Hello there! I hope everyone had a good start to their week!
I just finished reading ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’ by Robin Sharma. I had a couple of issues with the narration but what I want to talk about here is the issue with some of the content. Overall, I think the author had good intentions and wanted to convey as many ideas as possible. But I had an issue with the parts where there were mentions of how much it would take to transform your life.
If you have not read it yet, it is a book about a workaholic lawyer eventually selling every possession and leaving for India to find himself after he had a heart attack in court. He comes back a few years after with a fully different personality and he looked much younger. This is already very unrealistic. A few years is most likely not enough to change everything about your life and personality. And looking much younger after a few years is also an issue for me. But this was made extreme on purpose to create shock value, perhaps. What bothered me more is when the main character gave practical tips on how to improve life, he kept saying that if his listener does all he says, he will have completely change in his patterns in a month, based on the idea that it takes 21 days to form a habit. But for one, we usually struggle to transform our habits, so take time to settle into a new habit after we put the intention. I tend to take a few weeks to even start applying the new pattern in its full force. When I first started meditating, it took me a year to find what really worked for me. Another thing is that even if you apply a habit perfectly for 21 days, human beings’ complexity often does not allow complete changes in a short time because other things come up when we change one thing. Personal development is a journey and often it takes years. Sometimes, even after years, we still have a lot of things to improve.
Anyways, I usually do not like it when people make claims that are too unrealistic or too optimistic. But let’s see what you have to say: how long do you think it usually takes to change a pattern and eventually your life?