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Globally recognised author and leadership expert, Robin Sharma is popular for his impactful work in the field of personal development. However, Robin Sharma is best known for his international bestseller ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’. His empowering writings and teachings inspire millions of people across the world, who seek success and fulfillment in both– their personal and professional lives.In this exclusive interview with us, Robin Sharma talks about his upcoming book ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy‘, spirituality, writing, and more. Excerpts from the interview:
1. Firstly, I would like to ask you– Robin, you are known to help people cultivate positive habits and achieve goals to lead a better, and more fulfilling life. So, can you share a bit about your personal journey and what inspired you to become a writer and speaker, especially in the field of personal development?
I teach leadership. I help people live fulfilling lives. I help them realize their gifts and their talents. And I talk about routines and I talk about practical tools that will help people shift from all the busyness that people are feeling into lives that are much more productive, much more creative, and much more fulfilling. So, I’m an author and let’s call it a teacher on leadership and personal growth and living a meaningful life. We live in a world with a lot of confusion right now. I’m trying through my books and through my social media to help people get grounded again and live their finest lives. Right.
2. So, who or what has been your greatest inspiration in your career as an author?
My readers are definitely my heroes. I think for anyone who picks up a book or watches a video and is open to making themselves better and to living more of their potential and to learning how to maybe build a big company or a small company or do something amazing, I think that takes a lot of courage and a lot of bravery. A lot of people right now are spending the best hours of their days addicted to their phones or watching social media or watching videos. And I think anyone who says, I want to let go of the way I’ve been living to live a better life or to do some dreams or to make a difference in the world, I think that’s inspirational.
My father, who’s from Jammu and Kashmir, has also been a huge inspiration in my life. He’s a man who taught me about the importance of service and being helpful to people. He used to repeat the words of Rabindranath Tagore. He’d say, ‘Robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Son, live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice’. So he’s been a huge figure in my life.
My mom has been a great influence. She just has these little bits of wisdom that have helped me a lot.
And then, you know, some of the great leaders like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Steve Jobs. Those are some of the people who really have inspired me along the way.
3. Robin, you were talking about how you help people achieve their goals, help them stay focused on their goals. So what are your tips of staying centered throughout the day, considering there’s so many distractions in our life these days?
Well, one thing, and you’re not going to be surprised that I mention it, but it’s becoming a member of the 5am club. Millions of people across India have read the ‘5am Club’ book, and it’s taught them the 20-20-20 formula, and it’s taught them the power of getting up early. In India, part of the culture in many ways is, I believe the word is Brahma Muharat. And this idea of getting up early, doing your prayers or meditation or visualization because the impact of the prayers or reading is much more profound at that time of silence. We live in a world where there’s just so much noise, and there’s so much stimuli. And so joining the 5am club and giving yourself from 5 to 6, what I call the victory hour, and exercising and writing in a journal and all the things I talk about in the book is really very powerful to use your word, to be grounded. Because then we go out in the world and we’ve worked on our mindset, we’ve prepared ourselves physically, we’ve connected with some wisdom, we’ve written in a journal, for example, we’ve done a prayer to center us. And then we go out in the day and we’re not reactive, we’re living on our terms. So the morning routine is incredibly powerful.
The second thing would be, you know, as simple as it sounds, remembering that an addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production. And turning off your phone and doing the real work versus fake work. And understanding that each day really is a gift. As simple as it sounds, each day is a gift. No one knows what tomorrow brings. And the hours we waste, we never get back. And life goes back very quickly. So what is your information diet? What is the content that you’re studying? When you’re at work, are you doing real work or are you doing fake work? Turning off your phone, setting a series of boundaries and protocols to use technology as your servant rather than allowing it to be your master. And then in my books, like in ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’, that’s my latest book, there’s a lot of tools on how do you create a work environment and work routines and life routines that will help you be much more productive, but also much more relaxed.
4. Robin, you said one thing right now, which is very impactful– that, you have to use technology as a tool to help you rather than being a slave of technology. But what about people who have to use technology for their work? How do they stay focused on their goals?
