Improving Your Life

Review of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny by Robert Sharma is an inspirational and uplifting book. It truly is a modern day fable in which a wealthy and powerful man named Julian Mantle completely transforms his life and himself after experiencing a heart attack that almost kills him.

After Julian’s near death experience he realizes how truly unhappy he is despite his enormous outer success. He decides to sell everything he owns, including his Ferrari, and go on a mission to find happiness, peace, and purpose. On a visit to the Himalayas he comes onto contact with the “Sages Of Sivana”.

He finds a teacher who is willing to share with him all of their wisdom. The teacher uses a fable to illustrate the Seven Virtues to Julian, one that can be broken into seven distinct parts, each part representing another one of the Seven Virtues. The theory behind the book is that if someone lives according to these seven virtues they will have a happier and more fulfilling life. For each of the seven virtues there are a number of daily practices included in the book to help cultivate each virtue and improve your life.

The Seven Virtues are: master your mind, follow your purpose, practice kazien, live with discipline, respect your time, selflessly serve others, and embrace the present. This book discusses the importance of each of these virtues on the road to life mastery and outlines step by step how to reach these goals.

I definitely enjoyed this book. If you have read many books in the self-empowerment and improvement genre some parts of this book might feel like you have read them before. However, this book puts them all into a context that is very simple to understand. The fictional story format, as opposed to the non-fiction format of most books about improving your life, was a fresh way to look at ideas you may already be familiar with. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari packs a lot of positive, inspirational ideas into a book that is a relatively short and easy read. It would even be a good book to share with your spouse and children.

It is full of wisdom but the story is simple enough for fairly young children to grasp. I would absolutely recommend this book, especially to those people who are looking for a book to help them get more organized and accountable with their goal setting.

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Six Tips To Improve Your Life

Although improving the quality of your life can seem like an overwhelming project, the truth of the matter is that there are things you can do every day that significantly improve your life and leave you feeling happier, healthier and more productive. Here are six ideas.

1. Get more sleep. Whether you’re a night owl or early bird, everyone needs at least six hours of sleep every day. If you have to rely on an alarm clock to wake up every morning, you probably aren’t getting enough. To get more, avoid bright lights late at night (such as those from the TV, computer, etc.) before bed, reduce caffeine consumption after noon, and work naps into your schedule when you can. If needed, make up any lost sleep time on the weekends.

2. Eat the rainbow. A healthy, balanced diet is easily achieved if you make sure to eat a rainbow of colors at every meal. It forces you to cook a variety of foods and use ample amounts of fruits and vegetables. It also ensures you get the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals that you need to keep your energy up and your health robust. For example: Red (tomatoes, apples), Orange (orange, pumpkin) Yellow (squash, lemon) Green (spinach, leeks) Purple (beets, kidney beans, eggplant).

3. Focus on now. Worrying about what’s already happened or what might happen later on taxes your brain and only leads to stress. Worse, all that worrying rarely changes a situation or helps you prepare for upcoming challenges. Instead, always try to focus on what you’re doing at the moment, and you’ll soon find yourself much calmer.

4. Get a pet. Having a companion animal is a fantastic stress reducer and (depending on species) can also help you work in more exercise into your day. And an animal’s unconditional love can make up for a lot when things are stressful in other parts of your life.

5. Watch less TV. TV viewing has been shown to lower metabolism, cause mild depression and it obviously can eat up a lot of valuable free time. Decide to watch less TV, and soon you’ll see both your attitude and your productivity improve.

6. Get outside every day. There’s no better mood improver than fresh air and sunshine. Always shoot to spend at least 15 minutes outside each day — even if the weather isn’t ideal, a quick walk around the block can lift your mind and spirit. Although improving your life can seem like an overwhelming project, the truth of the matter is that there are things you can do every day.

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Improve Your Life

There are many ways to improve your life, but few create lasting results. Often, that is due to the nature of change, and the desire to improve one’s situation drastically and quickly. Indeed, it can be hard to muster patience when things are truly out of control. But, even then, it is often the best path to pursue.

Rather than attempting big hurdles, progressive change comes into your life when you ease into it gradually. The more you embrace changes that make you feel better, the more you will build a solid foundation for reaching larger goals.

The first step to attaining gradual and reliable improvement in your life is to simply change one little thing. Not just any little thing, either, but something that you know you can easily do. Take a walk once a week, find a lower calorie and cholesterol margarine, fold the clothes you normally pile in your drawers, or put those scattered photos into an album. Little changes that make you gradually feel better are a wonderful way to reward yourself for embarking on the path of change, one step at a time.

Next, give up something little. It should be something that you don’t really like or need, but otherwise it can be anything. Give up that committee you really don’t want to be on, that junk in the back corner of your closet, the drive-through breakfast that empties your wallet, or the late hours you keep. If you find something you can do without, it will open up more space in your life. More space leads to more time, and supports your efforts to gradually move toward living your life in a way that brings you peach and happiness.

Finally, work on just one problem. Not a huge problem, but something that can be broken up into very tiny steps. If you need to do your taxes, gather just the needed forms that you received in the mail. If you need to paint the back-yard fence, paint just one panel. If you need to lose 30 pounds, resolve to lose just the first two. If you have never mustered the courage to get a massage, and your muscles are wracked in pain, do the research to find a reputable masseuse. It may not seem remarkable to take a single step toward one of your many larger goals, but one step always leads to another.

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