No Success Like Failure: UNLIMITED POWER, by Anthony Robbins (Part 2)

“You are not your behavior.”

*****

The first term that swept across the 22^nd floor like a bad cold was “efficient.” Granted, “efficient” is a common enough word, especially in a corporate environment, but one day it started cropping up as if it had been planted in everyone’s dreams the night before. It was like that scene in Never Been Kissed in which the cool kid decides that “rufus” is the new hip term and then later a group of students bounce down the steps and one says to the other, “It’s going to be so rufus.” It was exactly like that. “We need to start brainstorming ways that our department can be more efficient,” my manager said one morning, innocently enough. Then, various people in meetings throughout the week: “Does anyone have a more efficient solution?” or “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m just trying to take care of the situation as efficiently as possible” or “It’s not a question of resources; it’s a question of efficiency.” I swear that someone on high decided that bonuses would be tied to the number of times management could use the word “efficient” throughout the day. “Efficient”’s crowning achievement occurred when an “efficiency expert” was summoned to analyze all of our processes. This was more Office Space than Never Been Kissed, only without the laughs. Ten months later, a whole bunch of people lost their jobs in what would become known as the First Wave of Layoffs. Efficiency, 1; employees, 0.

The next word that suddenly found itself en vogue was “robust.” This was a significantly more jarring term to encounter in meetings because I had previously only heard it used to refer to wines, and, despite the excellent wine shop only a block away, we rarely discussed bouquets. Instead, our use of “robust” preceded “programs,” “instruction,” or “training.” We had “robust books,” “robust supplements.” We were running a “robust organization.” A friend and I made a game of it. “That’s a pretty robust sandwich you got there.” “I got it across the street, that guy with the robust cart.” The funny thing is that we all used the word correctly—everything from a lesson plan to a ham-n-cheese could be sturdily constructed—so it wasn’t a question of us trying to appear smarter than we actually were. We were as smart as we thought we were, which was pretty smart. The problem was that “robust” just looked so out of place next to the more standard modifiers like “leveled” or “grade-appropriate.” It just felt wrong, even if it was technically right. My job at the time included editing copy that regularly made the case for our robust-ness. I would always leave a note next to “robust” that said, “Are you sure this is the term you want to use?” My queries were never answered.

The final term that the Corporate Gods anointed was “execute against,” as in “If we staff up, we could execute against the first 30 items by the end of the week.” The first time I heard this phrase I thought I had blacked out and woke up in a conversation about death metal. “Live Tonight, One Nite Only: Cannibal Corpse, Septic Flesh, and Execute Against.” I was diligently taking notes, and this combination of words caught me so off guard that I didn’t even know what to write.

“Excuse me,” I said to my manger, this manager three removed from the one who took the efficiency memo to heart. “What did you say?”

“I said if we staff up we could execute against the first 30—.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does what mean?”

“‘Execute against.’”

“It means ‘complete.’”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

I appreciate the need for idiosyncrasies of language for given populations. Baseball wouldn’t quite be baseball without the fifty different ways to say “homerun,” each more colorful than the one before. I appreciate too that disciplines require you to demonstrate mastery of their vocabulary before they truly welcome you among their ranks. In such instances, the language functions as a kind of verbal uniform, the words serving in the same way that a tie or a paper hat serves, which is to say as a reminder of who and where you are. I suspect I would have a difficult time keeping up with the lingo if I were to sit in on a meeting of stone masons or air-traffic controllers. And there is an undeniable charm in one who is able to drop “We’re here to drill down to a granular level, but first let me tee it up for you” with the deftness of one plucking a tune on a 12-string guitar.

But too often I find that the language is used in such a way that saps it of its would-be charm. Not that it’s called the “Wharton School of Charm,” I realize, but still. In The Big Short, Michael Lewis notes that Wall Street calls overpriced bonds “rich” rather than “expensive,” and that the bottom floor (or “tranche”) of the riskiest bonds are called “mezzanines” rather than something that doesn’t sound like a desirable section at a sporting event. The idea, obviously, is that “Bond market terminology was designed less to convey meaning than to bewilder outsiders.” Something close to this was going on in the office. Language as a game, only the game felt an awful lot like Keep Away for those of us who resisted playing by rules that we found silly. 

One problem was that the game itself trumped the quality of the player. What matters was not that you were able (or even competent). What matters is that you sounded like you were. The other problem: Did I really want to play in the first place?

“What does that mean?”

“What does what mean?”

“‘Execute against?’”

“It means ‘complete.’”

“Then why don’t you just fucking say so?”

How corporate speak makes us feel.