There’s a difference between real work and fake work. So even people who have to use technology, I would guarantee you probably over 90% are still not leveraging technology. They’re allowing technology to invade their focus, their creativity, and their productivity.
So we live in an amazing world. You can build a YouTube channel. I was reading recently Mr. Beast, the YouTuber, is worth 20 billion dollars. And you can influence the world with a phone. You can build an app that changes the world right now. Technology is extraordinary. I don’t think we should dismiss or degrade the value of technology.
The reality though is, I believe, the majority of people have become addicts. They’re addicted to the white screen. They’re addicted to the social media. They’re addicted to getting likes. They’re addicted to video games. They’re addicted to online shopping. And so what’s the cost on that? The cost is your creativity. The cost is you’re losing your human potential. The cost is we’re going to work and we’re not really doing real work. The cost is we’re not in the moment anymore. Some families are having a family meal and every family member is looking on the phone. Well you’re never going to get those moments of family time back.
5. Shifting the focus to your upcoming book titled ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’, which is set to release in April 2024, could you tell me a bit about the book? What was the idea behind writing it?
Well so I’ve spent one year of my life almost to the month working on this new book ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’. It’s definitely the most special book I’ve ever written and I think it’s an ideal book for this time. We’ve gone through a pandemic. There’s wars. There’s a cost of living crisis. There’s incredible economic volatility. A lot of people are scared. A lot of people are tired. And one thing is for sure a lot of people are saying, ‘Wow! I’ve chased money for many years. I’ve hustled and grinded but I’m still empty. I’m not happy. What is the real purpose? How can I find real success?’.
So, ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’ is really about the wealth money can’t buy (smiled)! It’s the things that society has told us that money and wealth will make us happy. That real success is a lot of money in the bank and a big house and a fast car. This book is really about the other forms of wealth. So, it’s built on a model called the eight forms of wealth that I’ve been teaching to billionaires and titans for over 15 years. Money is one form of wealth but there’s also seven other forms of wealth– like family, like seeing your work as your craft, like personal growth and getting to know your inner riches. And I believe that once you get all of these eight forms of wealth to a high level in your life then you’re truly happy and you’re truly rich.
6. So, what is true wealth for you Robin?
There’s a few answers I would say to that:
– A great family life. So, I think being successful in the world and losing your family along the way is no wealth.
– I think, for sure, good health. Someone once said to me health is the crown on the well person’s head that only the ill person can see. And so, if we have good health it’s definitely a form of wealth.
– For me, being an instrument of service, knowing that ‘The 5am Club’, or ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’, or ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’ has helped so many people do their dreams or get their health back or become happier people. Being of service is definitely a form of wealth in my life.
– Nature and long walks are very much to me a form of wealth.
7. Robin, very recently Mr. Narayan Murthy, he said that youngsters should focus or at least give work 70 hours a week to help India progress. So what are your views on it as a leadership expert? Do you think people should work more?
Well, I’m not a subscriber to the hustle and grind culture. In ‘The 5am Club’ there’s actually a model called the twin cycles of elite performance. And what I believe is when you work you should work intensely, swiftly, deeply. And that’s the high excellence cycle. But after that the key to longevity as a performer is recovery. And so, if all we’re doing is working we’re actually depleting our mental focus, our creativity and our productivity. As a matter of fact, the hustle and grind culture comes from the factory era. If we worked longer on the factory we’d be more productive, we’d make more widgets. But we live now in the intellectual era, the cognitive era, the information era, the digital age! And so I believe, just my personal opinion, it’s not about how long you work, it’s about how intensely, intelligently and wisely you work. And if you really want to have a long career without burning out then I think recovery is very important.
So, of course, hard work does have a bad name these days and I think hard work is really important. You can’t build a great company or a great team without hard work. Look at the great artists– hard workers. But if you really want to be super productive, get really good at resting, be a professional sleeper, enjoy time with your family as well, so you don’t lose the sparkle in your eye and then you come back to work and you’re fresh and you do better work.
