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I dedicate this book to you, the reader. May you apply the life lessons you discover within these pages to manifest the fullness of your talents while making a difference in the lives of all those around you.

This book is also dedicated to my children, Colby and Bianca, two of my greatest teachers. I love you.

The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live.

– Norman Cousins

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Testimonials

Also by Robin Sharma

Dedication

Epigraph

Foreword

Preface

1. Discover Your Calling

2. Every Day, Be Kind to a Stranger

3. Maintain Your Perspective

4. Practice Tough Love

5. Keep a Journal

6. Develop an Honesty Philosophy

7. Honor Your Past

8. Start Your Day Well

9. Learn to Say No Gracefully

10. Take a Weekly Sabbatical

11. Talk to Yourself

12. Schedule Worry Breaks

13. Model a Child

14. Remember, Genius Is 99 Percent Inspiration

15. Care for the Temple

16. Learn to Be Silent

17. Think About Your Ideal Neighborhood

18. Get Up Early

19. See Your Troubles as Blessings

20. Laugh More

21. Spend a Day Without Your Watch

22. Take More Risks

23. Live a Life

24. Learn from a Good Movie

25. Bless Your Money

26. Focus on the Worthy

27. Write Thank-You Notes

28. Always Carry a Book with You

29. Create a Love Account

30. Get Behind People’s Eyeballs

31. List Your Problems

32. Practice the Action Habit

33. See Your Children as Gifts

34. Enjoy the Path, Not Just the Reward

35. Remember That Awareness Precedes Change

36. ReadTuesdays with Morrie

37. Master Your Time

38. Keep Your Cool

39. Recruit a Board of Directors

40. Cure Your Monkey Mind

41. Get Good at Asking

42. Look for the Higher Meaning of Your Work

43. Build a Library of Heroic Books

44. Develop Your Talents

45. Connect with Nature

46. Use Your Commute Time

47. Go on a News Fast

48. Get Serious About Setting Goals

49. Remember the Rule of 21

50. Practice Forgiveness

51. Drink Fresh Fruit Juice

52. Create a Pure Environment

53. Walk in the Woods

54. Get a Coach

55. Take a Mini-Vacation

56. Become a Volunteer

57. Find Your Six Degrees of Separation

58. Listen to Music Daily

59. Write a Legacy Statement

60. Find Three Great Friends

61. ReadThe Artist’s Way

62. Learn to Meditate

63. Have a Living Funeral

64. Stop Complaining and Start Living

65. Increase Your Value

66. Be a Better Parent

67. Be Unorthodox

68. Carry a Goal Card

69. Be More than Your Moods

70. Savor the Simple Stuff

71. Stop Condemning

72. See Your Day as Your Life

73. Create a MasterMind Alliance

74. Create a Daily Code of Conduct

75. Imagine a Richer Reality

76. Become the CEO of Your Life

77. Be Humble

78. Don’t Finish Every Book You Start

79. Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

80. Make a Vow of Silence

81. Don’t Pick Up the Phone Every Time It Rings

82. Remember That Recreation Must Involve Re-creation

83. Choose Worthy Opponents

84. Sleep Less

85. Have a Family Mealtime

86. Become an Imposter

87. Take a Public Speaking Course

88. Stop Thinking Tiny Thoughts

89. Don’t Worry About Things You Can’t Change

90. Learn How to Walk

91. Rewrite Your Life Story

92. Plant a Tree

93. Find Your Place of Peace

94. Take More Pictures

95. Be an Adventurer

96. Decompress Before You Go Home

97. Respect Your Instincts

98. Collect Quotes That Inspire You

99. Love Your Work

100. Selflessly Serve

101. Live Fully so You Can Die Happy

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Exclusive Sample Chapter

Back Ads

Copyright

About the Publisher

FOREWORD

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.

PREFACE

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.
Discover Your Calling

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 has a lesson to teach and a story to tell. Every person you pass during the moments that make up your days represents an opportunity to show a little more of the compassion and courtesy that define your humanity. Why not start being more of the person you truly are during your days and doing what you can to enrich the world around you? In my mind, if you make even one person smile during your day or brighten the mood of even one stranger, your day has been a worthwhile one. Kindness, quite simply, is the rent we must pay for the space we occupy on this planet.

Become more creative in the ways you show compassion to strangers. Paying the toll for the person in the car behind you, offering your seat on the subway to someone in need and being the first to say hello are great places to start. Recently, I received a letter from a reader ofThe Monk Who Sold His Ferrari who lives in Washington State. In it she wrote: ‘I have a practice of tithing to people who have helped me along my spiritual path. Please accept the enclosed check of $100 with my blessing and gratitude.’ I quickly responded to her generous act by sending one of my audiotape programs in return so she received value for the gift she sent me. Her gesture was a great lesson in the importance of giving sincerely and from the heart.

3.
Maintain Your Perspective

One day, according to an old story, a man with a serious illness was wheeled into a hospital room where another patient was resting on a bed next to the window. As the two became friends, the one next to the window would look out of it and then spend the next few hours delighting his bedridden companion with vivid descriptions of the world outside. Some days he would describe the beauty of the trees in the park across from the hospital and how the leaves danced in the wind. On other days, he would entertain his friend with step-by-step replays of the things people were doing as they walked by the hospital. However, as time went on, the bedridden man grew frustrated at his inability to observe the wonders his friend described. Eventually he grew to dislike him and then to hate him intensely.

One night, during a particularly bad coughing fit, the patient next to the window stopped breathing. Rather than pressing the button for help, the other man chose to do nothing. The next morning the patient who had given his friend so much happiness by recounting the sights outside the window was pronounced dead and wheeled out of the hospital room. The other man quickly asked that his bed be placed next to the window, a request that was complied with by the attending nurse. But as he looked out the window, he discovered something that made him shake: the window faced a stark brick wall. His former roommate had conjured up the incredible sights that he described in his imagination as a loving gesture to make the world of his friend a little bit better during a difficult time. He had acted out of selfless love.

This story never fails to create a shift in my own perspective when I think about it. To live happier, more fulfilling lives, when we encounter a difficult circumstance, we must keep shifting our perspective and continually ask ourselves, ‘Is there a wiser, more enlightened way of looking at this seemingly negative situation?’ Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest physicists ever, is reported to have said that we live on a minor planet of a very average star located within the outer limits of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies. How’s that for a shift in perspective? Given this information, are your troubles really that big? Are the problems you have experienced or the challenges you might currently be facing really as serious as you have made them out to be?

We walk this planet for such a short time. In the overall scheme of things, our lives are mere blips on the canvas of eternity. So have the wisdom to enjoy the journey and savor the process.