PNTV: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma (#43)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, as always, we've got a great book, The Monk who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. Great book. Six page Philosopher's Notes PDF with about ten of my favorite big ideas. Robin Sharma is awesome. He's one of my favorite authors and teachers. He's become a friend over the last several years, and I was first turned on to his work when I got a copy of the Greatness Guide several years ago when I was running my last business, the Greatness Guide. Awesome book. Highly recommend. It just really just big idea after big idea after big idea on how to go out and rock it. And I loved it so much, I immediately ordered copies for everyone on our team and. And sent it to a bunch of my friends. Just a good, good dude. Great wisdom, super practical. He's one of the top leadership coaches in the world. And this book is a fable. What's the subtitle? A fable about fulfilling your dreams and reaching your destiny. So if you're into Paulo Coelho and his book the Alchemist and all of his great stories, you'll like this book. And Paulo actually wrote one of the little testimonials on the book here. But essentially it's kind of like the Alchemist, but instead of having a shepherd finding his purpose and living that we have an attorney who becomes a yogi and goes to the Himalayas and comes back an enlightened man and then teaches his old protege, his young protege, the essence of virtuous living. It's a really cool story, packed with wisdom. Just a lot of big ideas in there. If you're feeling it, I think you dig it. For now, let's take a look at a few of my favorite big ideas from the book. So first, the seven timeless virtues of enlightened living are what kind of form, the basis and the structure of the book? The seven timeless virtues of enlightened living are the following. Number one. And we talk about these all the time. Robin nails them throughout the book. Number one is mastering your mind. Right. In my evolving philosophy, I describe that as having optimism, being able to shape the contents of our consciousness, mastering our mind. If we can't do that, it doesn't matter. None of this other stuff matters because we're constantly going to be wasting energy in anxiety and depression. All these things that are really grounded in whether or not we have control over our mind. So mastering our mind, number one. Number two, following your purpose, we've Got to have a clear sense of our purpose. We've got to be living in integrity with that as we talk about again and again in these notes. But we'll talk about that a little bit more today. Practicing Kaizen Robin the next one is living with discipline. Robin's all about consistency on the fundamentals. One of my favorite ideas from the Greatness Guide and the rest of his work is as he studied greatness, as he studied great people. What he's discovered is that although they're different in what they do, some are athletes, some are politicians, some are entrepreneurs, and they've demonstrated their greatness in different ways. They, they all have consistency on their fundamentals. They've determined what their fundamentals are for their success. An athlete has different ones than an entrepreneur or a spiritual teacher. But we all have a set of fundamentals that are unique to us that we need to master if we want to live an authentically extraordinary life. Robin's all about that. Consistency on the fundamentals has really been the theme of my life for the last 18 months. I've always been intense and had great visions of what's possible, but it didn't always have consistency on my fundamentals. So I'd go up and down way more than I wanted and way more than I can if I really want to live the type of life that I'm committed to living. So consistency on the fundamentals, that's huge. And we do that by practicing kaizen, which is a Japanese concept, essentially constant and never ending improvement, always doing your best and getting a little bit better, matching that with living with discipline, which, as you know, we talk about all the time. Discipline, bliss, upline, all that good stuff. Number five of the seven timeless virtues is respecting your time. Number six is selflessly serving others. And number seven is being in the present moment, embracing the present. So those are the seven timeless virtues that form kind of the structure of the book. And we're going to look at a few of my favorites in more detail right now. The first one is an idea of investing in yourself. Robin's got a great story in the book about the fact that his mentor, the mentor in the book rather comes back. He's now a yogi talking to his former protege. And he's saying, look, can you invest 672 hours of your life? That's one month, 672 hours. Are you willing to practice these ideas for 672 hours and invest this energy for one month and get benefits for the rest of your life in ways you can't even imagine. Most of us aren't willing to invest in ourselves. We talk about