8. Talking about mental health and work-life balance, how do you manage your personal and professional life? And if you would describe a day in your life.
Well how do I manage it? I have a lot of protocols that I write about in my books. One is, I have a very powerful scheduling process. So every Sunday night I spend one hour and I do a written schedule on a template of the week ahead. And that doesn’t just have working on my book or creating a piece of content or delivering a presentation… On that written schedule, my 5 a.m. meditations, family dinners, time to read– it all goes on the seven-day schedule ahead which creates balance.
Secondly, I have great habits. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I pay a lot of attention to my habits. And so, things like getting up early to do what I call MVP– meditation, visualization, and prayer– it brings a lot of peacefulness and balance to my life. I have a protocol called ‘The Second Wind Workout’. If you believe exercise is important, why would you only do it in the morning? So when I finish most of my work days, at least four days a week, I’ll go for a long walk or in the summertime I’ll go for a swim. So those would be some of the ways that I bring balance.
Three nights a week are reading nights. Every July and August, I take most of July and August off and I recover and I read and I travel. So those are some of the ways that I bring balance into my life. And I’m always trying to pay attention. ‘Okay, am I out of focus? How can I shift back to balance?’
9. Talking about reading and books, so what was the last book that you read and what kind of books do you like reading, in general?
What was the last book I read? Wow, I have so many books I’m reading. Well, one is a book on business. It’s called ‘Big Little Legends’. So I’ve been reading that. Walter Isaacson’s book on Elon Musk. I finished that as an audio book. It was very interesting. The Arnold Schwarzenegger book, ‘Be Useful’. I just finished that as an audio book. So those would be three of the books I just finished.
And I love reading from so many different areas. I read books on leadership. I read a lot of biographies and autobiographies because then I can learn about how great women and great men lived, which inspires me and it also gives me ideas. I read a lot of books on spirituality. I read books on macroeconomics. I’m very fascinated by ideas like: What will the world look like in a year? Will there be a recession? Will there be a depression? Have these cycles happened before? Which they have… How can you see into the future? How can a great company survive? How can a human being navigate what’s coming? We live in a very disruptive time. I don’t think we’ve had anything like this in the past 100 years… Someone once said ‘History may not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme’. So by reading history I can try to see into the future a little bit.
10. Moving to spirituality, how would you define it and what importance does it play in your life?
I think we have our egoic selves. That is the scared part of us, the insecure part of us, the human part of us. The egoic self is what’s in it for me. The egoic self is ‘How can I fit into the tribe and society? How can I be liked online and offline?’ The egoic self is ‘How can I keep myself smal,l so I don’t live my dreams and get hurt?’ And then I think we have a higher power. Well, that’s not necessarily God or the universe. I believe our higher powers just are better selves! And so, I think, when I talk about the 5am club or some of these protocols in my books, it’s really about turning down the voice of the egoic self and listening to the silent whispers of your stronger self. That’s the part of you that has the instinct to build a business or build a better life. The truer part of you knows to be loving, kind, decent, and ethical.
And so, spirituality for me is: Number one, getting to know who you truly are. Underneath the layers of doubt, fear, scaredness, and the hypnosis of society, giving us these programs to be limited and not loving and not daring and not great leaders. Spirituality also to me is about living for something bigger than yourself. I think about Mahatma Gandhi. I know you know this, but he died with under 10 possessions. I’ve been to Mother Teresa’s mission in Calcutta and I saw her bedroom and she had nothing in there. She had a bed and a wooden desk. And so spirituality is saying, ‘Okay, getting to a place where you devote your life to something bigger than yourself’. And that doesn’t mean you have to be Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi. It means if you’re a rickshaw driver, you say, ‘Okay, I’m making a living, but I’m also going to find a way to leave people better than I found them. And that’s going to be my mission’. So that to me is spirituality.
