Book Review By Prof.M.S.Rao - “Who Will Cry When You Die?” Authored By Robin Sharma

“The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live.” - Norman Cousins


I read the book titled ‘Who Will Cry When You Die?’ authored by Robin Sharma the leadership guru who has specialized in life leadership. It contains several chapters writing on each aspect that helps in transforming your life and bringing behavioral changes for becoming a better personality.

Quotes and Research Findings:

Robin has great collection of quotes and provides the same along with his content. He does lot of research before authoring a book. We shall look at both the quotations and research findings below mentioned in the book:
1. Mother Teresa said, “there should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone’s house. That says enough.”
2. A timeless truth “The hand that gives is the hand that gathers.”
3. Thomas Carlyle said, “The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest.”
4. “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and help them become what they are capable of being,” said the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “He who asks may be a fool for five minutes. He who doesn’t is a fool for a lifetime,” goes the wise Chinese proverb.
5. Buddhist sages observed, “Every arrow that hits the bull’s eye is the result of one hundred misses.”
6. Virginia Woolf wrote, “The skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.”
7. John Dryden observed, “We first make our habits and then our habits make us.”
8. Ancient Persian proverb, “I wept because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet.”
9. “There is nothing in the world more valuable than friendship. Those who banish it from their lives remove as it were the sun from the earth, because of all of nature’s gifts, it is the most beautiful and the most pleasing.” - Anonymous
10. Old saying goes, “We see the world, not as it is but as we are.”
11. Blaise Pascal wrote, “All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.”
12. According to ancient Eastern thinking, to live a fulfilling life, you must do three things: have a son, write a book and plant a tree.
13. According to U.S. News & World Report, over the course of your lifetime, you will spend eight months opening junk mail, two years unsuccessfully returning phone calls and five years standing in line. Given this startling fact, one of the simplest yet smartest time management strategies you can follow is to never go anywhere without a book under your arm.
14. One study of 18,000 Harvard alumni found that every hour spent on exercise added three hours to the participants’ lives.
15. Recent studies show that those with a wide circle of friends and family live longer, laugh more and worry less.

Takeaways from Robin Sharma:

“Man must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment of his life is a miracle and a mystery,” - H.G.Wells.

• Count your blessing not troubles.
• Always compare your problems are minor.
• Writing down your daily experiences along with the lessons you have drawn from them will make you wiser with each passing day.
• Daily write journal and the lessons you learnt in a day. A journal is not a diary. A diary is a place where you record events while a journal is a place where you analyze and evaluate them.
• When you want to grow in a specific area, focus your entire energies in that only to acquire mastery.
• Weekly once spend your time with your family.
• To live your life to the fullest, start taking more risks and doing the things you fear.
• The greatest leader in this new economy will be the greatest thinkers.
• List all your problems on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It brings you some solace.
• The greatest gift you can give to your children is the gift of your time.
• 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.
• If you want to grow in your area of activity, buy relevant books, audio cassettes, join associations and network with others.
• Tough times call for cool people and they are always cool and calm when the pressure is on.
• The job of leadership today is not just to make money, it’s to make meaning.
• The problem with people is that they spend more time focusing on their weaknesses rather than developing their strengths.
• Negative news sells. In our society, more people will choose to watch the criminal trial of a celebrity rather than the biography of a truly great human being. Therefore, become more selective in the news you expose your mind to.
• Always seek out new opportunities.
• As human beings, we are genetically programmed to resist change and maintain a state of equilibrium.
• It takes about 21 days to develop a new habit.
• Help those who are less fortunate.
• The tree that has the most fruit is the tree that bends to the ground.
• You perform best when you meet tough people.
• You must keep raising the bar and holding themselves to a higher standard.
• Thomas Edison’s life story is one worth reading about. Part visionary, part gambler and part genius, he was a brilliant inventor who made the best use of is time on the planet. Though he had only six months of formal schooling, he had read such classics as ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ by the time he was eight and invented the phonograph. He had rare ability to thrive on only four hours of sleep.
• Take photos frequently with your children. A picture truly is worth a thousand words. Photographs capture and record life’s greatest memories so that we can re-live them as the years go by. You might be surprised how good you will feel when you go through your albums years from now.
• Human beings must be thoroughly used up when they die.
• Listen to motivational audio cassettes.
• Use your commute time for listening to audiocassettes and convert your driving time into learning time.
• 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.
• Rewrite your life story.
• Make your future spotless.

Robin reveals four tips to help you sleep more deeply:
• Don’t rehearse the activities of your day while you are lying in bed trying to get to sleep.
• Don’t eat after 8 p.m. (If you have to eat something, have soup)
• Don’t watch the news before you go to sleep.
• Don’t read in bed.

Conclusion:

“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.” - Woodrow Wilson

The book is a gold mine of wisdom and knowledge. It helps you become a good ancestor rather than a good inheritor. The flow of the book is natural and good. Robin has the uncanny ability to articulate his ideas effectively. He is good at usage of quotes aptly. He recharges your batteries through his motivational and inspirational ideas and insights. It is a must read for those who craves for continuous learning and growing. You can gift this book to your friends so that they can remember you forever.