Who Will Cry When You Die?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

by Robin Sharma

The golden thread of a highly successful and meaningful life is self-discipline. Discipline allows you to do all those things you know in your heart you should do but never feel like doing. Without self-discipline, you will not set clear goals, manage your time effectively, treat people well, persist through the tough times, care for your health or think positive thoughts.

Remember, if your life is worth thinking about, it is worth writing about.

Be a person of your word rather than being “all talk and no action.” As Mother Teresa said, “there should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point.

And thinking about all those things that you wish never happened to you is actually blocking all the things you want to happen from entering into your life.

Learning to say no to the non-essentials will give you more time to devote to the things that have the power to truly improve the way you live and help you leave the legacy you know in your heart you are destined to leave.

“You are not here to merely make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

With a healthy dose of inspiration, you will quickly raise your life to a whole new plane of living.

Remember, there are no real failures in life, only results. There are no true tragedies, only lessons. And there really are no problems, only opportunities waiting to be recognized as solutions by the person of wisdom.

We all have a deep-seated need to feel important.

How high you will rise in your life will be determined not by how hard you work but by how well you think.

We have two ears and one mouth for a reason: to listen twice as much as we speak.

“Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it,” observed David Starr Jordan.

The mark of a strong character lies not in doing what is fun to do or what is easy to do. The sign of deep moral authority appears in the individual who consistently does what he ought to be doing rather than what he feels like doing.

The smallest of actions is always better than the boldest of intentions.

You will never be able to eliminate a weakness you don’t even know about. The first step to eliminating a negative habit is to become aware of it. Once you develop an awareness about the behavior you are trying to change, you will be well on your way to replacing it with one that is more helpful.

“Anyone can become angry — that’s easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not easy,”

The problem with losing your temper on a daily basis is that it becomes a habit. And like most habits, a time arrives when it becomes second nature.

The ancient sages would only speak if the words they were about to utter passed three gates. At the first gate, they asked themselves, Are these words truthful? If so, the words could then pass on to the second gate. At the second gate, the sages asked, Are these words necessary? If so, they would then pass on to the third gate, where they would ask, Are these words kind? If so, then only would they leave their lips and be sent out into the world.

“He who asks may be a fool for five minutes. He who doesn’t is a fool for a lifetime,”

“Every arrow that hits the bull’s eye is the result of one hundred misses.”

“The job of leadership today is not just to make money, it’s to make meaning.”

In the old days, most of us were content to have a job that simply paid the bills. But now, we crave so much more in our work. We want fulfillment, creative challenge, growth, joy and a sense that we are living for something more than ourselves. In a word, we seek meaning. One of the best ways to find the higher meaning in the work you do is to use the technique of creative questioning to become aware of the impact your work has on the world around you. Ask yourself questions like, Who ultimately benefits from the products and services my company offers? or What difference do my daily efforts make? Once you do so, you will start noticing the connection between the work you do and the lives you touch.

By concentrating on the value your work adds and the contribution you make, you will see quantum improvements in your satisfaction and motivation levels.

Ruskin put it this way, “The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race.”

So many of the highly successful and enlightened people I know share a common habit: they listen to audiocassettes in their cars. In doing so, they transform their driving time into learning time and make their automobiles moving universities. Turning your car into a “college on wheels” will be one of the best investments you will ever make. Rather than arriving at work tired, frustrated and dispirited, listening to educational audio-cassettes will make your commute fun and keep you inspired, focused and alert to the endless opportunities around you.

my opinion, setting clearly defined goals for all the areas of your life works for three reasons. First, it restores a sense of focus in your world, a world that has become complicated by too many options. In this age we live in, there are simply far too many things to do at any given time. There are too many distractions that compete for our attention. Goals clarify our desires and, in doing so, help us to focus on only those activities that will lead us to what we want.

“A clear plan relieves you of the torment of choice.”

“Goals and plans take the worry out of living.”

As human beings, we are genetically programmed to resist change and maintain a state of equilibrium.

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it.”

What you focus on in your life grows, what you think about expands and what you dwell on determines your destiny.

Someone once said to me that the first fifty years of life are dedicated to building one’s legitimacy while the last fifty are devoted to building one’s legacy.

One’s sense of mortality is a great source of wisdom.

In the new economy you now find yourself in, you will be compensated not by how hard you work but by how much value you add to the world around you. Think about it. If you are currently being paid twenty dollars an hour, this money is being given to you not simply because you showed up at your desk for those sixty minutes but because you have added twenty dollars’ worth of perceived value during those sixty minutes. So, the monetary reward you receive is determined not by how long you work but by how much value you add.

So to be paid more money in your work, you must add more value to the world. And the best way to begin adding value to the world is to start becoming a more valuable person. Acquire skills no one else has. Read books no one else is reading. Think thoughts no one else is thinking. Or, to put it another way, you cannot have all that you want if you remain the person you are. To get more from life, you need to be more in life.

Be a Better Parent The way you raise your children is the way you raise your future generations. Since few of us have had formal training in the fine art of parenting, most of us simply treat our children the way our parents treated us. We know of no other way to do it. Although being a parent is a great joy, it is also a privilege that involves tremendous responsibility. While I would do anything for my two children, that willingness is not enough. We need to develop the skills of excellent parents. We cannot just hope that the way we are raising our kids is the right way and pray that we will be lucky enough that they become thoughtful, caring and wise adults. We must take the initiative to improve our parenting abilities by attending seminars, reading books and listening to audiocassettes by the leading thinkers in this field. Then we must have the courage to keep trying to refine the ideas we learn in the laboratory of our own lives in order to find the parenting strategies that best suit our families. I know your life is busy and there is too much to do in too little time. But those miraculous years of your sons’ and daughters’ childhoods will never come again. And if you do not devote the time and effort to becoming the best parent you know you can be, one day you will deeply regret the lost opportunity. As one father who attended a seminar I gave in Toronto said, “When my son was growing up, he constantly asked me to give him piggyback rides. Though I knew how much ...

To live a richer, more rewarding life, it is essential that you run your own race. Stop bending to the demands of social pressure at the expense of your uniqueness.

The wisdom of life so succinctly expressed. And yet most of us live our lives like one long air raid drill, filling our days with activities that seem important in the moment but that count for little in the overall scheme of our lives.

We are the creators of the thoughts that flow through our minds and, given this fact, we can change our thoughts if we choose to do so.

At the end of the day, the only thing we can take with us are our memories of all those great life experiences that add meaning to our lives.

Many people think that it takes months and years to change your life. Respectfully, I disagree. You change your life the second you make a decision from the depths of your heart to be a better, more dedicated human being. What takes the months and years are the efforts you must apply to maintain that decision. And the best life change decision you will ever make is the one to live every moment of your days to the fullest.

We really don’t discover how powerful and resilient we are until we face some adversity that fills our minds with stress and our hearts with pain. Then we realize that we all have within us the courage and the capacity to handle even the greatest curves life may throw our way.

we need to keep our ears and eyes open to the realities of life. If we don’t act on life and take action to make things happen, it will act on us and give us results we might not want.