Help Me!

by Marianne Power

  The theme from Chariots of Fire blared from the speakers, then ‘Life Will Never Be the Same Again’ – and that felt right. Life would never be the same again! It really wouldn’t be! I wanted a life of orgasms and triathlons! Until I was a hundred!

  By the end of the first day I was in the aisles with the others, dancing, shouting, roaring. The Norwegian accountant was now wild-eyed and wet with sweat. ‘I think I am in love!’ I shout. ‘Me too!’ he replied. We both looked up at the screen, at Tony. Our God.

  F**k It had been replaced by F**K YEAH!!

  Poor John didn’t stand a chance.

  And so it went for four days.

  Every moment of Tony’s life was spun into motivational gold. His terrible childhood, his abusive mother, the fathers that came and went . . . they all helped him become who he is today – which was rich and successful. And we were in no doubt as to how rich and successful Tony was because he kept telling us.

  Every story was littered with sports cars speeding down the Californian coast or involved him hopping on private jets to visit his private resort on Fiji where he hung out with the most powerful people in the world. But somehow he said it in a way that made us feel that we too could get the cars, the jets, the houses. If we just followed his daily routine of workouts, strict diet, morning meditation . . . we too could be like Tony.

  He firmly believed that we were all capable of greatness, and before long we did too. As the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ blared from the speakers we scribbled down notes of what we wanted from our lives and, just as Susan Jeffers recommended with affirmations, I wrote my desires in the present tense – as if they were already real:

  I have £100,000 in my bank account! I am writing a great book! I have happiness, freedom, love! I go on flights all the time, travel regularly, love a hot handsome man who is kind and tall – a man who allows me my freedom. I have a lean body, great wardrobe, lots of blow-dries! Sheila, Helen and Mum are happy! And I am happy! I am bursting with energy and productivity! And I have braces to fix my teeth.

  I was back to my initial vision of Perfect Me – skinny, rich, good teeth. All F**K It zen was gone.

  This was why I read self-help books – this was what I wanted. I didn’t want an ordinary life; I wanted an extraordinary life! And so did everyone around me. It felt so good to be with people who all wanted the same things as me. To be better. To be happier. To be their best selves.

  ‘I have a PhD in results, motherfuckers!’ Tony shouted and we all cheered back.

  Day Three – dubbed Transformation Day – was the big one. Tony explained that there are two reasons we make changes in life: either because we are in so much pain we have no choice or because the potential rewards are so great we can’t say no. In order to make changes we needed to focus on the benefits we’d get from the change and also scare ourselves witless with the thought of what would happen if we didn’t change.

  First we were asked to identify our limiting beliefs, the beliefs that shaped our world and stopped us from getting what we wanted. As sad music played, I wrote down my two most persistent and limiting of beliefs: men don’t like me and I’m crap with money.

  Tony asked us to close our eyes and imagine what would happen if we held on to these beliefs in five, ten, fifteen years from now? An image came to me instantly: I was standing by a bathroom mirror. My skin looked ashen. My hair was grey and limp. I opened the bathroom cabinet to take pills, antidepressants, and I closed it again. I was wearing a white shapeless nightdress. I was a spinster in my fifties but I looked much older. The bathroom was in a rented flat I could hardly afford. I was broke and alone. I pictured myself putting on make-up and plastering on a smile as I went to visit my friends in their family homes, alive with love and noise and people. I fake-smiled as I sat at their kitchen table and told them that I was fine before asking about them and listening for hours. Then I returned to my flat, alone, irrelevant, invisible.

  The vision was so real it was a shock. This was what my life would be if I carried on the way I had until now. I started to cry and so did everyone around me.

  A woman to my right was wailing as if she’d just lost her child. A man behind me was sobbing. Edvard Munch’s The Scream was being reenacted by seven thousand people in a conference hall in London’s Docklands. It went on for an eternity as Tony urged us to feel the horror. We did.

  Then the music changed. Something lighter came on, something that sounded like fairy dust being sprinkled on the stadium. This was our cue to change our emotions.

