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It’s a true privilege to be able to write this message to you as you begin this very special edition ofLife Lessons from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
I wrote this book during a hard time in my life. And so I was going deep, highly reflective and doing my very best to understand what makes a human life happy, excellent and peaceful. As you know, adversity is a superb servant, helping us strip away the distractions and shiny toys of the world to refocus us on what’s truly important. And it reminds us about the pursuits that truly matter.
Life Lessons from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari is a powerful manual for living your absolute best life. The chapters are short, enormously practical and hopefully truly inspiring. And the ideas I share, while simple, are ultimately game-changing once you have the courage to act on them and make them a part of your daily habits. Today could be the first day of your greatest life. I’m very excited for you.
More than anything else, I wrote this book to help you break free of any shackles that may be holding you back from expressing the potential that you were born into, so that you get big things done, experience a remarkable sense of joy that lasts and live a life that’s truly legendary. Yes, legendary.
So enjoy – and savor – the insights that follow. Make the course corrections you’re ready to make. And inspire everyone who is blessed to intersect with your path by the person that I know you’ll step into being.
Your fan,
Robin Sharma
P.S. I love connecting with my readers atrobinsharma.com. You’ll also find a wealth of training videos, free ebooks, podcasts and other learning resources that will help your transformation. And keep you energized. Again, my best wishes.
I honor you for picking up this book. In doing so, you have made the decision to live more deliberately, more joyfully and completely. You have decided to live your life by choice rather than by chance, by design rather than by default. And for this, I applaud you.
Since writing the two previous books inThe Monk Who Sold His Ferrari series, I have received countless letters from readers who saw their lives change through the wisdom they discovered. The comments of these men and women inspired and moved me. Many of the notes I received also encouraged me to distill all that I have learned about the art of living into a series of life lessons. And so, I set about compiling the best I have to give into a book that I truly believe will help transform your life.
The words on the following pages are heartfelt and written in the high hope that you will not only connect with the wisdom I respectfully offer but act on it to create lasting improvements in every life area. Through my own trials, I have found that it is not enough to know what to do – we must act on that knowledge in order to have the lives we want.
And so as you turn the pages of this third book inThe Monk Who Sold His Ferrari series, I hope you will discover a wealth of wisdom that will enrich the quality of your professional, personal and spiritual life. Please do write to me, send me an e-mail or visit with me at one of my seminars to share how you have integrated the lessons in this book into the way you live. I will do my very best to respond to your letters with a personal note. I wish you deep peace, great prosperity and many happy days spent engaged in a worthy purpose.
Robin Sharma
1.
When I was growing up, my father said something to me I will never forget, ‘Son, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die the world cries while you rejoice.’ We live in an age when we have forgotten what life is all about. We can easily put a person on the Moon, but we have trouble walking across the street to meet a new neighbor. We can fire a missile across the world with pinpoint accuracy, but we have trouble keeping a date with our children to go to the library. We have e-mail, fax machines and digital phones so that we can stay connected and yet we live in a time where human beings have never been less connected. We have lost touch with our humanity. We have lost touch with our purpose. We have lost sight of the things that matter the most.
And so, as you start this book, I respectfully ask you, Who will cry when you die? How many lives will you touch while you have the privilege to walk this planet? What impact will your life have on the generations that follow you? And what legacy will you leave behind after you have taken your last breath? One of the lessons I have learned in my own life is that if you don’t act on life, life has a habit of acting on you. The days slip into weeks, the weeks slip into months and the months slip into years. Pretty soon it’s all over and you are left with nothing more than a heart filled with regret over a life half lived. George Bernard Shaw was asked on his deathbed, ‘What would you do if you could live your life over again?’ He reflected, then replied with a deep sigh: ‘I’d like to be the person I could have been but never was.’ I’ve written this book so that this will never happen to you.
As a professional speaker, I spend much of my work life delivering keynote addresses at conferences across North America, flying from city to city, sharing my insights on leadership in business and in life with many different people. Though they all come from diverse walks of life, their questions invariably center on the same things these days: How can I find greater meaning in my life? How can I make a lasting contribution through my work? and How can I simplify so that I can enjoy the journey of life before it is too late?
My answer always begins the same way: Find your calling. I believe we all have special talents that are just waiting to be engaged in a worthy pursuit. We are all here for some unique purpose, some noble objective that will allow us to manifest our highest human potential while we, at the same time, add value to the lives around us. Finding your calling doesn’t mean you must leave the job you now have. It simply means you need to bring more of yourself into your work and focus on the things you do best. It means you have to stop waiting for other people to make the changes you desire and, as Mahatma Gandhi noted: ‘Be the change that you wish to see most in your world.’ And once you do, your life will change.
2.
Every Day, Be Kind to a Stranger
On his deathbed, Aldous Huxley reflected on his entire life’s learning and then summed it up in seven simple words: ‘Let us be kinder to one another.’ All too often, we believe that in order to live a truly fulfilling life we must achieve some great act or grand feat that will put us on the front covers of magazines and newspapers. Nothing could be further from the truth. A meaningful life is made up of a series of daily acts of decency and kindness, which, ironically, add up to something truly great over the course of a lifetime.
Everyone who enters your life