The Effects of a Life Coaching Seminar on Gratitude and Psychological Well-Being

Applied Science & Performance Institute

Status: Completed

Conditions: Mental Stress; Psychological Stress; Mental Health Wellness 1; Depression, Anxiety; Psychological; Mental Depression

Treatments: Behavioral: Tony Robbins Date with Destiny

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Industry

Identifiers

NCT04172051

121901

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study will consist of a randomized experimental group and a control group, In addition to the control and experimental group, there will also be a non-randomized motivated experimental group. Approximately 75 males and females from the ages of 18 to 80 will take part in this study. Subjects will be randomly divided into a Control and Experimental Group. Subjects for the control and experimental group will be recruited from a Tony Robbins Facebook page, and subjects in the experimental group (DWD Group) will be admitted to the Tony Robbins Date With Destiny Event (December 2019) in West Palm Beach for free, while the subjects randomly assigned to the control group, will not attend the event, but instead be required to a Gratitude Journaling experiment (Three Good Things Intervention). Psychological assessment surveys will be taken before the event, directly after the event, and one month following the event. The control group will take the psychological assessment before beginning journaling, directly after completing journaling, and one month following completion of journaling.

Full description

Background:

A Pubmed or Google Scholar search reveals zero peer-reviewed articles examining Robbins' events, techniques, or principles, despite Robbins' enormous impact on culture, psychology, and individual lives. Furthermore, only poorly conceptualized studies testing clinically irrelevant hypotheses were ever conducted on Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), a constitutive framework for part of Robbins' methodologies. Due to the intimate link between beliefs, wellness, and disease, the investigators hypothesize that an intervention focused on belief-restructuring, trauma release, psychoeducation, hope, inspiration, & social support like participation in a Tony Robbins' event (e.g. DWD) will demonstrate significant mental and physical health outcomes.

The investigators hope to obtain a better understanding of:

1. Whether Tony Robbins' DWD improves affect, depression symptoms, and well-being.
2. Setup collaboration infrastructure and generate hypotheses for a future randomized controlled trial to determine short- and long-term physiological and health effects of Tony Robbins' interventions.

Importance:

Tony Robbins, inventor of the term, life coach, and a coach to leaders around the world, regularly sells out 14,000 person arenas worldwide to talk about psychology, mental health, and wellbeing, and his website alone averages 1,000,000 unique visitors per month. Yet, a literature search through PubMed & Google Scholar reveals 0 empirical studies of Tony Robbins' work. Considering patients prefer psychotherapy over medication, there are a rich set of interventions to draw from Tony Robbins that could prove to be effective, accessible, and affordable in treating & preventing mental health issues including depression and suicide. Understanding the science of Tony Robbins' work could provide new theoretical frameworks and clinical interventions to inform non-pharmacological approaches to mental health.

Methodology:

This study will consist of a randomized experimental group and a control group, In addition to the control and experimental group, there will also be a non-randomized motivated experimental group. Approximately 75 males and females from the ages of 18 to 80 will take part in this study. Subjects will be randomly divided into a Control and Experimental Group. Subjects for the control and experimental group will be recruited from a Tony Robbins Facebook page, and subjects in the experimental group (DWD Group) will be admitted to the Tony Robbins Date With Destiny Event (December 2019) in West Palm Beach for free, while the subjects randomly assigned to the control group, will not attend the event, but instead be required to a Gratitude Journaling experiment (Three Good Things Intervention).

Subjects will be recruited by posting a Survey Monkey link on the DWD Facebook page as well as via email and direct referral. All participants will complete a consent form and take a brief eligibility survey administered digitally through Survey Monkey's secure system. Both groups will be given surveys before DWD, immediately after DWD to assess acute changes, and after 1 month after DWD to assess longitudinal changes. The experimental group will attend DWD. After attending DWD, the experimental group will be asked to continue practicing "Priming " daily for a month. A One-page "priming" cheat sheet will be given to the subjects in the experimental group. The control group will be asked to engage in gratitude journaling (protocol below) every day for a month. The control group will NOT attend the event.

A third group called the Motivated Experimental Group (M Experimental) will consist of participants who registered and paid for Tony Robbins Date with Destiny (DWD). They are chosen as the motivated experimental as they will be paying full price for the event. Subjects will be recruited at the event, as well as through the facebook group. Two investigators will follow up with subjects monthly by phone to assure consistency.

All surveys will be administered electronically through survey monkey. Informed Consent forms will also be provided electronically to all subjects. All subjects that participate in this study will receive a free book and audiobook, regardless of the group they were in upon completion of the study.

Study variables

Primary variables:

• Mental Health (depression, anxiety, stress) scores.

IRBs will need to be Electronically Signed by all participants. All Variables will be collected electronically over Survey Monkey. All questions will be extracted and worded directly off of the physical copy of each questionnaire into Survey Monkey.

Enrollment: 45 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 80 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Ages 18+, male and female, English speaking, lives in the U.S.
• Experimental group: must be a registered participant in Tony Robbins Palm Beach DWD (Dec 5th-10th)
• Control group: PHQ 9 score > 4 (5 is the cutoff for mild depression).

Exclusion criteria

• Excluded from the experimental group if you DO NOT attend the event.
• Excluded from the control group if you DO attend the event.
• Excluded from the Motivated Experimental Group if they have been compensated for their admissions fee.
• No confounding medical conditions.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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45 participants in 3 patient groups

Experimental Group

Experimental group

Description:

Subjects will be admitted into the Tony Robbins event for free, or receive a voucher for an event in the future. The experimental group will attend the event. Subjects will be exposed to a variety of mind-body exercises and psychoeducational content including neural linguistic programming, designed to motivate, inspire, and improve the quality of people's lives. After attending the event, the experimental group will be asked to continue practicing "Priming " daily for a month. A One-page "priming" cheat sheet will be given to the subjects in the experimental group.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Tony Robbins Date with Destiny

Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

The control group will be asked to engage in gratitude journaling every day for a month. The control group will NOT attend the event. This exercise will take 10 minutes to complete. The subject will write down three things that went well each day and provide an explanation about why they went well. This will be written down in a journal. The subjects will follow these instructions: 1. Give the event a title (e.g., "co-worker complimented my work on a project") 2. In the space below, write down exactly what happened in as much detail as possible, including what you did or said, and if other people were involved, what they did or said. 3. Include how this event made you feel at the time and how this event made you feel later (including now, as you remember it).

Motivated Experimental Group

Active Comparator group

Description:

The Motivated Experimental Group (M Experimental) will consist of participants who registered and paid for Tony Robbins Date with Destiny (DWD). They are chosen as the motivated experimental as they will be paying full price for the event. The experimental group will attend the event. Subjects will be exposed to a variety of mind-body exercises and psychoeducational content including neural linguistic programming, designed to motivate, inspire, and improve the quality of people's lives. After attending the event, the experimental group will be asked to continue practicing "Priming " daily for a month. A One-page "priming" cheat sheet will be given to the subjects in the experimental group.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Tony Robbins Date with Destiny