The Top 10 Secrets From Anthony Robbins

For more than 25 years US-based motivational speaker and success coach Anthony Robbins has been passionately pursuing the answers to questions such as 'What shapes human behaviour? And how can we create lasting change
within oursleves and others?'.

He has spoken in front of more than 3 million people around the world and sold around 35 million Books and audio coaching products.

After attending his 4-day 'Unleash The Power Within' seminar recently in Kuala Lumpur I learnt many strategies to perform at your best.

I even took part in his famous barefoot walk over hot coals. This powerful physical metaphor shows how anyone can overcome their deepest and greatest fears with focus, passion and desire.

Part rock concert, part learning experience, part aerobic workout, the seminar was attended by more than 4,000 people in a giant indoor sporting stadium that was built for the Commonwealth Games.

Standing 6'7", weighing 265 lbs and with a shoe size of 16, Robbins was impressive on stage as he harnessed the energy of the crowd.

In fact, security guards have to line the stage as he is regularly swamped by over eager fans.

At 43 years old, he has been enourmously successful and worked with people like President Clinton and Nelson Mandela.

What was it like?

Hot, humid, high energy and simple take home messages packaged with a high-tech light, sound and video show.

I was impressed, motivated and got some great ideas from it.

Here is my gift to you. The Top 10 Secrets of Success I learnt from spending 4 days with Tony Robbins.

1. YOUR POTENTIAL IS DETERMINED (OR LIMITED) BY YOUR SELF-BELIEF.

As the promotional material says the event was 'about creating breakthroughs, moving beyond fears and limiting beliefs, accomplishing goals and realizing true desires, turning dreams into reality, creating fulfilling relationships, and modeling the strategies of peak performers to produce a quantum difference in your life.'

If you cut out the hype, the simple message is if you believe in yourself enough you can achieve anything.

A memorable one-liner was "the only thing that's keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself".

2. MOST PEOPLE HAVE SELF-DOUBT AROUND UNIVERSAL THEMES.

Ask anyone and most people will admit they lack confidence in some areas of their life. The interesting thing I learnt from this seminar is that this self-doubt is around universal themes. These themes cross age, gender, religious, cultural and Language barriers.

Common doubts include 'I am not good enough', 'I am lazy' and 'No-one loves me'.

3. YOU CAN LEARN MECHANISMS TO ELIMINATE SELF-DOUBT.

Robbins calls it 'immersion' where you break old patterns and build new ones by repetition. He uses a lot of Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques to achieve this with his audiences.

He says "progress is not automatic".

A memorable moment in the seminar was when we had to visualize ourselves inside a bubble and inside that bubble was a series of videotapes neatly arranged in a time-line that represented all our memories in our lives so far. We had to pull out the negative videotapes and destroy them. This was followed by time spent visualising the future and how your life will look 10 and 20 years from now.

4. BELIEF IMPACTS ON MANY LEVELS.

The Robbins message was that 3 things shape our self-belief. He calls them the Triad. These are our patterns of physiology, focus and Language or meaning.

He highlighted this with the quote: "where focus goes energy flows".

5. OUR VALUES AND BELIEFS SHAPE OUR ACTIONS.

Robbins believes you can "vanquish whatever is holding you back from taking action".

Walking barefoot across a bed of glowing coals is the physical metaphor he uses in his seminars to prove this point to the skeptics.

Eliminate negative self-belief and take massive action are his keys to success.

6. TO CREATE POSITIVE OUTCOMES YOU MUST TAKE MASSIVE ACTION.

"Where focus goes energy flows" is a quote used by Robbins in his presentation to highlight why you need to know your outcome and why achieving this is a must.

But many people fail to take the next step. They delay, put off and find many reasons or excuses not to act.

Robbins believes "progress is not automatic" and "action is power". Take action, even if it is the wrong action. He says it is "never a failure if you learn something".

7. MATCHING & MIRRORING CREATES CONNECTION, TRUST & EMPATHY.

Robbins spent a fair amount of time in the seminar talking about and demonstrating interpersonal communication skills.

He used people from the audience to show how the process of "matching and mirroring" the non-verbal communication and body Language of others can be a very powerful way to connect with people.

In essence, you create rapport by adopting the body language of the person you are communicating with.

He believes "rapport is power" and "total responsiveness is created by a feeling of commonality".

If you have learnt these techniques before and haven't used them for a while, I suggest it is time to dust them off and put them into action next time you are communicating with someone on a one-to-one basis.

8. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IF YOU FOCUS ON PASSION AND PURPOSE.