And the final thing I’d say, spirituality is living your values, not just reading a book about living your values and being the kind of person you know in your quiet moments you want to be. Spirituality is very practical. It has to do with leadership. Spirituality is, ‘Okay, here’s the person I want to be as a leader, a human being. Here’s the life I want to create’. And then you put down your phone and social media and you go out there and live it every day. One philosopher in India said, ‘Let your life be your message’.
11. Many times what happens is people are very focused on their goals. They’re working, they’re doing everything to achieve it. But sometimes that little voice creeps in where they start doubting themselves. It happens with a lot of writers as well. They start questioning whether, what they’re writing is good enough? So, how can one get over that self-doubt, according to you?
It’s an excellent question. I just finished the new book, ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’. I finished it, the final version, about a few weeks ago. And I have to tell you, many times I’d look at a version of the manuscript and I just say, this isn’t good or this chapter isn’t good. And I think that’s the human condition too. You know, scientifically the human brain has a negativity bias. And it served us very well thousands of years ago where we had to look for threats, predators and warring tribes. Here we are, we’re in New Delhi in the modern age and we still have the negativity bias. And so we have that monkey mind, that neocortex that says, ‘What if people don’t like me? What if my idea for the new app or the new love life, what if people laugh at me?’ I think it’s very human.
But what I would say is, how do you overcome it? You realize that your instinct is more powerful and more trustworthy than your intellect. We live in a world that says, trust your intellect. Your instinct is weak, it’s wrong. I’ve made the biggest mistakes in my life when I didn’t listen to my instinct and my intuition. Because your intellect is just what the world taught you was possible. But Roger Bannister did the impossible by running the mile under four minutes. India just put someone on the Moon, as I understand it– that was called impossible many years ago… So instinct is very powerful. I guess what I’m saying is, you have to protect your faith in what feels right to you. And that’s where meditation is powerful. Journaling is powerful. Releasing the energy vampires from your life is powerful. Putting down the social media and stop comparing yourself. Trust your instinct doesn’t mean you’re always going to get it right. Failure is the highway to success. But having faith in what feels right to you.
12. And my last question to you, Robin, is: What advice would you give to people who are aspiring authors?
Write a page today. Stop looking for books on how do you write. Stop asking everyone, ‘How do I do a book?’ Pull out a piece of paper or pull out your phone and write the first page.
1. Firstly, I would like to ask you– Robin, you are known to help people cultivate positive habits and achieve goals to lead a better, and more fulfilling life. So, can you share a bit about your personal journey and what inspired you to become a writer and speaker, especially in the field of personal development?
I teach leadership. I help people live fulfilling lives. I help them realize their gifts and their talents. And I talk about routines and I talk about practical tools that will help people shift from all the busyness that people are feeling into lives that are much more productive, much more creative, and much more fulfilling. So, I’m an author and let’s call it a teacher on leadership and personal growth and living a meaningful life. We live in a world with a lot of confusion right now. I’m trying through my books and through my social media to help people get grounded again and live their finest lives. Right.
2. So, who or what has been your greatest inspiration in your career as an author?
My readers are definitely my heroes. I think for anyone who picks up a book or watches a video and is open to making themselves better and to living more of their potential and to learning how to maybe build a big company or a small company or do something amazing, I think that takes a lot of courage and a lot of bravery. A lot of people right now are spending the best hours of their days addicted to their phones or watching social media or watching videos. And I think anyone who says, I want to let go of the way I’ve been living to live a better life or to do some dreams or to make a difference in the world, I think that’s inspirational.
My father, who’s from Jammu and Kashmir, has also been a huge inspiration in my life. He’s a man who taught me about the importance of service and being helpful to people. He used to repeat the words of Rabindranath Tagore. He’d say, ‘Robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Son, live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice’. So he’s been a huge figure in my life.
My mom has been a great influence. She just has these little bits of wisdom that have helped me a lot.
And then, you know, some of the great leaders like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Steve Jobs. Those are some of the people who really have inspired me along the way.
3. Robin, you were talking about how you help people achieve their goals, help them stay focused on their goals. So what are your tips of staying centered throughout the day, considering there’s so many distractions in our life these days?
