The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

About the book

Book author: Robin Sharma

It’s a self helf book. A super-successful lawyer gets a heart attack and leaves his life behind by moving to a small village in Himalaya. While there he trains with some ancient monks, and learns a lot of insight. He comes back with this knowledge and talks about it with his former closest colleague and friend. The entire book is a dialogue between them, and him telling his story, and why he is much happier now.

Reflection and takeaways

I’m torn on this one: there is a lot of good “practical” advice, but it’s delivered a little too cheesy for my taste.

The TL;DR is basically: tend to your thoughts, follow your calling, practice kaizen, live with discipline, respect and protect your own time, don’t be selfish, and live in the present.

There’s nothing bad with any of that.

Some things about the book that made me pause a little bit:

You can never hit a target you can’t see. Find your target!

Visualise goals to program your subconscious

This quote I loved:

“The meaning of life is to live a meaningful life”

That doesn’t make sense at first, but it’s actually clever and has many levels to it. It’s the best answer I’ve seen to “the ultimate question” so far. Live a life that’s meaningful to you, and that’ll be the meaning of your life.

Discipline is a muscle that must be trained. You have to continually do so. Take a walk.

And:

Be proactive in your life, not reactive

Why did I pick it

My mom has nagged me for about 15 years to read this book and now I got around to it.

Verdict

3.0/5. I don’t regret reading it, but I’m not really going to recommend it either.