Robbins believes that "to have an extraordinary quality of life you need two skills: the science of achievement (the ability to take anything you envision and make it real) and the art of fulfilment (this allows you to enjoy every moment of it)."

He says "success without fulfilment is failure".

Find your passion and purpose in life. My purpose is to make a difference in people's lives and use my gift as a speaker.

9. MODEL YOURSELF ON OTHER ACHIEVERS.

To gain improvements quickly and step up to a new level of achievement, Robbins believes learning from others who are the best in their field is the fastest way to achieve success.

He told the story of how he wanted to improve his tennis game and so employed Andre Agassi, the then number one ranked player to help him achieve this.

Who could you model yourself on?

"People's lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group," according to Robbins.

10. SUCCESS IS BUILT ON A HEALTHY, HIGH ENERGY BODY, HEART AND MIND

If you are not healthy - all of the above points are a waste of time.

Your health is determined and influenced by your lifestyle.

One major change I've made since the seminar is to eat a healthier diet and exercise more regularly.

As a speaker, my whole business depends on my ability to perform at a peak state. Like any professional athlete, the success of business is directly linked to my diet and health.

Take care of yourself, your body is ultimately your most important asset.

Teaching Vocabulary to Learners of English As a Foreign Language

Vocabulary is clearly an essential part of Language learning and teaching vocabulary in a productive way is something which must be at the forefront of our minds as teachers of English. Teaching new words to learners of English as a Foreign Language at first seems quite a straightforward proposition. You provide the appropriate word and meaning much like an automatic dictionary and move on. However, the teacher is far more than merely a speaking dictionary.

There are many things to think about when teaching vocabulary.

How many words should you try and teach students in one class? How do you decide which new words you should teach to your students? What criteria do you use to decide which words are most useful? How do you guide the students themselves in recognising which words are most useful for them? What is the importance of active and passive vocabulary? Why are frequency and coverage important? Why is register important? Do all students need to learn the same words?

How many new words should you think about teaching in a class?

There is no definitive figure here of course, as every student is different, but lower level students can generally manage about 5-8 new words of vocabulary a day. At higher levels usually a few more.

What new words should you teach to your students?

Even if you wanted to, you clearly can't teach students every word in the English Language. There are upwards of 500,000 words in English so you clearly only know a fraction of them yourself. A typical B2 (Upper Intermediate) learners' dictionary contains about 55,000 words of vocabulary. The average native speaker probably uses less than 20,000 words actively. Reducing huge quantities of words to manageable learning is a significant challenge for ELT and one of the great challenges for teaching vocabulary is which words to choose.

What criteria do you use in choosing what words to teach?

Frequency and Coverage:

Choose words to teach that are frequently used. Telling students about how often words are used or in what situations you might use them (formal, informal, academic, spoken or written English etc) is something invaluable that they often can't get from a dictionary. Clearly, the most frequently used words will be the most valuable to learn. The words taught also need to be assessed in the light of topic, function, structure, teachability, needs and wants.

Polysemic Words and Word Building:

In English, many words are polysemic - have more than one meaning - and can be used as nouns, verbs or part of a phrasal verb. It is important to bear in mind these alternative meanings and uses when teaching new words. It would appear logical to learn these polysemic words as a priority. The important point to remember when explaining meaning is that context will show which of the various meanings and uses is intended.

Word formation is an essential part of vocabulary teaching, for example, the way that root forms of words change to form adjectival and adverbial forms with the addition of prefixes and suffixes. Learning about word formation raises students' awareness of the language they use. Teach students word building skills. For example, if you teach the verb 'to advance', you might also teach the adjective 'advanced' and the noun 'advancement.' This gives the student extra vocabulary immediately but it also indicates broader patterns within the language. For example, you can point out that 'ment' is a common noun ending. (Others include 'ness' 'ence' 'ation' 'ism' etc.) Typical adjective endings would include 'ed' 'ing' 'ent' 'ive' 'ical' etc.

How do words lead onto other words? How can you point students towards patterns in the language?

Another important aspect of teaching vocabulary is 'word grammar', some words trigger/collocate certain grammatical patterns. Countable/uncountable nouns are an example of this, the former can be used with both singular and plural verbs, while the latter with only singular verbs. Other nouns are neither countable nor uncountable but have a fixed form and collocate with only singular or plural verbs, e.g. people (plural), the news (singular).

Register:

Register refers to a particular style of language relevant to a particular situation or context. For example the way a doctor talks to a patient about a prognosis/diagnosis will differ in style from the way the same doctor will relate the same information to a fellow colleague. Similarly, the way we speak in a job interview will differ from the style of language we use in conversation with close friends. Students need to be aware how certain words fit into different registers. When explaining vocabulary, bear in mind that explanations need to include relevant aspects of context and usage, e.g. 'mate' is a synonym of friend but is used colloquially typically for males.

