PLAYBOY: Did she share her secret?

ROBBINS: Yes. She’d focus on a memory from her previous life that would get her laughing. And she got outside of herself by lifting people up with music. Compare her story to someone saying “I lost my job on Wall Street and now it’s over.” Give me a break. You’re not in Somalia, right? You haven’t lost your abilities. You can find a way to retool.

PLAYBOY: What’s the real problem?

ROBBINS: We’re emotionally unfit. We expect things to be given to us that other generations had to earn. We think we’re supposed to get homes with no money down and be supported by the government if we’re unemployed.

PLAYBOY: What do you tell people who lose their jobs?

ROBBINS: First, feed and strengthen your mind with something that inspires you. If you don’t, disaster and fear is where your brain will go. Second, feed and strengthen your body. Fear is physical. When you lift weights or go for a sprint, that energy flows back into your body and restores you to certainty. Third, find a role model, someone who has turned their life around. Fourth, take massive action and keep changing your approach. Fifth, find somebody who is 10 times worse off and help them. It reminds you that you have something to give and to be grateful.

PLAYBOY: Some people think you have all the answers. Do you?

ROBBINS: I have no delusions that I’m the only source of improving people’s lives or that I’m even the right source. My style is intense, and it’s not going to be right for everybody.

PLAYBOY: Some mental health professionals might say you attempt to fix people in a weekend, when it takes months or years to properly delve into a psyche.

ROBBINS: First of all, I don’t fix anybody, because I don’t think anybody’s broken. I think what people have are patterns, and those can be changed. People quickly understand that what’s controlling their thoughts and emotions are their values and rules, and they learn how to shift those.

PLAYBOY: Don’t some who are physiologically depressed require medication?

ROBBINS: Without a doubt. But biochemistry can be instantly changed without drugs, which may sound like bullshit hyperbole. But I’ve been demonstrating for decades that you can alter anyone’s state by a radical change in physiology—lifting weights, sprinting, abruptly changing breathing, all of it shifting your mind-set in a heartbeat. But we take on these identities of diseases and feel we’re doomed. Are there people for whom only medication can make a difference? Yes, but I’d say it’s rare, a small percentage. And 75 percent of people who take antidepressants are still depressed.

PLAYBOY: Yet 30 million Americans are taking them, and countless doctors would disagree with you.

ROBBINS: We’ve been sold a bill of goods that says you shouldn’t have pain and that if you do you should end it with a pill, a message reinforced by ridiculous commercials. You hear beautiful music and see somebody floating through a meadow, and at the end you find out that the drug may blow up your brain, but try it anyway, right? A pill can’t solve the problem. All it can do is numb you and lose the pain that would otherwise drive you to finally change something.

PLAYBOY: Ever taken an antidepressant?

ROBBINS: Never. I’m not saying it isn’t useful for people; it’s just not my path. That’s not because I’m a superman. I grew up in a family where both my parents were alcoholics and users of prescription drugs. At the age of 11 I’d go to the pharmacy and convince the pharmacist that my mom had lost her Valium, and he’d refill it. So I saw the severe effects of drugs.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever seen a therapist?

ROBBINS: No.

PLAYBOY: Are you against it?

ROBBINS: No, I actually train therapists through my Center for Strategic Intervention, using films of my interventions. But I believe therapy can be done more rapidly. I’m into your finding the source of what’s making you think and feel the way you do and shifting it quickly.

PLAYBOY: How do you feel when you’re onstage? Does the adrenaline start to flow?

ROBBINS: It’s not just adrenaline; oxytocin is flowing too. I love that audience. I’m out there feeling them rather than being inside my head. I don’t use teleprompters or notes. I’d want to kill myself if I did the same regurgitated stuff every time. I’m always loading my brain with new ways of looking at something. To me, words are like stickpins. I can throw a word at you and it will bounce right off your body. But if I take that little stickpin and wire it to the back of an iron bar called human emotion, I can put that thing right through your heart.

PLAYBOY: During those hours, are you wearing down people’s defenses as a means of creating a breakthrough?

ROBBINS: That’s bullshit. In a world where people won’t stay in their seats to watch a three-hour movie that cost $300 million, why do they stay put for 50 hours in my seminars? They can vote with their feet and get a full refund. Nobody’s holding them there. When Oprah came to Unleash the Power Within, her people said she’d stay for two hours max, but she stayed until one A.M.

