WHAT WENT WRONG My life has led me in the most interesting of directions. I used to be a litigation lawyer. I had done everything I could to be successful. I had two law degrees, I was driving the right car, I was living in a beautiful house, I had a great office - so everything looked wonderful on the outside, but everything was in many ways falling apart on the inside.
[I asked myself] why was I so unhappy? Why did I have no energy? Why had I lost any sense of passion in my life? So I started searching.
WHAT WENT RIGHT I started reading books on leadership, personal development, relationship building. I began studying the lives of extraordinary people and applying some of their best practices and I realised I was changing the way I was thinking. I started to feel better. I became much happier. My relationships improved. I finally had the idea to share my message about what I'd learned, about living a more authentic life, about living your dreams - so I self-published The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
A FAMILY AFFAIR I started off from very humble beginnings, about 500 copies in my apartment. My mother helped me edit it, my father helped me sell it one book at a time. My first seminar had 23 people and 21 of these people were my family members - so the dream started out very, very small. But people starting reading the book and telling other people about it, and through word of mouth the message spread.
I was always very philosophical. My father comes from the north of India, the place where the Himalayas are, so I think I was always attracted to people who understood the power of the mind. When I was growing up, my father translated a Sanskrit saying: 'When you are born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.' What I'm saying is I motivate myself by ultimately remembering it's about reminding people they can live their dreams, they can be happier, they can be successful, they can live better lives.
THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS What I write about and speak about in my seminars is not only what I've learned from working 15 years with many companies ... but also what I've learned in my life through painful lessons [as a once-struggling lawyer and single father]. I don't find it hard to live by my own advice, because these are my beliefs. Everyone will go through painful periods in their lives, that's just life happening. When you go through it, the suffering is unpleasant and you just have to keep going. There's really no easy way out.