Topic Area Words:

You could select a theme such as 'weather.' The ensuing vocabulary would include: rain, sunny, cold, windy etc. This is particularly useful if the student is interested in a particular topic or if a topic area has a direct relation to their life or job. Not all vocabulary or topic areas are of equal importance to every student.

Passive and active Vocabulary:

New words enter the Passive Vocabulary of students. Students may understand meaning, especially in the specific context where they see a new word used but as yet cannot use the word independently themselves. To ensure words enter the students' Active Vocabulary, regular revision in meaningful situations is essential. It is estimated that a student needs to encounter a word 10-12 times before it fully enters their Active Vocabulary. Vocabulary, in the same way as Grammar, is learned through use. It is therefore very important to give students opportunities within the classroom to use the new vocabulary themselves. Students remembrance of words is relative to the degree which they have used the word, thus the more we get students to use words in a task of some sort - finding opposites, transformation etc - the better they will remember them. Similarly, if we involve students in presenting new words the better they will remember them. Hence, acting out definitions in a dramatic way - trip, stagger etc - should lead to deeper learning of the words. Sense memory becomes involved, taste, smell, touch etc, which further enhances recall. Discovery techniques where students have to find out the meanings of words themselves will be more effective than standard teacher presentation of new vocabulary.

There may be many words that students will not need to use actively themselves at a particular stage in their learning career and therefore they can remain in the students' Passive Vocabulary. For example, at Beginner level it is enough to know 'big' and 'small'. At Intermediate levels, you might begin to use 'huge' 'massive' 'tiny' 'minute' etc. At Advanced levels, you might use words like 'vast' or 'minuscule' to give a different shade of meaning or to adopt a more formal or academic tone. The point is that at Beginner level it is clearly not practical or useful spending time trying to get the student to use a word like 'vast'.

Vocabulary Testing:

Vocabulary testing has several forms, and as with all techniques in ELT the more variety in the classroom the better.

Examples include:

1. Multiple choice Questions
2. Matching (opposites/complements)
3. Odd one out
4. Writing sentences
5. Dictation
6. Close/gap-fill (with and without wordlist)
7. Sentence completion

Conclusion:

In the classroom, the teacher remains central to the effective acquisition of new vocabulary. Every student is different so their language learning needs and vocabulary requirements are different too. As a teacher, you are interacting with students face to face on a human level. You have an expertise about who the student is and what is useful for them to learn that no dictionary or computer programme could ever have.

Cleanth Brooks' The Language of Paradox

In The Language of Paradox, Cleanth Brooks takes on the Language of poetry, stating that at its core poetry is the Language of paradox. Brooks bases his position on the contradictions that are inherent in poetry and his feelings that if those contradictions didn't exist then neither would some of the best poetry we have today.

Using works from Wordsworth to Shakespeare Brooks shows how the only way some ideas can be expressed is through paradox. His best example of this idea is from Coleridge's description of imagination,

...reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects, a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order...(Brooks 40)

Brooks points out that while it is an eloquently worded statement it is also a series of paradoxes. He argues that since poetry spends its time trying to explains ideas and emotions as intangible as the idea of imagination it too has to use paradox to best convey those thoughts.
Brooks bolsters his argument on the use of paradox in poetry through a close reading of John Donne's "Canonization". He says that if it were not for paradox Donne's poem would either come across as not taking love seriously or not taking religion seriously.

Since the poem does neither, Brooks concludes that Donne is able to use the discordant image of two lovers giving up the physical world for their love and through their sacrifice achieving sainthood only because of the paradox that the imagery of their love and that of their religion generates.

I agree with Brooks to a point, poetry is filled with paradoxes as a way to convey emotions or sentiments that aren't so easily expressed through a single train of thought but have to encompass many contradictory ideas to begin to describe that emotion or sentiment.

His example of Coleridge's response to what imagination is, is an excellent example of his hypothesis. However, the Coleridge example also undermines his premise in that paradox is not just the Language of poetry or literature but the language of life. In everyday life we find ourselves trying to explain something, an idea, event, an emotion that is not easily explained by simple, straight-forward terms but requires a series of contradictions or paradoxes, if you will, to properly convey their meaning.

There is no reason why poetry shouldn't be any different and I think the radical tone of the chapter, this idea that he is creating a new and previously un-thought of way to look at poetry, is unfounded and hardly revolutionary.