PLAYBOY: Did she do the fire walk?

ROBBINS: She did.

PLAYBOY: What’s the point of walking across coals heated to 1,200 degrees?

ROBBINS: To have a breakthrough, you want to give people the experience of doing something they thought impossible. I use fire walking as a metaphor, a test of someone’s strength and courage.

PLAYBOY: About a year ago, at one of your seminars in San Jose, Fox News reported a “hot coal catastrophe,” saying more than two dozen participants out of 6,000 were injured and hospitalized with second- or third-degree burns during the fire walk.

ROBBINS: Those reports were absurd, and they have been proven to be completely false. A handful of people had a mild degree of redness, and we gave them immediate treatment. Nobody was hospitalized. And there wasn’t one third-degree burn. Fox later issued a rare on-air retraction.

PLAYBOY: How safe can a fire walk be?

ROBBINS: In the past 35 years, more than 2 million people from 100 countries have done the fire walk successfully. It’s like skydiving—if you know what you’re doing and prepare for it, it’s an exhilarating and unforgettable experience.

PLAYBOY: In Oprah’s case, being a tough, sophisticated woman, what would she be afraid of?

ROBBINS: Everybody has fear. I was surprised by her level of vulnerability. Right now she’s in the spotlight, working to build a TV network with positive and uplifting content in a world where humiliation and voting people off the island are what sell. That’s not easy, even for Oprah. What I learned from her is grace under pressure.

PLAYBOY: What did she learn about you?

ROBBINS: Before coming to the seminar Oprah thought I was a salesman, an infomercial guy, nonspiritual in some way. But now she’s been introducing me as her spiritual warrior. We laughed about it, and I teased her a bit.

PLAYBOY: When you first met her, years ago, how was the rapport?

ROBBINS: Well, I’d never been on her show. It’s ironic. I’d been on every show dozens of times—God only knows how many times on Today—but Oprah never invited me.

PLAYBOY: You’ve often said “You’ve got to discipline your disappointments.”

ROBBINS: Yes. When I say I rarely fail in life, that’s bullshit. I fail all the time, but I don’t view it as failure. Unless you can discipline your disappointment, it overwhelms you. It puts you in a mental and emotional state that drains your energy. You lose your will and your capacity to be resilient. The one common denominator of all successful people is their hunger to push through their fears.

PLAYBOY: Is fear the biggest problem people have?

ROBBINS: No question. Our deepest fear is that we’re not enough. I don’t care if it’s the president, a prisoner, an Olympic athlete or a parent. We feel we’re not competent enough—or smart, strong, athletic, humorous or beautiful enough. And if we’re not, our second fear is that we won’t be loved.

PLAYBOY: But what about fear of illness, death, our children’s welfare, unemployment, living in a post-9/11 world?

ROBBINS: Do people feel afraid of many things? No question. Those fears are real, but all roads lead to Rome, down to the twin fears. It’s okay to feel afraid, and you can use that emotion to propel yourself forward. I don’t tell people, “Go to your garden and chant ‘There are no weeds’ and do a bunch of affirmations.” I’m not Mr. Positive Thinking. I never have been. I’m a strategist, not a motivator. I’m obsessed with finding strategies that create real results in the shortest period of time.

PLAYBOY: You often say change happens in a second. Do you mean that literally?

ROBBINS: People say it takes 10 years to change your life. It’s bullshit. It takes a moment, a second, yes. But it may take you 10 years to get to the point of finally saying, “Enough.”

PLAYBOY: What do most people do when they have a problem?

ROBBINS: They feed their fear because they are deathly afraid of failing, of not being enough. They will say, “I can’t lose weight because I’m big-boned.” I say, “No, you’re freakin’ fat!” You don’t like your body, your job, your relationship? Change it. It’s obvious. But most people won’t do that. It’s too scary.

PLAYBOY: What fear keeps you up at night?

ROBBINS: I’m not kept up right now, but I’ve certainly had those moments. One fear was that I would die young. I thought, Why me? That fear helped me because it gave me a sense of urgency to have an impact.

PLAYBOY: But if you had to name a fear today, what would it be?