 

*****

“Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

*****

Robbins’ key to world domination can be summed up in one word: “Steal.” Find someone whose life you admire—popular choices in 1986 included Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Steven Spielberg—and steal everything you possible can about them: their drive, their vision, their posture, the way they think, the way they speak, walk, breathe (yes, breathe: every gazillionaire knows that your breathing ratio should be “inhale one count, hold four counts, exhale two counts,” else he wouldn’t be a gazillionaire). In the creepiest section of the book—and, believe me, to be the creepiest section of a book like this is to be really, really creepy—Robbins mimics the physical attributes of a complete stranger sitting across from him at the park so convincingly that he becomes a kind of mirror image of the man. This is less about being the man and more about getting from the man, as Robbins operates under the principle that people really like themselves, and the closer you are to being them the more likely they are to give you what you want. Robbins prefers the term “model” to “steal,” but don’t let the positive connotation fool you. He’s really advocating for the grandest kind of larceny of all: the hijacking of a life.

What’s more, he’s pretty open about his lack of originality. “Excellence can be duplicated,” he writes. “If other people can do something, all you need to do is model them with precision and you can do exactly the same thing, whether it’s walking on fire, making a million dollars, or developing a perfect relationship.” That last line provides a glimpse of Robbins’ assumed audience, which could cast him as a predator if it weren’t so accurate: salesmen, single women, and, uh, firewalkers.

As Robbins repeatedly points out, the firewalk is the culminating event of his seminars (and, who are we kidding, the book is really just a long advertisement for the seminar). I’ve heard of speakers who submerge their heads under water for seemingly impossible lengths of time, and I’ve actually attended a presentation in which participants were invited to break boards with their bare hands, a la Daniel-san and the ice in The Karate Kid II, but I suspect that Robbins prefers the firewalk on account of its primal implications, to say nothing of the fact that “I walked through fire” serves much better on a metaphorical level and sounds significantly more awesome than “I broke four boards,” though, in fairness, one should never underestimate the cool factor of “with my bare hands.” In any case, they’re all pretty much different versions of the same emotional tenet of motivational speakers: the firewalk, the broken boards, the self-waterboarding—they all illustrate the degree to which you create your own reality. Mind over matter, to resort to a cliché (and why not, since they so often do).

“Remember that we control our brain,” Robbins asserts. “It doesn’t have to control us.” When bald-pated Karl Pilkington suggests the same thing, Ricky Gervais berates him ruthlessly and calls him an idiot, yet somehow when the speaker has a full head of hair he’s heralded as a messiah (raise your hand if you’d like to see Gervais and Robbins go at it Lincoln-Douglas style about a topic of Robbins’ choosing). According to Robbins, everything from a headache to clinical depression can be treated if you follow the Ultimate Success Formula ™ (tell me you’re surprised that it’s trademarked). “If you are depressed, you created and produced that show you call depression,” he writes. “It isn’t a permanent state like losing a leg. It’s a state that people can pop into and out of.” Apparently the chapter on sympathy failed to make the final cut.

Robbins’ approach to controlling your brain relies on a heavily visual component. The headache, for example, he balls up and ushers out the door. But Robbins’ greatest accomplishments are less banishment and more replacement. Robbins knows something that the priest who performs an exorcism doesn’t: The priest focuses only on extracting the devil and doesn’t bother to insert God, which, come to think of it, could be a flaw with most exorcisms. Robbins does not want to leave that empty space. He wants to remove the bad and replace it with the good. Out with Satan and in with God, only in his situation Satan is cheesecake and God is broccoli.

His method for setting someone on the path of a healthier lifestyle involves invoking the mental image of the negative influence, harnessing all of the joy and satisfaction that accompanies that image, and then transferring these feelings to the positive image, which injects the positive with power of the negative and smashes the negative like so many pieces of shattered glass.

He calls the technique for this process the Swish Technique, and an important component is that the person initiating the transfer lets loose with an audible “Whoosh!” when the positive dethrones the negative. So, picture a piece of cheesecake—bright and tempting—at the fore of your mind. Then, in the distance, as if being pulled back by a slingshot, the broccoli—dull and undesirable. Then let the slingshot fly, the broccoli breaking through, assuming all of those positive feelings you had for the cheesecake. When the broccoli scatters the cheesecake, let loose with your accompanying “Whoosh!” Now the cheesecake will be splattered across the floor of your mind and the broccoli will take its place as a shining beacon of desirableness. The swap may not take at first, but after repeating the steps a few times—voila!—you’ll be craving greens for dessert.

You can do this with any part of your life that you want to change. Your relationship, your job, your health, your fears, your frustrations. Robbins again: “See this, ‘Wooosh!’ Do this, see this, ‘Wooosh!’ Do this, see this, ‘Wooosh!’ Do this…until the old picture automatically triggers the new picture, the new states, and thus the new behavior.”

He’s serious. As serious as a flying head of broccoli can be.  

Actually, I think I'd rather break shit with my bare hands.

*****

“[P]lagued by an insistent internal dialogue?”

*****

On Seinfeld, when Jerry refuses to confront a woman’s boyfriend at her behest—a boyfriend who is, at the time, in a coma, I might add—the woman calls Jerry’s masculinity into question. “You are not a man,” she chides. “Then what are all of those ties and sports jackets doing in my closet?” he responds. The implication is that, whatever Jerry lacks, temperamentally speaking, he makes up for with his wardrobe. Apparently the clothes really do make the man, after all.