these ideas, we think about them, but we don't actually live them. We don't actually take the time to go out and rock it and make these ideas and virtues part of who we are. Robin's awesome about challenging us to actually live it, and he tells a great story. A lot of people say they're too busy to meditate or to do yoga or to exercise or to prepare certain foods or to take time for themselves. Whatever it is, they're too busy. They've got kids, they've got responsibilities, whatever. Robin says that saying you're too busy is like driving your car and saying, I don't have time to stop for gas because I've got to get to that place this fast. But you know what? You're running out of gas. And if you don't stop for gas, you're going to stop for gas anyway and you're going to need to walk to the gas station and back and it's going to be a heck of a lot less pleasant than if you took the time while you're at half full and went to the gas station. So saying we're too busy is a good sign that we really need to slow down and plug in and check in. We talk about this whole idea of emotional fuel gauges, right? Where we got full and we got empty. When we talk about Esther and Jerry Hicks, I love the idea and I want to talk about it a little bit more here. So a lot of times we wait until we're on empty to do the things that really nourish our souls, right? Or we go to empty and we get critically life threatening illnesses or whatever it is, right? The wake up calls. The idea here is don't wait until you're on empty. Find ways, invest in yourself. I, I don't let my gas tank in my car go below half. I like to fill it up. I don't like to worry about those kinds of things, right? Maybe a little bit less. That's it. In my life, the same thing. I have emotional fuel gauges where when I feel myself getting a little cranky and a little bit off, I know to check in and invest in myself and nourish myself, fill up with gas, exercise, move, journal, eat better, whatever it is, get more rest that you can do to invest in yourself. Practice the fundamentals, start so you're full. It's a big idea. We can talk about that for a weekend and I almost did, but the next one Is blueprinting about following your purpose? Robin says that everything is created twice. Everything has a blueprint, right? The house that you're living in or wherever you're living, that was constructed first in a blueprint and then in reality. Same thing with everything really. This table, the computer you're watching this on, everything was created twice. Once imagination and journaling and all that stuff, and once in physical reality. So if we want to create an extraordinary life, if we want to live a life of purpose, we've got to blueprint our ideal life first. We're not just going to stumble upon it. We've got to take the time, invest in ourselves again and get clarity, develop our self awareness and identify what would it look like if we were living our ideal lives? What are we most passionate about doing, which is the next big idea? The secret of happiness is all about, Robin says, doing what you love to do. That's how we live a life of purpose, using our greatest strengths, often in service to the world. That's the science of happiness and authentic happiness, which we do in these notes. Extraordinary book. We've got to know who we are, what we love to do, and do it often. That's what it's all about. So blueprinting is huge. Identifying what you love. I talk about it in the note quite a bit. I'll save that. Robin's also big on rising with the sun. He's one of the big reasons why I've developed my habits such that I'm getting up earlier and earlier. When I was in Bali, when I wrote this, I was all about it getting up at 5am it's been a lot more challenging to do that consistently since being here. And the irony is this morning I was up until 4.30am, which I joke about in the note. Not a frequent thing for me, but I got on a roll riding. It was pretty funny. But getting in nature's rhythms. Rising with the sun is awesome. Highly recommended. Strengthening your mind, as we mentioned. That's number one. That's the number one virtue. Robin talks about mantras and how our mind, our thoughts, we've got to treat them like our most prized possessions, right? Take care of our thoughts, look at the seeds we're planting that are going to bear fruit in our lives and question and observe and insert new thoughts with. When we're being critical of ourselves and others, when we're gossiping, when we're complaining, blaming, being anxious, fearful, etc. Tend to our thoughts carefully. Robin also says we're all geniuses, we talk about it more in the note and he says, ultimately what we're here to do is to serve. All this is fun, but it's all about alchemizing into a place we can give ourselves most fully to the world. So that's a quick look at the monk who sold his Ferrari. Hope you dug it. Share more soon.

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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

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