  We were then asked to identify the opposite of our limiting beliefs and shout them at the top of our voice. ‘I am great with money!’ I bellowed. ‘Men love me!’ I yelled less loudly, in case the (good-looking) man two seats down thought I was weird. We were then to visualize what life would be like if we lived according to these new beliefs.

  I closed my eyes. I was in the bathroom again, looking at the mirror. But it was a different mirror and a different bathroom. This time I was smiling and humming to myself as I put my make-up on; I was wearing slim black trousers and a cream blouse. My hair was shiny. I glowed. A voice called to me from the living room and I walked into a room with big windows, a lush grey sofa and art on the walls. The voice was coming from a man, a kind-faced, dark-haired, smiling man who was sitting on the sofa.

  ‘Are you ready yet?’ he was asking.

  ‘Yes,’ I said as I leaned down to kiss him. He pulled me down onto the sofa and I laughed. We were going to see friends together. I pictured us skipping down the street. I imagined being healthy, energetic and productive. Someone alive and vibrant. It was bliss. I had seen the movie of my life – the disaster version and the fairy tale.

  I wanted the fairy tale.

  We all started high-fiving and hugging each other. We were gripping strongly now, like long-lost brothers and sisters. Men in ironed jeans and chinos embraced each other and held on tight, swaying, reluctant to let go. I squeezed Daisy and when I moved away I saw she had tears in her eyes. I did too. We were alive. Inspired. In love, with ourselves, with each other, with the world!

  We ran around, sharing our visions.

  ‘I want to be more so I can do more!’ said a woman in purple leggings.

  ‘I want to bring Tony Robbins’ message to Putin – I think then we can have world peace!’ said a man with gelled black hair and an accent.

  ‘I want to have sex,’ said Daisy. ‘Lots and lots of sex!’

  ‘Me too!’ I said.

  Then it was dark again and we stood with our eyes closed as the soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey reverberated through the arena. I opened my eyes and saw a sea of rapt faces – and for a second it frightened me. This is what it’s like to be in a cult.

  We walked with bare feet towards the purple glow of a neighbouring Travelodge. Our shoes and socks had been left in the building, along with our old limiting beliefs. We were now marching, with rolled-up jeans, towards a new destiny.

  My mind went blank the second I put my feet on the burning coals – until my last step, when I could feel heat. For half a second, I panicked as I remembered what I was doing but, by then, it was over. My feet were being hosed down by helpers.

  I’d done it. I’d walked across a bed of hot coals.

  It was so easy it was almost underwhelming. I couldn’t make sense of it but I didn’t need to. I left Tony on Sunday evening, feeling that I could not only walk on fire; I could walk on water. Possibly even fly.

  This was the feeling I’d been waiting for my whole life – the feeling that I could do absolutely anything. Forget all the years of doubt and worry and loneliness. That was all behind me. I had crossed the fire. I was different.

  My new life was going to start right now.

  No more Old-Neurotic-Mildly-Depressed-Overweight Me.

  Time for Perfect Me.

  Perfect Me – The 10-Day Tony Challenge

  To reach perfection all I had to do was follow Tony’s 10-Day Pure Energy Challenge. If I could
‘commit with full force’, I would ‘experience the power, vitality, energy, and joy of your body being totally alive with health’.

  Life would never be the same again! Starting TODAY!

  • Get up at 6am! Sit up in bed and do Tony’s deep breathing and something called ‘priming’ which involves thinking of everything I’m grateful for and everything I see in my future. I see fancy cars. Hot men. Bestselling books. A nice flat. And I’m grateful for everything. Grateful for my bed! For my friends! My family! For my laptop!

  • Go downstairs. Boil the kettle and drink hot water with lemon. No more coffee for me – it’s acid! Too much acidity in the system causes lethargy and illness! My body is now a temple. A dilapidated temple undergoing renovation!

  • Make salad for breakfast. Yes, salad. Open bag of lettuce and chop up an avocado. No more marmalade on hot buttered toast – bread is the devil! All white food is evil. Green, that’s the colour I want. Tony says that we should ‘Go Green!’ to alkalize our bodies. No more processed carbs either! No wheat! No sugar! We are what we eat! And I want to be a green smoothie! I will no longer be hungover and spotty, instead my skin will glow and I’ll bounce out of bed with energy!

