Useful motivational guide. Review on Discover Your Destiny with the Monk who Sold his Ferrari - Robin Sharma

Discover Your Destiny With The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma; Jaico Books; Price: Rs.175; 220 pp

Though it can hardly be classified as a book-reading nation — ''national bestsellers'' are titles which sell a modest 3,000 copies — there’s no denying that India is a huge market for self-improvement books. Legend has it that the most successful title in Indian book publishing history is How to Improve Your Correspondence, first published in the 1930s and since reprinted hundreds of times. Cruelly denied half-decent education by an inherently unequal system of secondary and collegiate education, desperate youths in the vast hinterland lap up self-improvement books in a big way.

Into this scenario comes Discover Your Destiny With The Monk who sold his Ferrari, a sequel to the bestseller The Monk who sold his Ferrari authored by Robin Sharma. A US-based lawyer-turned-motivational speaker Sharma is ranked among the world’s premier self-improvement gurus and has authored six other books, including The Monk who sold his Ferrari, which reportedly sold over four million copies worldwide. Founder-CEO of Sharma Leadership International (SLI), Sharma is the star of his own PBS television show and lectures over 200,000 people a year at his overbooked international seminars which attract audiences of up to 10,000. He has also shared speaking platforms with high-profile individuals including former US president Bill Clinton, holistic healer Dr. Deepak Chopra, author Richard Carlson and counsellor Dr. John Gray.

Promoted as a handbook which offers seven steps to self-realisation, Discover Your Destiny is recounted as a narrative, detailing the story of Dar Sanderson, a 43-year-old successful entrepreneur who has a nice home, and a steadily increasing income but suffers on the personal and home fronts. Fed up with his odd timings and obsessive business overdrive, his wife walks out on him with their three children. Deeply depressed, Sanderson takes to drinking, loses his fitness and health and attempts a desperate suicide bid by shooting himself in a shabby motel room. Just as he is about to pull the trigger, he feels dizzy and collapses on the floor. As he lies writhing with fearful seizures he experiences a revelatory vision. ''Your life is a treasure and you are so much more than you know,'' intones a voice which pierces his deepest being.

Later a chance encounter with Julian Mantle — a hotshot lawyer turned monk who has learnt the secrets of lasting success from sages in the Himalayas — sets Sanderson upon an exciting and educative six-month odyssey to discover himself and reclaim the life of his dreams. As he journeys down the path to self-discovery, Sanderson learns about the seven paths every person must walk if he/ she wishes to experience lasting happiness and personal and spiritual development.

This ten-chapter book comprises a short introduction by the author and two chapters introducing readers to the main characters – Sanderson and Mantle. Subsequently each chapter details one of the seven stages of the journey towards self-realisation. Each stage is explained elaborately using a simple, quintessentially American narrative style laced with a generous dose of quotable quotes from several epics, religious books and famous personalities including Patanjali, Oscar Wilde and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The seven stages of self-awakening which form the core of Discover Your Destiny are: Living a Lie; The Choicepoint, Awareness of Wonder and Possibility, Instruction from Masters, Transformation and Rebirth, The Trial and finally The Great Awakening of the Self.

In the ten chapters, Sharma provides useful answers to questions that inhibit every mind and prevent people from innovating or undertaking great enterprises for fear of failure or ridicule. There are useful pointers on ‘How to trust in your limitless potential’; ‘How to avoid the crime of self-betrayal’; ‘ How to realize the life of your dreams’; ‘How to transform fear into fortune’; ‘How to discover your true calling’; ‘How to turn events that test you into experiences that reward you’; ‘How to find the love you want’, among others.

I can’t help admitting that despite its folksy tenor, Discover Your Destiny provides a useful road map to self-improvement. This book could well be a catalyst for self-transformation and could stimulate readers to stop leading mundane lives by lighting a path for those lacking self-belief and wallowing in despair. It has potential to deliver the happiness, prosperity and inner peace to which everyone is entitled. Sharma has successfully combined eastern wisdom with western management principles in this absorbing practical guide, which offers the reader a simple blueprint for a beautiful life. A motivational guide, especially for the timorous and faint-hearted who lack courage to follow their dreams, it could, however have done with better typography and layout. But then Jaico is Jaico.