Perhaps the greatest challenge for any life coach is knowing how far to push clients. That’s what made the new NBC show “Breakthrough with Tony Robbins” so remarkable for me as a professional and as a human being who wants people to see their own potential.

According to the promos leading up to the show, the concept is for Robbins to take people in extreme stress and have them turn it around in 30 days and to show a “pathway of power of how to do that.” Robbins’ theory is that one hour in primetime “could open up things for people.”

Well, I’d say he did that and then some.

Robbins does not hesitate to push hard and it’s exhilarating to watch, even if it is strangers on my television screen. If Frank and Kristen Alioto can begin living life again despite Frank injuring himself on their wedding day and becoming a quadriplegic, then who can’t?

I am a can-do coach and have had some heady and gratifying triumphs with my clients, but I  can’t imagine telling a quadriplegic man that he is going to skydive in Fiji, learn to play murder ball (rugby in wheelchairs), and drive his prized truck in the desert. Robbins rode shotgun for the latter and exclaimed in delight as Alioto took him for a bumpy, sand-flying ride. I was blown away.

“A breakthrough is that moment in time when it all changes, when suddenly what seemed to be impossible becomes possible,” Robbins says. “It’s not some positive thinking garbage. It’s a trigger.”

Herein lies the key to what works about real, quality life coaching as opposed to some of the surface stuff that gets put out there. The positive mindset can get you places, for sure. But it doesn’t sound like anything more than a platitude when used as the answer to everything. Someone going into a job interview might do well to hear “think positive” as a piece of advice. Someone who is getting evicted, not so much.

On Breakthrough, Robbins deals with people who are way past the point of positive thinking being the solution. For Kristen Alioto, who never got to experience being a wife but immediately was thrust into the caretaker role, a giant shift in understanding and seeing needed to take place. Robbins sensed her need to not only have a break from what had become a daily grind, but the importance of her seeing her husband be strong and emotionally there for her.

For Frank – who asked in the beginning of the process, “What kind of life is this?” -- it was about seeing his own physical strength and realizing he had the ability to help his wife feel better in a given moment. He can indeed “show up” for her. Very powerful to watch.

Over the course of the show, Robbins took the couple through these steps:

•Rewrite your story

•Confront your real issues

•Discover your inner strength

•Redefine what is possible

•Exceed your expectations

•Change your belief system

•Own your breakthrough

Again, these can feel like platitudes in black and white, but seeing them in the context of the process with Robbins gives them punch and meaning. He pushes in each step and lets the results speak for themselves as the journey unfolds.

Robbins says the impetus for creating the show was how many people are in pain these days with all that is swirling around us in the economy, the environment, etc. He wanted to give more people than just the millions who have attended his seminars, read his books and listened to his tapes a taste of his gift. This, in turn, would allow them to help themselves and/or pay it forward.

I love that. I have just been talking to people in my life about the paying it forward concept, as I feel I’m in a place where so many people were there for me when times were lean and I’m not necessarily giving that positive energy back to the source. I am passing it on to others.

How fabulous that Robbins is making us acutely aware of our possibilties and the tools to show others theirs.

“I can’t imagine anything holding us back anymore,” Kristen Alioto says at the end of Breakthrough.

All it took was the right kind of push.

 

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.