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The Greatness Guide
Book Highlights
Title: The Greatness Guide
Author: Robin Sharma
Genre: Self-Help
Publisher: Jaico Publication
Pages: 221 Pages
Difficulty Level: Easy
The Greatness Guide: Book Review
The author, Robin Sharma, is a professional actively working to improve the lives of others and improve their productivity, balance in life, and leadership by offering insights into various domains that are a part of a successful person. You cannot be a success if you only master one skill. There are other crucial elements in life, such as your health to be taken care of, a family to look after, and service to give back to society. All these anecdotes find their place in his book, “The Greatness Guide.” His specialty is the ease with which he explains any concept. You won’t find a topic that sophisticated in his books.
His works on self-improvement and leadership have worked wonders for many. And this book is yet again a product of improving your life by understanding his advice. I myself look up to his suggestions to hone my skills, especially regarding leadership.
In The Greatness Guide, you will seek the relevance of having balance in life which is easily ignored by many and thus suffer in one way or another. Too much of anything is never good, be it money or fame. I have always sought to have the right balance in my life, and sometimes I fail, but the guidance in his book is highly influential, with great suggestions. If you approach this book with an open mind, you may find many ideas that are personally influential to your lifestyle and can actually contribute to your improvement.
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I really enjoyed some of his insights about doing 101 things before dying and how to treat people for a better business. It really adds a spark to your life. I have just started to make my 101 lists, and I am sure I will have some great things to write in them. If anyone is living an entrepreneurial journey, I feel you should read this book at least once. You will understand the critical areas in your personal and business that you could improve and have better results.
If I must add about the negatives, some stuff in this book is similar to his other works. Such as The Mastery Manual and The Everyday Hero Manifesto, with topics including various forms of wealth and the importance of saying no. But there are some new insights you will learn about, and even though some concepts are similar, it is good to revisit them from time to time.
I’ve compiled notes on some of the key topics in the book which can give you a better overview of the content you’re gonna find in the book.
The Greatness Guide: Book Summary
- Anecdotes to become the best. We are meant to become the best of ourselves and this book is an attempt to ignite it.
- The book talks about variety of segments of life, thus covers many things positively to a great extent.
- Life is all about balance. If we are able to maintain it, we are able to achieve many things and live our life peacefully.
Who Should Read It?
This book can be attributed for the beginners who are trying to make adjustments in their life and need some guiding light for initial attempts to bring the change.
Another segment that will greatly benefit from this book would be the entrepreneurs who wish to learn the invisible tactics of business.
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The Greatness Guide: Top Quotes
- There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- The Best thing to do is generally the hardest thing to do.
- Every time you say yes to something that is unimportant, you say no to something that is important.
The Greatness Guide Notes
1. Your Days Define Your Life 📅
- This is a wonderful section of the book where it is said that life is nothing but a series of well lived days. How we spend our each day shapes the path for the next day and when we focus that duration of improving ourselves our days gets improving, upgrading our months and beautifying our life.
- Choose daily tasks that benefit yourself. Avoid the wastage of time in negative activities. Focus on the constant improvements.
2. Make Time To Think ⌚
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all
- Taking out time to contemplate about life is an important habit. Whatever you are doing in life, take some time off regularly to think, whether you are on the right track? How can you make yourself better? I personally devote time to think about my projects and how can I improve them to create better service for readers like you.
- Spending time allows to have clarity about your present status and give you more chances to become successful. You’ll be able to prioritise the important things first and get lost in getting busy.
3. Leadership Begins on the extra mile🏃♂️
- If we want to create a leadership skill within us, it is us who has to do the most. We have to do the things that may not be fun but wise to do. You cannot expect an employee to put in the efforts like a CEO. It’s just not right.
- This skill very dear to me as I am on my journey of trying to make projects that can impact the lives of the readers and for that I understand that I have to go an extra mile to put in more efforts to be able to see the bright results.
4. Mick Jagger and Reference Points 🚩
- Reference points are a great things to have. If they are positive. When we assign someone or something as a reference point, it become a parameter for comparison and when used in positive manner, it surely helps to elevate to a better self.
Positive reference points will pull you into a new way of seeing things and introduce you to a new set of possibilities. Doors you never knew existed will begin to open.
5. Work Hard, Get Lucky 👨💻
- You have to put in the extra hours to allow luck to work in your favour. I feel people always judge that a successful person is mostly lucky but no one has seen those enduring and painstaking efforts the person went through the years before that. Outwork every one around you to lead a successful life later on.
