess that is good enough if he can really help people quickly and the clients feel like they really got their money’s worth.

Anthony Robbins clearly has learned the tools needed for success. He learned from the best in his time, and has integrated the ideas into his own system of coaching. He has written two best selling books (“Unlimited Power” and “Awaken The Giant Within”) which many people have said changed their life for the better.

Robbins has said that when he started high school, he was only around 5′ 2″-5′ 3″. Within just 2-3 years, he would have his height shoot up to 6′ 7″. It would be until later in life would he learn that the reason for his insane growth spurt was because of a tumor in his head. We know this as the release of somatropin into his body by the anterior part of his pituitary gland.

After getting medical advice from his physicians around the age of 30, he decided not to operate on the brain and he has been fine since which might indicate the tumour shrunk down after he past puberty. From looking at his face, it seems that the growth hormones have given him the large cheekbones, jawline, teeth, and hands that are characteristic of acromegaly. His body is proportional, and video of him back when he was in his 20s in the 1980s show that he was very fit and healthy.

I think the reason he has reached the success he has is from his ability to use the principle of presence to the maximum, but especially the element of him being so big to generate the element of presence to a very high degree. His combination of passion and energy and warm is something that most people can generate. I have met life coaches which have his level of intensity in life and have just as good speaking and coaching skills. However these people are not at his level of success.

Is it just because Anthony Robbins came before these guys and he was the one who created all of these ideas and systems which the newer coaches are using? i would say partly.

Extreme human tall stature has always generate awe, admiration, and instant respect within humans. I would guess that the behavior of being in awe of taller beings is something that is very instinctual in humans. The fact that Robbins stands 6′ 7″ due to his lucky break in developing gigantism in his teenager years, before his growth plates closed allows him to almost automatically generate respect when an average sized human meets him.

6′ 7″ is over 2 meters and this height is within the 00.1% of all humans in the world. Most people have stated that the first time they meet Robbins is a very unique experience since it is very unusual to meet someone his size. In additon, the growth hormones also made his voice very deep due to the cartilage his larynx thicker generating an automatic deeper voice. Studies in evolutionary psychology has shown that human males with lower, deeper voice tones tend to exhibit more dominant male behavior.

So it would be Robbins asset of his large body size and his deep voice which would make people instantly listen to him speak and assume that he is someone important and influential. In addition, when Robbins was young, even before his insane growth spurt, he was known by his high school friend to be a great speaker, a problem solver, and a communicator. The lowering of his voice which commands more respect due to the cartilage in his trachea and larynx being enlarged helped him develop a even more alpha-like, masculine presence.

This is why I think Robbins has reached the level of success that he has.

If he was a normal sized male, like 5′ 11′ he would still be successful and probably would have become a millionaire after 10 years of hard work, with the type of energy and passion that is his trademark behavior. However I doubt that Robbins would have been able to reach the level of his success so quickly without his height and size. I know rationally and logically that getting a talk from a talk and advice from a big person should be no different from a small person, but at an unconscious level I might be able to take the advice of a small person as seriously and actively as from a person who would be much bigger. Bigger people are just able to command attention and respect so much easier than smaller people.

I personally just can’t imagine a 5′ 3″ Anthony Robbins being able to come up on stage in front of 10,000 people in one of his seminars and still be able to command the same level of respect. He might be the center of attention and his usage of psychological tactics to make people easier to influence might work in his seminars but if he decides to meet his clients face to face for personal coaching, I would say that the ability and quality of his coaching would not be as effective or strong as where he is so much bigger than other people.

This is my two cents on the subject of one of my personal heros and mentors, Anthony Robbins.