Friday 23 September 2011

The monk who wouldn’t buy a Ferrari


From my treasure trove
I’m no monk myself but I also wouldn’t buy a Ferrari either, given all the money in the world. Wisdom says you don’t live long enough to experience everything there is, yourself; which is why you need to learn from other folks’. It is last year that I adopted the philosophy of kaizen into my life. An ancient Oriental concept of constant and never ending improvement. The purpose was to enrich and empower myself and live an inspired life.


It has been a journey of transformation. During this journey I have made a few things, a part of my life that has added meaning to it. One of them being books, mostly self-help books. I have always loved reading; I only rediscovered my passion last year and consciously set a goal to read atleast one book per month. Modest and realistic. To this effect, I have read 11 books so far and I am bang on target up till now. I also decided to read only books that would help me add to my cup of self-knowledge (I had picked up two others; one by Upamanyu Chatterjee and another by Amitav Ghosh. One lies half-read till date and I don’t see myself finishing it anytime in this life, regretfully). The one book that stands apart in this category and will be in the foremost row of my library in the coming years is Robin Sharma’s “The monk who sold his Ferrari”. I was already walking the path to self-discovery and enlightenment and coming across this book only helped me re-inforce my faith in what I had already learnt and knew to be true.

I don’t like reviews myself so I don’t offer the same to my readers. I will only attempt to sum up the wisdom from Robin’s book in a nutshell and in my own words.

What it is that you want to leave behind or what it is that you want to be remembered for long after you are gone?

Do you in your twilight years wish to reflect back and regret or wish to recollect with pride and joy?

Will it be enough for you to just say you have lived and done what every Tom, Dick and Harry did?

What does a “fulfilled and satisfied” life mean to you?

What are those few things you would want to do before you die?

If you do not yet know the answers to these qs, it’s time you did some soul-searching.

Living in the times of instant coffee and nirvana I realize that the attention span of readers is getting smaller and smaller. Hence brevity is the order of the day.

If you are still walking this earth, you haven’t yet fulfilled your life’s purpose. Go find yours and live it.. Crisp, clear and simple enough?

From the writer's desk: This post has been emailed to Robin Sharma (wisdom@robinsharma.com) as an acknowledgement of the positive effect his book has had and my note of thanks for something I find worth revisiting every now and then.

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