I picked up this book couple of weeks ago, expecting it to be a summary of a course/lectures by Robin Sharma. However, it turned out to be a very different experience to read it. It has forced me to do detailed introspection and modification of my own internal behaviors. The book professes achieving personal mastery and success with practical enlightenment of various concepts.

The book begins with a back story of a failing entrepreneur who is at the brink of giving it all up and an artist who is missing a buzz in his creativity. They end up attending a personal mastery conference to see if there is any hope left to turn their lives into more fruitful endeavor. This is where they meet a ‘Spell Binder’ who leads them to  this billionaire who shares the lights of his knowledge and convictions.

Honestly, I would like to come back to this book couple of years later to assess and get re-inspired from the text. This book talks to people of every age and walks of life and is very relevant to young adults who have a full life ahead of you to plan and execute.

Recently, I developed a habit of highlighting the important text and messages which books want to convey. On this book, it felt like highlighting most of the words of the book. So, in this review I am going to summarize the key item/learning points which I felt are too special to be cherished by everyone and implemented by everyone [Keeping jazzy management lingos aside].

• Each of you has a call on your lives. Every one of you carries an instinct for excellence within you spirits. No one in this room needs to stay frozen in average and succumb to the mass mediocratization of behavior evident in society along with collective de-professionalization of business.
• Limitation is nothing more than a mentality that too many good people practice daily until they believe its reality. Your excuses are seducers, your fears are liars and your doubts are thieves to your pursuit of excellence. Most people take limits of their vision to be limits of the world. A few don’t. Join them.
• Ideas or ambitions without implementation is ridiculous delusion.
• Develop and Re-engineer your 4 Internal Empires. i.e. Mindset, Healthset, Heartset and Soulset.
• Addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production.
• Excuses breed no genius. Just because you haven’t installed the early rising habit before doesn’t mean you can’t do it now.
• To have the results the Top 5% of producers have, you must start doing what 95% of the people are unwilling to do.
• Ideation –> Implementation –> Impact
• Dedication and discipline beats brilliance and giftedness every day of the week.
• Stop managing your time, and start managing your focus.
• Sweat more in practice, bleed less in war.
• Everything you do in your outer world is an absolute consequence of what’s happening within you.
• Small daily, seemingly insignificant improvements, when done consciously over time yield staggering results.
• The illustrious and noble souls of our world become strong, brave and moral whilst standing resolute in the storms of adversity, difficulty and doubt. Victory demands consistency and persistency.
• Personal discipline is a muscle. The more you stretch it, stronger it grows.
• You don’t have the brain you want, you have the brain you deserve/earned.
• Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, Explore, Dream and Discover.

There are many such excerpts from the book which make you think and react to modify yourself to achieve excellence and mastery. This book does discuss many theories and concepts which have been put to use by author in his own coaching and public speaking sessions.

In the end to summarize, I really enjoyed this book and recommend to read it cover-to-cover! More than beginning to wake at 5am to complete a Victory Hour, this book inspired some critical thinking around the kind of human being I’d like to be in the world. It challenged some of the bad habits I’ve fallen into (e.g. getting distracted by the news or social media), encouraged me to more critically examine my goals and take concrete steps toward achieving, and has reinvigorated my drive for lifelong learning. While most of the content wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before, I enjoyed the way he weaved the concepts together through storytelling, making the content accessible to anyone regardless of career path and life circumstances.

With this, the book will go back into my personal collections. Please do let me know if you need to borrow.

Nihit M