  • Talking of bouncing . . . Tony bounces on a tiny trampoline called a rebounder every morning to stimulate the lymphatic system and get rid of toxins and possibly protect against cancer. I don’t have one. Instead I jump up and down in the kitchen for ten minutes – OK, maybe one minute – until I get dizzy. Then I run – OK, walk quickly – to the top of Parliament Hill, where I jump up and down some more. I am lymphasizing!

  • Keep running – well, walking fast – while pumping my fist in the air. I wait until I find an empty bit of the park before shouting: ‘I am unstoppable!’ at the top of my voice. This is an incantation. Affirmations are for wimps, what you need are incantations, where you really feel what you are saying and you shout it out loud. A woman walking a Jack Russell appears. It’s awkward. I keep running – OK, walking – muttering the incantation in my head and pumping my fist in a subtler way, kind of down around my hip.

  • Come home. Tony plunges into an ice bath every morning, to boost his circulation and immune system. I barely remember to fill the ice tray in the freezer – so instead I turn the water of the shower onto cold. Kick legs under cold water and shriek. This can’t be good for you! I turn on the heat.

  • Go back to kitchen and make a green smoothie by stuffing kale, cucumber, coconut water and green vitamin powder (£26) in my new NutriBullet (£59). Glug down some Udo’s Choice Oil (£24), which Tony recommends because it is full of essential fats. Not all fats are bad! We all need good fats!

  • Work from 9am to 1pm. I am a working, focused machine. No tiredness. Tiredness is all in the mind. I write another article about mascaras. Take regular music breaks to get into a ‘peak state’. Jump up and down by my desk to Rihanna and Beyoncé. Feel inspired by their power and beauty. I too can be beautiful and powerful! Oh yes, and rich!!

  • Find myself worrying that the intro to my piece on mascaras is crap but stop myself going down this negative path by throwing my shoulders back. Tony says the quickest way to change your mood is to change your posture. I sit up straight, with chest, chin and eyes up. Yes, sir!

  • Salad for lunch. More lettuce. More Udo’s Oil. Want to chop up some cheese and ham but Tony doesn’t like too much red meat or dairy. Settle for a tin of tuna but think he said something about mercury in it? Maybe I should go vegetarian? Yes! Maybe even vegan?

  • Another brisk walk. More muttered incantations and subtle fist pumping:

  I am powerful and strong! Fist pump.

  I do it all easily and effortlessly! Fist pump.

  I am powerful and beautiful! Fist pump.

  • 2pm. More work. Write about a new pair of tights that claim to be the best-ever tights in the world. Try them on. They rip straight away.

  • 4pm. Pee on a stick to check the acidity of my urine. Yes, to change your life you must first change your urine! Tony says my pee should be pH7 but mine is 6. This is bad – I am acid!

  • Drink water. Lots and lots of water. Water is an essential and major component of all living matter! My body will soon be as clean as a mountain stream.

  • 4.30 – the late afternoon slump but I don’t need caffeine, I need to oxygenate, or in other words, breathe! Tony says that instead of taking coffee breaks, we should take ten ‘Power Breaths’ three times a day. I inhale for eight seconds and try to hold for the recommended thirty-two seconds but splutter out air after ten. Oh well.

  • More dancing and bouncing. Download the soundtrack from the event on Spotify.

  • 6pm – look at Tony’s Facebook group. People are posting motivational quotes: ‘Own Today!’ ‘Make your Move!’ ‘If your dreams don’t scare you – they aren’t big enough.’ We send each other messages: ‘You’re freaking awesome!!’ These are my people! Positive, motivated people! Making the most of their lives!

  Text from Daisy: ‘You’re outstanding!’

  ‘You too!!’

  ‘You freaking rock!!!’

  ‘Have you peed on your stick?’

  • 7pm. Don’t drink wine – it’s acid! It kills brain cells! Get high on life!

