The Culture of Personality, a Hundred Years Later

Society is itself an education in the extrovert values, and rarely has there been a society that has preached them so hard. No man is an island, but how John Donne would writhe to hear how often, and for what reasons, the thought is so tiresomely repeated.

-WILLIAM WHYTE

Salesmanship as a Virtue: Live with Tony Robbins

"Are you excited?" cries a young woman named Stacy as I hand her my registration forms. Her honeyed voice rises into one big exclamation point. I nod and smile as brightly as I can. Across the lobby of the Atlanta Convention Center, I hear people shrieking.

"What's that noise?" I ask.

"They're getting everyone pumped up to go inside!" Stacy enthuses. "That's part of the whole UPW experience." She hands me a purple spiral binder and a laminated nametag to wear around my neck. UNLEASH THE POWER WITHIN, proclaims the binder in big block letters. Welcome to Tony Robbins's entry-level seminar.

I've paid $895 in exchange, according to the promotional materials, for learning how to be more energetic, gain momentum in my life, and conquer my fears. But the truth is that I'm not here to unleash the power within me (though I'm always happy to pick up a few pointers); I'm here because this seminar is the first stop on my journey to understand the Extrovert Ideal.

I've seen Tony Robbins's infomercials-he claims that there's always one airing at any given moment-and he strikes me as one of the more extroverted people on earth. But he's not just any extrovert. He's the king of self-help, with a client roster that has included President Clinton, Tiger Woods, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa, Serena Williams, Donna Karan-and 50 million other people. And the self-help industry, into which hundreds of thousands of Americans pour their hearts, souls, and some $11 billion a year, by definition reveals our conception of the ideal self, the one we aspire to become if only we follow the seven principles of this and the three laws of that. I want to know what this ideal self looks like.

Stacy asks if I've brought my meals with me. It seems a strange question: Who carries supper with them from New York City to Atlanta? She explains that I'll want to refuel at my seat; for the next four days, Friday through Monday, we'll be working fifteen hours a day, 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., with only one short afternoon break. Tony will be onstage the entire time and I won't want to miss a moment.

I look around the lobby. Other people seem to have come prepared-they're strolling toward the hall, cheerfully lugging grocery bags stuffed with PowerBars, bananas, and corn chips. I pick up a couple of bruised apples from the snack bar and make my way to the auditorium. Greeters wearing UPW T-shirts and ecstatic smiles line the entrance, springing up and down, fists pumping. You can't get inside without slapping them five. I know, because I try.

Inside the vast hall, a phalanx of dancers is warming up the crowd to the Billy Idol song "Mony Mony," amplified by a world-cla.s.s sound system, magnified on giant Megatron screens flanking the stage. They move in sync like backup dancers in a Britney Spears video, but are dressed like middle managers. The lead performer is a fortysomething balding fellow wearing a white b.u.t.ton-down shirt, conservative tie, rolled-up sleeves, and a great-to-meet-you smile. The message seems to be that we can all learn to be this exuberant when we get to work every morning.

Indeed, the dance moves are simple enough for us to imitate at our seats: jump and clap twice; clap to the left; clap to the right. When the song changes to "Gimme Some Lovin'," many in the audience climb atop their metal folding chairs, where they continue to whoop and clap. I stand somewhat peevishly with arms crossed until I decide that there's nothing to be done but join in and hop up and down along with my seatmates.

Eventually the moment we've all been waiting for arrives: Tony Robbins bounds onstage. Already gigantic at six feet seven inches, he looks a hundred feet tall on the Megatron screen. He's movie-star handsome, with a head of thick brown hair, a Pepsodent smile, and impossibly defined cheekbones. EXPERIENCE TONY ROBBINS LIVE! the seminar advertis.e.m.e.nt had promised, and now here he is, dancing with the euphoric crowd.

It's about fifty degrees in the hall, but Tony is wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt and shorts. Many in the audience have brought blankets with them, having somehow known that the auditorium would be kept refrigerator-cold, presumably to accommodate Tony's high-octane metabolism. It would take another Ice Age to cool this man off. He's leaping and beaming and managing, somehow, to make eye contact with all 3,800 of us. The greeters jump rapturously in the aisles. Tony opens his arms wide, embracing us all. If Jesus returned to Earth and made his first stop at the Atlanta Convention Center, it would be hard to imagine a more jubilant reception.

This is true even in the back row where I'm sitting with others who spent only $895 for "general admission," as opposed to $2,500 for a "Diamond Premiere Membership," which gets you a seat up front, as close to Tony as possible. When I bought my ticket over the phone, the account rep advised me that the people in the front rows-where "you're looking directly at Tony for sure" instead of relying on the Megatron-are generally "more successful in life." "Those are the people who have more energy," she advised. "Those are the people who are screaming." I have no way of judging how successful the people next to me are, but they certainly seem thrilled to be here. At the sight of Tony, exquisitely stage-lit to set off his expressive face, they cry out and pour into the aisles rock-concert style.

