Discover Your Destiny with the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: The 7 Stages of Self-Awakening

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Robin Sharma gets to the heart of the matter in his introduction:
“Though I have my human limitations,” he says, “I will also admit
to you that I have come a long way in a short period of time in terms of
removing the blocks that have kept me small (and so can you if you
follow the extraordinary process explained on the pages that follow.”
Sharma, like Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, and Dr. Phil, has made, it must
be said, a lucrative career out of telling the affluent and the
successful how much more affluent and successful they can be, while
feeling good about it. It is difficult not to be cynical when a
self-help book concludes with pages of ads for “the 7-Day System to
Awaken Your Biggest Life, $99.95 Cdn, $69.95 USD,” and with
instructions for retaining the author as a personal coach.

Sharma, who struck it rich with The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, has
figured out that if something works it is probably worth a repeat
performance. And so the monk reappears in the titles of most of his
other books, from Leadership Wisdom from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari,
through Family Wisdom from the Monk ..., and now this volume. The
formula is the same throughout: be authentic to yourself, conquer your
fears, serve others.

Dar Sanderson is a suicidal businessman who is singled out by
Sharma’s fictional self, Julian Mantle, for special coaching, which
takes the form of long conversations in which advice is proffered and
lessons are learned. The dialogue in most books of this genre is pretty
much unbearable, and Sharma’s writing is among the worst. “Oooh,
that’s a good one, Julian,” Dar says at one point, after his mentor
has pontificated that “Synchronicity is God’s way of remaining
anonymous.” It is in the lucrative world of business where Sharma has
made his mark, and Dar “like[s] the fact that Julian’s philosophy
for personal fulfillment allow[s] for making money, having nice things,
and being ‘in the world.’ Actually,” Dar realizes, “he
suggest[s] that such pursuits [a]re very positive.” Just what the
businesspeople attending a Sharma speaking engagement would want to
hear.