Tony Robbins: The Truth Behind the Wealth

Tony Robbins built his fame on best-selling books and the motivational seminars that drew packed rooms. His fortune now sits somewhere north of $400 million. It did not begin there. By his own telling, there was a stretch when he lived in a cramped apartment with a single $20 bill to his name, which is the same spot millions of people occupy right now. What shifted first was his thinking. He handed that last bit of cash to a young boy, and in doing so he rewrote what wealth meant to him. Money stopped giving the orders. He was free of it. The way a person thinks really can reshape the whole of their life.

He was born Anthony J. Mahavoric on February 29, 1960, in North Hollywood, California, and later took the surname Robbins from his father. He grew up in Azusa and attended Glendora High School. His father walked out when Tony was young, and his mother leaned on drugs and alcohol, which left him caring for his younger siblings. That is a heavy load to put on a kid. During high school a pituitary tumor triggered a growth spurt of roughly ten inches. At 17 his mother forced him out, and he did not return home again.

From there he became wealthy and widely known as a speaker. The lesson he keeps pointing to is that a personal development plan can carry you a long way. The question he throws back at people is whether they can find a route through their own obstacles and come out the other side, the way he did.

The lift after giving that boy his money did not hold. His career picked up for a while, then stalled. He put on weight, grew unhappy, and found himself short of the things he actually wanted. His way out, he decided, ran through a development plan he built for himself. Success depended on meeting the standards he set for his own life. If he kept believing he was worthless, that belief would simply keep being true. Choosing instead to get up and chase what he wanted was what started to move things. He also saw that letting go of the fear of what might or might not happen cleared the path to go further.

So where is the truth in all of this. Robbins located confidence inside himself, and that is the thing he presses other people to do. Quiet the fear, reach in, and build the confidence yourself, and you get to steer your life where you want it to go. The record of wins came after the lean years, not before them. He drew up a plan and, more to the point, he acted on it. Action is the part that counts, and the same route is open to anyone else trying to get somewhere.

His whole career rests on one decision: to move forward rather than stay stuck at the bottom. He is not only working in the field of motivational speaking and seminars, he is out in front of it. The dreams turned real because he took action and claimed them.