Well, one thing, and you’re not going to be surprised that I mention it, but it’s becoming a member of the 5am club. Millions of people across India have read the ‘5am Club’ book, and it’s taught them the 20-20-20 formula, and it’s taught them the power of getting up early. In India, part of the culture in many ways is, I believe the word is Brahma Muharat. And this idea of getting up early, doing your prayers or meditation or visualization because the impact of the prayers or reading is much more profound at that time of silence. We live in a world where there’s just so much noise, and there’s so much stimuli. And so joining the 5am club and giving yourself from 5 to 6, what I call the victory hour, and exercising and writing in a journal and all the things I talk about in the book is really very powerful to use your word, to be grounded. Because then we go out in the world and we’ve worked on our mindset, we’ve prepared ourselves physically, we’ve connected with some wisdom, we’ve written in a journal, for example, we’ve done a prayer to center us. And then we go out in the day and we’re not reactive, we’re living on our terms. So the morning routine is incredibly powerful.
The second thing would be, you know, as simple as it sounds, remembering that an addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production. And turning off your phone and doing the real work versus fake work. And understanding that each day really is a gift. As simple as it sounds, each day is a gift. No one knows what tomorrow brings. And the hours we waste, we never get back. And life goes back very quickly. So what is your information diet? What is the content that you’re studying? When you’re at work, are you doing real work or are you doing fake work? Turning off your phone, setting a series of boundaries and protocols to use technology as your servant rather than allowing it to be your master. And then in my books, like in ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’, that’s my latest book, there’s a lot of tools on how do you create a work environment and work routines and life routines that will help you be much more productive, but also much more relaxed.
4. Robin, you said one thing right now, which is very impactful– that, you have to use technology as a tool to help you rather than being a slave of technology. But what about people who have to use technology for their work? How do they stay focused on their goals?
There’s a difference between real work and fake work. So even people who have to use technology, I would guarantee you probably over 90% are still not leveraging technology. They’re allowing technology to invade their focus, their creativity, and their productivity.
So we live in an amazing world. You can build a YouTube channel. I was reading recently Mr. Beast, the YouTuber, is worth 20 billion dollars. And you can influence the world with a phone. You can build an app that changes the world right now. Technology is extraordinary. I don’t think we should dismiss or degrade the value of technology.
The reality though is, I believe, the majority of people have become addicts. They’re addicted to the white screen. They’re addicted to the social media. They’re addicted to getting likes. They’re addicted to video games. They’re addicted to online shopping. And so what’s the cost on that? The cost is your creativity. The cost is you’re losing your human potential. The cost is we’re going to work and we’re not really doing real work. The cost is we’re not in the moment anymore. Some families are having a family meal and every family member is looking on the phone. Well you’re never going to get those moments of family time back.
5. Shifting the focus to your upcoming book titled ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’, which is set to release in April 2024, could you tell me a bit about the book? What was the idea behind writing it?
Well so I’ve spent one year of my life almost to the month working on this new book ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’. It’s definitely the most special book I’ve ever written and I think it’s an ideal book for this time. We’ve gone through a pandemic. There’s wars. There’s a cost of living crisis. There’s incredible economic volatility. A lot of people are scared. A lot of people are tired. And one thing is for sure a lot of people are saying, ‘Wow! I’ve chased money for many years. I’ve hustled and grinded but I’m still empty. I’m not happy. What is the real purpose? How can I find real success?’.
So, ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’ is really about the wealth money can’t buy (smiled)! It’s the things that society has told us that money and wealth will make us happy. That real success is a lot of money in the bank and a big house and a fast car. This book is really about the other forms of wealth. So, it’s built on a model called the eight forms of wealth that I’ve been teaching to billionaires and titans for over 15 years. Money is one form of wealth but there’s also seven other forms of wealth– like family, like seeing your work as your craft, like personal growth and getting to know your inner riches. And I believe that once you get all of these eight forms of wealth to a high level in your life then you’re truly happy and you’re truly rich.
6. So, what is true wealth for you Robin?
There’s a few answers I would say to that:
– A great family life. So, I think being successful in the world and losing your family along the way is no wealth.