ROBBINS: I love my wife, Sage, at a level that’s just ridiculous, so when I think of all the things in my life that give me joy—besides my mission—it’s my wife and kids. When Sage was born, her vestibular system, which controls balance and eye movement, was damaged, and the result was severe motion sickness. With me traveling constantly by plane, she was throwing up on every flight, losing weight, wilting away to nothing. I thought I was going to lose her.

PLAYBOY: How did you cope?

ROBBINS: I was punishing myself. Here I am, Mr. Solution, right? But not being able to turn things around for her was torturous. For nine years we went to doctors, nutritionists, natural healers, even experts at NASA and the U.S. Navy’s Top Gun school—nothing worked. And at one point she developed a tumor in her lymph gland and I thought she was going to die. She’s fine now, but her constitution isn’t as strong as mine. I’m always aware of that, so that’s the one fear out there for me. But I don’t obsess about it, and I don’t live in that fear. And the good news is we finally solved the problem.

PLAYBOY: How?

ROBBINS: It’s a crazy story. It was a natural hands-on healer who did it, a monk at Oneness University, on the eastern coast of South India. It sounds like complete bullshit, but after Sage learned a form of self-meditation that calms the parietal lobe of the brain, she was able to tolerate motion. We took the most turbulent helicopter flight I’d ever had, and she sat there smiling. I’m crying because it had taken years, but here’s the grace of this woman who is finally healthy.

PLAYBOY: How has this changed you?

ROBBINS: It got me to say, “Look, maybe this is a gift from God. I think I’m indestructible, but no one is. Maybe this woman was sent into my life because I would never have slowed down for me, but I’ll do it for her.” So I cut the number of events by half.

PLAYBOY: Aside from public seminars, you coach private clients too. Is it true you charge up to $1 million a year?

ROBBINS: Yes. From one client I’ve had for 20 years—one of the top financial traders in the world—I get a base fee plus a piece of the upside. He e-mails me each day, and I monitor both his financial performance and his psychology and emotion. And I go see him four times a year for a couple of hours each time.

PLAYBOY: You also get emergency calls from celebrities, right?

ROBBINS: It could be anyone from Billie Joe Armstrong ofGreen Day to President Clinton wanting just another point of view, or a financial trader who just lost $30 million, or Hugh Jackman wanting to take his acting to the next level, or Serena Williams after she’s been injured. I have to deliver right there and right then.

PLAYBOY: What was the coaching about for Serena?

ROBBINS: A few years ago, after surgery, she was in bad shape. She’d lost her drive and hunger and, quite frankly, was afraid to fail, having stacked up so many painful experiences. I had to dig inside and find the part of her that was unstoppable. She reclaimed her rhythm and energy and went on to the U.S. Open, improving every aspect of her game.

PLAYBOY: Among those you’ve met or coached, give us some snapshot impressions. For example, Mother Teresa.

ROBBINS: I asked her, “What really excites you, lights you up?” Kind of a bizarre question, right? She giggled, looked directly at me and said, “Seeing a person die with a smile on their face.” I was stunned. But to her, seeing the end of suffering is what she lived for.

PLAYBOY: Nelson Mandela.

ROBBINS: I made the mistake of asking, “Sir, how did you survive all those years in prison?” He gave me a stern look: “I didn’t survive, I prepared.” He believed he’d either die in jail and become a martyr, or live—in which case he needed to lead. His strength, that sense of authority and certainty, was mind-boggling.

PLAYBOY: Who surprised you the most?

ROBBINS:Mike Tyson. I found out he’s incredibly well-read—religious books and a wide range of literature. He was describing how he’d brought Aryan and African gangs in prison together, preventing a riot. And in the middle of telling me all this stuff about love, he snaps, “But sometimes I think if there was a button you could push and kill everybody in the world, I’d just do it!”

PLAYBOY: Princess Diana.

ROBBINS: I’ll never forget the sad expression on her face when she said she felt like a lonely sparrow in a gilded cage, like she had no choices, that she was trapped in a system where she couldn’t be herself. My primary goal was to show her that there were choices. And she made the giant choice to end her marriage. One of her biggest concerns was that her son would not have the chance to be king. She believed that both sons were born to serve, that her own life was about service.