Author: Michael J Gelb
A little backstory about how I got this ‘different’ book in my hands. The last time I read a self-help book was probably six years ago, I am guessing! In my late teens, I did read a lot of these books though. Robert Kiyosaki, Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, Dale Carnegie, Burke Hedges, Greg S Reid, Shiv Khera, Robin Sharma, were names I was familiar with even before I hit 20. I loved reading these kind of books back then. Mostly because, I lacked confidence, self esteem and always kind of compared myself to others, and reading these books somehow made me feel at ease with myself. Though the topics of the books were varied, but I still enjoyed reading them, and it instilled in me a kind of hope, that future will be better for me, because I am reading these books!
Been a decade now since then and obviously circumstances have changed and so have my reading preferences. In fact I just wrote an article on why I don’t read self-help books much, anymore (https://www.thebookgully.com/post/i-have-had-enough-of-self-help-books). However, my husband (also loves reading books, non-fiction mostly), recommended me that I experience this book, and so here I am!
About the book:
The book definitely has ‘self help’ vibes. It is based on the principles that the great Leonardo Da Vinci lived his life on. And the author humbly tries to put those principles into simple words, and practices that can be applied in our daily lives. Intention of the book is sincere, because it just doesn’t spread out ‘motivational words’ but actually gives the reader a series of instructions, applications, experiments through out the book that actually leads to some self-reflection during the entire reading! So make sure, that you always have a pencil and preferably a note book with you whenever you are reading, unless you don’t mind scribbling all over the pages like me. The book comes with instructions that aims to deliver the message instead of like a fable like narration (for eg. Robin Sharma’s books). The book doesn’t necessarily have advice on how to be street smart or be emotionally intelligent, however it does take you on a step by step process on how to increase your ‘productivity’ and know your ‘senses’ better, and ‘perspectives on objects with relation to light’, and how to be ‘‘ambidextrous’, and ‘how to make the left and the right hemisphere of the brain work to equal strengths’ and a variety of such abstract ideas!
It’s an interesting book in the non-fiction, self improvement genre, if you are into such kind of books.
I would rate the book 6.5/10.
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