– I think, for sure, good health. Someone once said to me health is the crown on the well person’s head that only the ill person can see. And so, if we have good health it’s definitely a form of wealth.
– For me, being an instrument of service, knowing that ‘The 5am Club’, or ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’, or ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’ has helped so many people do their dreams or get their health back or become happier people. Being of service is definitely a form of wealth in my life.
– Nature and long walks are very much to me a form of wealth.
7. Robin, very recently Mr. Narayan Murthy, he said that youngsters should focus or at least give work 70 hours a week to help India progress. So what are your views on it as a leadership expert? Do you think people should work more?
Well, I’m not a subscriber to the hustle and grind culture. In ‘The 5am Club’ there’s actually a model called the twin cycles of elite performance. And what I believe is when you work you should work intensely, swiftly, deeply. And that’s the high excellence cycle. But after that the key to longevity as a performer is recovery. And so, if all we’re doing is working we’re actually depleting our mental focus, our creativity and our productivity. As a matter of fact, the hustle and grind culture comes from the factory era. If we worked longer on the factory we’d be more productive, we’d make more widgets. But we live now in the intellectual era, the cognitive era, the information era, the digital age! And so I believe, just my personal opinion, it’s not about how long you work, it’s about how intensely, intelligently and wisely you work. And if you really want to have a long career without burning out then I think recovery is very important.
So, of course, hard work does have a bad name these days and I think hard work is really important. You can’t build a great company or a great team without hard work. Look at the great artists– hard workers. But if you really want to be super productive, get really good at resting, be a professional sleeper, enjoy time with your family as well, so you don’t lose the sparkle in your eye and then you come back to work and you’re fresh and you do better work.
8. Talking about mental health and work-life balance, how do you manage your personal and professional life? And if you would describe a day in your life.
Well how do I manage it? I have a lot of protocols that I write about in my books. One is, I have a very powerful scheduling process. So every Sunday night I spend one hour and I do a written schedule on a template of the week ahead. And that doesn’t just have working on my book or creating a piece of content or delivering a presentation… On that written schedule, my 5 a.m. meditations, family dinners, time to read– it all goes on the seven-day schedule ahead which creates balance.
Secondly, I have great habits. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I pay a lot of attention to my habits. And so, things like getting up early to do what I call MVP– meditation, visualization, and prayer– it brings a lot of peacefulness and balance to my life. I have a protocol called ‘The Second Wind Workout’. If you believe exercise is important, why would you only do it in the morning? So when I finish most of my work days, at least four days a week, I’ll go for a long walk or in the summertime I’ll go for a swim. So those would be some of the ways that I bring balance.
Three nights a week are reading nights. Every July and August, I take most of July and August off and I recover and I read and I travel. So those are some of the ways that I bring balance into my life. And I’m always trying to pay attention. ‘Okay, am I out of focus? How can I shift back to balance?’
9. Talking about reading and books, so what was the last book that you read and what kind of books do you like reading, in general?
What was the last book I read? Wow, I have so many books I’m reading. Well, one is a book on business. It’s called ‘Big Little Legends’. So I’ve been reading that. Walter Isaacson’s book on Elon Musk. I finished that as an audio book. It was very interesting. The Arnold Schwarzenegger book, ‘Be Useful’. I just finished that as an audio book. So those would be three of the books I just finished.
And I love reading from so many different areas. I read books on leadership. I read a lot of biographies and autobiographies because then I can learn about how great women and great men lived, which inspires me and it also gives me ideas. I read a lot of books on spirituality. I read books on macroeconomics. I’m very fascinated by ideas like: What will the world look like in a year? Will there be a recession? Will there be a depression? Have these cycles happened before? Which they have… How can you see into the future? How can a great company survive? How can a human being navigate what’s coming? We live in a very disruptive time. I don’t think we’ve had anything like this in the past 100 years… Someone once said ‘History may not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme’. So by reading history I can try to see into the future a little bit.
