23rd Book of 2024
I remember reading a book by Dale Carnegie when I begun my career named “How to enjoy your life and your job” because people had scared me so much that I won’t be able to manage my personal life once the professional commitments would kick in. Definitely, as we say about “Self-help” books, it did help me initially as few of its teachings stayed somewhere in my subconscious mind. After almost 9 years of work experience, I felt that I need to read another book to get new lessons based on our ancient culture which made me pick up Richa Tilokani’s book “7 Lessons of Karm Yoga”. This 200-pages book published by Rupa also comes up with a tagline that says “Mindset management for Work-Life success”.
Richa starts the book explaining us about Karm Yoga as an overview before diving into the details. She helps us understand the three gunas and understand in which of the three we fall in. It helps us get clarity regarding the level at which we stand and where we must aspire to reach. The way she explained Rajo, tamo and sattva gun from modern work-related concepts really made me decipher where do I fall and in what quotient is each of them imbibed in my personality.
Authoress has studied the ancient texts very devotedly which can be sensed from her research and the types of quotes and references she uses throughout. The book has many Sanskrit quotes with their respective translation and explanation by the author. She has majorly taken reference from Bhagavad Gita as one of its major sections is based on Karm Yoga. She doesn’t restrict her only till Gita but also used Ved and Upanishad quotes to explain the pointers. She even shares us great words said or written by esteemed personalities like Nelson Mandela, Gandhi etc.
Richa has given practical wisdom and ensures that some of the concepts which authors generally use As-It-Is from the ancient texts that further confuses the readers are explained well. For e.g. there’s a whole section on Desires where Richa clarifies that desires as a concept aren’t wrong completely. We must be aware about the kind of desires we are keeping while preparing our professional goals. Along with giving us professional advices, in the very beginning itself, author tells how important is keeping ourselves physically and mentally fit to create a good base for our professional careers.
Like Maslow’s hierarchical model, even author starts giving us her 7 lessons in a similar manner where she explains how our leadership must be based upon good foundation and with time, how we should work upon in refining them rather than trying to follow all the seven principles at once and fail miserably.
There are key takeaway sections which helps us note the major points separately. Similarly, author has nicely divided chapters into multiple sections/sub-sections and explaining them with multiple bullet points etc. to make it easier for us to understand the concepts well without getting confused.
Overall, the book can be completed in two to three sitting though I would advice to read it slowly and try to implement the small lessons in daily office lives. I am glad authors are using the ancient wisdom and trying to deliver them in modern context to make it easier for us to comprehend and create actionable out of them. I will give this book 4 stars out of 5.
Thanks!
WRITING BUDDHA
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