Soon enough, I join them. I've always loved to dance, and I have to admit that gyrating en ma.s.se to Top 40 cla.s.sics is an excellent way to pa.s.s the time. Unleashed power comes from high energy, according to Tony, and I can see his point. No wonder people travel from far and wide to see him in person (there's a lovely young woman from Ukraine sitting-no, leaping-next to me with a delighted smile). I really must start doing aerobics again when I get back to New York, I decide.

When the music finally stops, Tony addresses us in a raspy voice, half Muppet, half bedroom-s.e.xy, introducing his theory of "Practical Psychology." The gist of it is that knowledge is useless until it's coupled with action. He has a seductive, fast-talking delivery that w.i.l.l.y Loman would have sighed over. Demonstrating practical psychology in action, Tony instructs us to find a partner and to greet each other as if we feel inferior and scared of social rejection. I team up with a construction worker from downtown Atlanta, and we extend tentative handshakes, looking bashfully at the ground as the song "I Want You to Want Me" plays in the background.

Then Tony calls out a series of artfully phrased questions:

"Was your breath full or shallow?"

"SHALLOW!" yells the audience in unison.

"Did you hesitate or go straight toward them?"

"HESITATE!"

"Was there tension in your body or were you relaxed?"

"TENSION!"

Tony asks us to repeat the exercise, but this time to greet our partners as if the impression we make in the first three to five seconds determines whether they'll do business with us. If they don't, "everyone you care about will die like pigs in h.e.l.l."

I'm startled by Tony's emphasis on business success-this is a seminar about personal power, not sales. Then I remember that Tony is not only a life coach but also a businessman extraordinaire; he started his career in sales and today serves as chairman of seven privately held companies. BusinessWeek once estimated his income at $80 million a year. Now he seems to be trying, with all the force of his mighty personality, to impart his salesman's touch. He wants us not only to feel great but to radiate waves of energy, not just to be liked, but to be well liked; he wants us to know how to sell ourselves. I've already been advised by the Anthony Robbins Companies, via a personalized forty-five-page report generated by an online personality test that I took in preparation for this weekend, that "Susan" should work on her tendency to tell, not sell, her ideas. (The report was written in the third person, as if it was to be reviewed by some imaginary manager evaluating my people skills.)

The audience divides into pairs again, enthusiastically introducing themselves and pumping their partners' hands. When we're finished, the questions repeat.

"Did that feel better, yes or no?"

"YES!"

"Did you use your body differently, yes or no?"

"YES!"

"Did you use more muscles in your face, yes or no?"

"YES!"

"Did you move straight toward them, yes or no?"

"YES!"

This exercise seems designed to show how our physiological state influences our behavior and emotions, but it also suggests that salesmanship governs even the most neutral interactions. It implies that every encounter is a high-stakes game in which we win or lose the other person's favor. It urges us to meet social fear in as extroverted a manner as possible. We must be vibrant and confident, we must not seem hesitant, we must smile so that our interlocutors will smile upon us. Taking these steps will make us feel good-and the better we feel, the better we can sell ourselves.

Tony seems the perfect person to demonstrate such skills. He strikes me as having a "hyperthymic" temperament-a kind of extroversion-on-steroids characterized, in the words of one psychiatrist, by "exuberant, upbeat, overenergetic, and overconfident lifelong traits" that have been recognized as an a.s.set in business, especially sales. People with these traits often make wonderful company, as Tony does onstage.

But what if you admire the hyperthymic among us, but also like your calm and thoughtful self? What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer, reflective types in the world?

Tony seems to have antic.i.p.ated such questions. "But I'm not an extrovert, you say!" he told us at the start of the seminar. "So? You don't have to be an extrovert to feel alive!"

True enough. But it seems, according to Tony, that you'd better act like one if you don't want to flub the sales call and watch your family die like pigs in h.e.l.l.

The evening culminates with the Firewalk, one of the flagship moments of the UPW seminar, in which we're challenged to walk across a ten-foot bed of coals without burning our feet. Many people attend UPW because they've heard about the Firewalk and want to try it themselves. The idea is to propel yourself into such a fearless state of mind that you can withstand even 1,200-degree heat.

Leading up to that moment, we spend hours practicing Tony's techniques-exercises, dance moves, visualizations. I notice that people in the audience are starting to mimic Tony's every movement and facial expression, including his signature gesture of pumping his arm as if he were pitching a baseball. The evening crescendoes until finally, just before midnight, we march to the parking lot in a torchlit procession, nearly four thousand strong, chanting YES! YES! YES! to the thump of a tribal beat. This seems to electrify my fellow UPWers, but to me this drum-accompanied chant-YES! Ba-da-da-da, YES! Dum-dum-dum-DUM, YES! Ba-da-da-da-sounds like the sort of thing a Roman general would stage to announce his arrival in the city he's about to sack. The greeters who manned the gates to the auditorium earlier in the day with high fives and bright smiles have morphed into gatekeepers of the Firewalk, arms beckoning toward the bridge of flames.

As best I can tell, a successful Firewalk depends not so much on your state of mind as on how thick the soles of your feet happen to be, so I watch from a safe distance. But I seem to be the only one hanging back. Most of the UPWers make it across, whooping as they go.