10. Moving to spirituality, how would you define it and what importance does it play in your life?
I think we have our egoic selves. That is the scared part of us, the insecure part of us, the human part of us. The egoic self is what’s in it for me. The egoic self is ‘How can I fit into the tribe and society? How can I be liked online and offline?’ The egoic self is ‘How can I keep myself smal,l so I don’t live my dreams and get hurt?’ And then I think we have a higher power. Well, that’s not necessarily God or the universe. I believe our higher powers just are better selves! And so, I think, when I talk about the 5am club or some of these protocols in my books, it’s really about turning down the voice of the egoic self and listening to the silent whispers of your stronger self. That’s the part of you that has the instinct to build a business or build a better life. The truer part of you knows to be loving, kind, decent, and ethical.
And so, spirituality for me is: Number one, getting to know who you truly are. Underneath the layers of doubt, fear, scaredness, and the hypnosis of society, giving us these programs to be limited and not loving and not daring and not great leaders. Spirituality also to me is about living for something bigger than yourself. I think about Mahatma Gandhi. I know you know this, but he died with under 10 possessions. I’ve been to Mother Teresa’s mission in Calcutta and I saw her bedroom and she had nothing in there. She had a bed and a wooden desk. And so spirituality is saying, ‘Okay, getting to a place where you devote your life to something bigger than yourself’. And that doesn’t mean you have to be Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi. It means if you’re a rickshaw driver, you say, ‘Okay, I’m making a living, but I’m also going to find a way to leave people better than I found them. And that’s going to be my mission’. So that to me is spirituality.
And the final thing I’d say, spirituality is living your values, not just reading a book about living your values and being the kind of person you know in your quiet moments you want to be. Spirituality is very practical. It has to do with leadership. Spirituality is, ‘Okay, here’s the person I want to be as a leader, a human being. Here’s the life I want to create’. And then you put down your phone and social media and you go out there and live it every day. One philosopher in India said, ‘Let your life be your message’.
11. Many times what happens is people are very focused on their goals. They’re working, they’re doing everything to achieve it. But sometimes that little voice creeps in where they start doubting themselves. It happens with a lot of writers as well. They start questioning whether, what they’re writing is good enough? So, how can one get over that self-doubt, according to you?
It’s an excellent question. I just finished the new book, ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’. I finished it, the final version, about a few weeks ago. And I have to tell you, many times I’d look at a version of the manuscript and I just say, this isn’t good or this chapter isn’t good. And I think that’s the human condition too. You know, scientifically the human brain has a negativity bias. And it served us very well thousands of years ago where we had to look for threats, predators and warring tribes. Here we are, we’re in New Delhi in the modern age and we still have the negativity bias. And so we have that monkey mind, that neocortex that says, ‘What if people don’t like me? What if my idea for the new app or the new love life, what if people laugh at me?’ I think it’s very human.
But what I would say is, how do you overcome it? You realize that your instinct is more powerful and more trustworthy than your intellect. We live in a world that says, trust your intellect. Your instinct is weak, it’s wrong. I’ve made the biggest mistakes in my life when I didn’t listen to my instinct and my intuition. Because your intellect is just what the world taught you was possible. But Roger Bannister did the impossible by running the mile under four minutes. India just put someone on the Moon, as I understand it– that was called impossible many years ago… So instinct is very powerful. I guess what I’m saying is, you have to protect your faith in what feels right to you. And that’s where meditation is powerful. Journaling is powerful. Releasing the energy vampires from your life is powerful. Putting down the social media and stop comparing yourself. Trust your instinct doesn’t mean you’re always going to get it right. Failure is the highway to success. But having faith in what feels right to you.
12. And my last question to you, Robin, is: What advice would you give to people who are aspiring authors?
Write a page today. Stop looking for books on how do you write. Stop asking everyone, ‘How do I do a book?’ Pull out a piece of paper or pull out your phone and write the first page.
Robin Sharma on spirituality: For me, it’s getting to know who you truly are
Watch Robin Sharma on ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy’, spirituality, writing, and more
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