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.