  Rachel walks in as I’ve just finished my third salad of the day and am doing more jumping up and down in the kitchen to Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Paradise City’.

  ‘I think I preferred F**k It,’ she says and walks upstairs.

  9

  Broke

  ‘If Tony Robbins is a billionaire who wants to make the world a better place – why does he charge so much?’ – Rachel.

  The till made a dull beep and the guy behind it looked up at me. ‘Your card hasn’t gone through,’ he muttered. ‘Wanna try again?’

  Cheeks burning, I pulled it out of the machine and pushed it back in again, typing in my PIN. Another beep.

  ‘It’s saying it’s declined.’ He shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know why,’ I said.

  I looked in my wallet to see if I had enough cash but I didn’t.

  I took out my Barclaycard and handed it over. Paying the £11.20 for a box of tampons and bottle of red wine on credit card. A new low.

  When I got home from Tesco, I poured a glass of the red. Perfect Me had lasted eight days – OK, five. I caved when Rachel poured herself a glass of white and it looked so nice and my mouth watered . . . and anyway, it was a Friday night and . . .

  ‘I might just have one glass,’ I said. ‘It’s the weekend; one isn’t going to kill me.’

  One glass ended up being one bottle.

  ‘I don’t know why you do this to yourself. You set yourself up for a fall with all these extremes,’ said Rachel.

  ‘I know, I just hate how much I drink, and how much crap I eat . . . I want to get my life in order . . .’

  ‘But why is it all or nothing?’ asked Rachel.

  Rachel was like my mother – understated, moderate, quietly successful by just getting stuff done without any drama. She didn’t need motivational seminars or YouTube videos. She got more done before she left to go to work than I did the whole day. She didn’t download £10 productivity apps, she wrote to-do lists on the backs of envelopes and crossed off every task.

  Even though I knew her view made sense, I was determined to stay on the Tony bandwagon. So I spent the rest of July yo-yoing between salad for breakfast and cake for lunch, green juice followed by coffee before finally admitting defeat. By the start of August I was back to crappy telly and wine – wine, that, it transpired, I could no longer afford.

  When I got home from the supermarket I did something I had not done since February – I logged on to my bank accounts. I felt a cold shudder when I looked at my current account. £3,200 overdrawn. Shit. Shit. Shit. How had it got that low?

  I scrolled through the spending: coffee shop, wine, pub, pub, Waterstones, but then I saw a debit I didn’t recognize: £92 – CHARGES. What charges? Someone’s been hacking m
y account!

  I called Barclays.

  ‘Hello, I think there’s been some suspicious activity on my account. £92 has been taken out and it’s not something I recognize. I think someone may have cloned my card.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, let me bring up your account details . . .’ said the man on the line. ‘Yes, I see it here, £92 . . .’

  ‘Could you tell me what it was for and if that person has taken anything else?’

  ‘That’s the monthly charge for your overdraft facility.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s £3 a day for any overdraft over £1,000.’

  ‘What? Since when? Why wasn’t I told?’

  ‘We sent out two letters informing you,’ he replied. ‘Did you not receive them?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t read all the letters . . . I’m very busy . . . How can you do this? It’s not right to charge £3 a day! How long has this been going on for?’

  ‘The charges were introduced two months ago.’

  I hung up and went up to my room, where a pile of unopened post lay on my desk – the letters were there, along with credit card bills and a notice telling me I had been late paying my VAT. I felt clammy panic rise up my body. This was bad. Really bad.

  What the hell had I been doing for the last six months? Why hadn’t I been working? I used to work hard, I really did. What happened? When I started this project I wanted to become more efficient and successful – but as the year went on I’d said F**k It to everything and believed that The Secret would provide.

  After spending all of February crying over bank statements and vowing to change, I had gone right back to my old ways. I didn’t keep up the whole look-at-your-bank-balance-every-day business, I got distracted creating Vision Boards with pictures of courgettes and yoga mats and writing fake cheques for £100,000. I’d gone into some nutty self-help bubble. Money comes to me easily and effortlessly. What a load of rubbish. No inspirational quote was going to fix my debts. And that cheque from the Universe had bounced, clearly.