- Do better things in your life, put in the extra energy and enjoy its fruits.
Whatever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
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6. Learn to say no 🙅♂️
- Prioritise your work. Do the things that are important and let go of the unimportant tasks near you.
- In my opinion, this is one of the crucial message of the book as it clearly points out that many of us waste the opportunity to improve our work by doing something unimportant when suggested by someone. Get your things in order and complete them on schedule to get the best of it.
7. Under the kimono: My best practices 👘
- This section of the books contain some of the great practises of the author’s which I personally feel are beneficial for masses and I personally would like to pick up some of those habits.
- Waking Up Early: One of the best practise you can ever have. Waking up at 5 AM and doing the necessary tasks for the day such as fitness, journaling gives you an edge to work over yourself and hone you skills. ( Read More: The 5 AM Club) Journaling allows you to analyse where you are going and what kind of changes should you make in life for more productive outcomes.
- Eating Healthy: Everyone knows theoretically to have wonderful meals. A rich nutrients based diet but many of us do not follow it. I personally have my days where I am unable to remain true to my diet but everyone slips now and then. Try to have maximum control with occasional treats to cheer yourself up.
- Habit of Journaling: This is one of the best habit that I am wanting to inculcate but often I struggle to keep it up with the pace. Writing down in journal allows to have a clarity within your mind and answer some unanswered questions present deep down within yourselves.
- Weekly Planning: The best productive method I’ve ever come across. Take out a slot in your week where you can plan and decide the tasks for the upcoming week. This clears a lot of space in your mind to constantly trying to remember the things you need to do. I came across the similar idea in 7-Habits of Highly Effective People and a step by step procedure has been explained in the book to tell you about how you can adopt the habit of Planning Your Week with least resistance.
8. Culture is the king 👑
- If anyone is into business or having an entrepreneurial journey that he/she is about to start, this section can bring wonders to their business. The importance of having a culture is a necessity in today’s time. Your company is defined by your culture. It’s what makes you stand out.
Your competitors will copy your products if they are good. They will copy your services. They will copy your branding. But they will never be able to copy your culture. And your culture is the very thing that makes your organisation special.
- People want to work at a place where they feel they belong to. Your workers should feel the welcoming culture along with the atmosphere that promotes discussion of new things.
- Five ways to build culture:
- Rituals: Having unique cultures like 7 am team huddles, or Friday Afternoon pizza parties to promote team bondings.
- Celebrations: Celebrate little things that becomes a bench mark for others to follow. Catch people doing good.
- Conversation: Talk to your employees. Understand their needs. Learn what they have to offer. Indulge fully with them.
- Training: Every organisation should work more to create better leaders. Hold seminars and workshops on various themes to grow the skill set of your staff. Work towards uplifting them.
- Story Telling: Tell the tales about your achievements to your workforce about times when people went the extra miles to showcase the principles the company stands for. Appreciate those stories that sets the benchmark for future employees.
9. Be wise Early rise
- An important goal. Having this habit installed in my routine, I can safely say that this is one of the most life changing habits that I have adopted and it really brings the change in your work dynamics.
- Giving yourself an early hour to exercise, get into a good shape, reviewing your life goals can give you higher edge over others and you are more likely to make better decisions as you spend enough time to improve them.
- Such is the importance of this topic, that the author of Greatness Guide has written a complete book about it in 5 AM Club. Read here.
- Here are some tips presented by the author to start waking up early:
- Don’t eat after 7 P.M. : When you eat after 7-8 PM, your body starts working to digest the food and it causes mismatch among your body and your brain. You are meant to sleep and have rest but your body is actively working to digest the food thus creating imbalance.
- Do not lounge in Bed: As soon as your alarm goes off, get off the bed. The more you stay there, higher the chances that you will end up sleeping. Remember do things that are wise to do, not easy.
- Get into World-Class Physical Condition: Devote the early hours in getting into the best fitness possible. Spend time doing cardio vascular exercises, strength training exercises. Click here to know more.
- Set BHAGs: Set Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Spend some time to decide some big goals for yourself which can contribute positively in your development and provides you better life.
10. Do 101 things before you die
- This is a wonderful idea I must say. I am really impressed with this concept. Having a list of 101 things that you would do before death. People are so into their daily routine that they miss the opportunity to do things they always wanted to.
- This list can give them a push to do those things and not go to their deathbed with regret.
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