This line resonates with me because I don’t even have the sports jackets as proof. I have a number of ties, most of which were passed down from my dad when he retired, but, were it up to me, I would never even tuck in my shirt, and one thing I’ve noticed about men—about real men, that is—is that they rarely go untucked.

I keep waiting for it to happen, for me to wake up one day and feel like a man. But I’m in my late-30’s now, and it hasn’t happened yet. I’m beginning to doubt that it ever will. I’m still five foot eight; I could still shave every other day without Leuinda noticing when I kiss her; and I still lack that sexy tuft of hair jutting from the top of my undershirt. And here I always thought that puberty was just a phase. Who knew that it was binding?

They won’t like me outing them, but most of my friends aren’t men either. Not really. Oh, sure. We look like men if you see us from afar at the bar, huddled around a pitcher of light beer like it’s a campfire on a cold night. If you overhear our conversation, we might even sounds like men, as we argue about sports—real but mostly fantasy—or tell off-color jokes or, occasionally, wonder if it was us or them in a recent dust up with our spouses (it’s usually us, though we always say it’s them).

But look more carefully and you will see that we are not as we appear. Not anywhere close, actually. Our clothes don’t really match in any power-suit kind of way—the shirts and slacks go together well enough, but they were cobbled, not coordinated—and not one of us sat across from anyone today in a position of anything other than subservience. We don’t exactly fetch the coffee for the people who have offices—Who had the tall doubleshot mocha with skim?—but neither do we make decisions of any consequence. Remember Chandler’s line from the first season of Friends?  “If I don’t get those numbered entered, it really won’t matter.” That’s us. We go about our day, and in the end if we didn’t someone else would, and it really wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

The truth is, when we get together, we don’t really talk about work, in fact actively avoid the subject, as if it’s a spot on an x-ray that we’d rather not acknowledge. I’m not even sure I really know what any of my friends do for living. I know that sometimes they seem busier than others; sometimes we have to meet at seven rather than at six-thirty, but I never bother to inquire about the delay. Just means the first round is on me. I know locations, generally, commutes, generic names for companies that are more often than not just called “work,” but I have no idea about duties. Not a clue. And they know just as much about me. I’d sit in meetings—back when I used to sit in meetings—and I’d think, If one of my friends walked in here right now, he wouldn’t even recognize me. He would turn his head in embarrassment. "Oh!" It’d be like a mother walking in on her naked grown son, albeit one without any chest hair. “Uh, give me a minute,” I’d stammer, hiding my Blackberry beneath a stack of reports (not that I’ve ever had a Backberry that wasn’t edible, or a stack of reports, for that matter).

I see them sometimes, men—real men—on the elevator while I’m listening to my headphones or hailing a taxi as I descend the stairs of the subway. They get their haircut when they don’t really need it, wear tweed coats that fall all the way to their knees, elbow their way to the front of the crowd. They cheer a little too loudly at the game, take things a tad too seriously, like when they grip your hand as if there’s a prize to be won or turn their nose up while looking in the mirror.

I’ve never spent more than thirty dollars for a watch.

The other day, I was going through security at the airport. I emptied my pockets: a handkerchief, keys, a phone that does little more than place and receive calls (and doesn’t even do that very well), and a little pouch that fits my license, credit cards, and what scarce cash I carry. The only word that can adequately describe this pouch is “purse.” I carry a purse. The guy behind me empties his pockets and plunks down, among other items that prove his y-chromosome, a money clip, thick with its contents, a newly creased fifty on top. I thought to myself, Oh, shit. Now that’s a man.

The most masculine among my friends, the one who is alpha among all of the betas—or at least beta plus—the guy who talks the raunchiest, initiates the occasional fight, bets on the horses, knocks back Jack, and still watches professional wrestling—that guy…he wears ankle-high socks. Ankle-high socks. You can’t be a man in ankle-high socks. In fact, I have it on good authority that Tony Robbins wears full size, with those sock suspenders that affix just below the knee.

Just one piece of proof that I lack.

*****

All of this is to say that I was at the pizzeria with Jonah. We had just completed another in a series of great trips to Fort Tryon Park, where he scooted on his scooter from the entrance all the way to the Cloisters while I ran next time to him like I was his security detail. I’d stay three steps ahead when he’d let me, but mostly I’d just jog alongside knowing that if he did actually fall I wouldn’t be of any real use. We were skinning knees and palms no matter what. Luckily we made it to the museum without incident. I put him on my shoulders for the return trip, his scooter in my right hand, my left holding on tight to his ankles around my neck. It was one o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon in March.

He was enjoying his favorite slice—tomato, onion, and broccoli—and we were talking between bites about what time Mommy would be home (she was substitute teaching) and what we were going to do when we got home (“I’m going to take a nap after I play with my cars, Daddy”) when it dawned on me that, of all of the customers there, I was the only man. There were mothers, grandmothers, and nannies—all with stroller-age children—but I was the only father. 

There were other men, yes, but they were all on the other side of the counter. Working. The delineation was impossible to ignore once I realized it:  On a Wednesday afternoon in March, women take the kids to get to pizza.

Men work.