It gives me immense pleasure to share that I have recently completed writing my first book - Wisdom Droplets : Inspiring Stories to unlock your Greatness. The book aims to empower every aspiring individual to gain wisdom through engaging motivational stories. Stories have always been an integral part of our life. Stories have always been around us and through them we learned without ever feeling the burden of formal learning. When we read the Panchatantra tales as a child, it was impossible to miss the moral underlying each story. Stories make ideas & concepts come alive by shifting the action to another world and another time. They help us step back and see things from a whole new perspective. And in times of seemingly never ending despair, they open a window of hope. They inspire, they are memorable. They stick in our heads and minds. That is precisely why, most of the successful leaders have one thing in common - they tell stories and paint pictures through the words they use to influence people.
About the Book
The book will enable every budding manager to unleash the leader within; every student, Job seeker to stand out from the crowd; every entrepreneur to turn adversity into advantage and every parent to instill life values, in their child, which are required to unlock their full potential.
The book uncovers inspiring incidents from the life of successful people, anecdotes from Hindu mythology, life lessons from ancient Indian sources of wisdom and key takeaways from purposeful Zen stories.
The book will equip every aspiring individual with Soft Skills. The Soft skills projected to be in the highest demand in future are : ability to turn crisis into an opportunity, positive attitude - ability to see positive in a negative situation, empathy & compassion, creative thinking, active listening, critical thinking, interpersonal and teamwork skills, effective communication skills. The book will benefit the readers to learn and gain more insights on all these soft skills.
Why this book
In today’s hyperactive digital age, we live in a world flooded with information. We think that having access to more information makes us more knowledgeable. But, if anything, the opposite is true. What matters is our ability to assimilate and apply the information ,when needed, to make the right decisions. This ability is known as Wisdom. Most people think of wisdom as something which can’t be learnt, as it is more often associated with age, experience and learning from our mistakes. What we do not realise is that we can’t live long enough to make all the mistakes ourselves. What we can do is, learn from the life experiences and the mistakes of others. As it is said in this famous Zen proverb -‘It takes a wise man to learn from his mistakes but an even wiser man to learn from others.’ In other words, wisdom can be gained very early in life. The book will help readers to develop a perspective and gain understanding of essential qualities which are considered necessary to become wise, early on in their lives.
What is Wisdom and how is it different from Information and knowledge ?
Here is an interesting analogy - Information is having a library of books on shipbuilding. Knowledge applies that to building a ship. Once you’ve built your ship, wisdom is — what allows you to sail it without sinking, to protect it from the storm that creeps up from the horizon in the middle of the night.
Similarly, in our lives, wisdom is what allows us to navigate the storm of challenges, difficulties, roadblocks which threaten to halt our journey towards our set goals. While we cannot prevent the challenges from coming our way, we can definitely control how to deal with them. Wisdom enables us to develop a positive mindset, stand tall in the face of adversity, refuse to let the problems bog us down, tackle them head on and walk through them like a winner.
Wisdom is what allows us to look at challenges as blessings in disguise - Look at life’s challenges as positive experiences, opportunities to learn, grow, move out of our comfort zone, push our limits and realize our hidden potential.
How did I come up with the idea to write this book ?
Since onset of era of the social media, on every weekend, I developed the habit of sharing inspirational stories, with life lessons with my friends, colleagues through Whatsapp and Facebook. The key takeaways of the stories enabled me to get deeper insights into - How successful people think, What drives them, How they handle failures, How are they able to inspire their team to give their best performance?
Since my wisdom stories were being shared every Weekend and they were Inspiring in nature, it resonated with WISDOM - Weekend Inspiration for Self Development and Open Mind.
The encouraging words of appreciation from many of the readers of my Wisdom Series made me realize that these stories were having a positive impact in their lives. The readers could co-relate the stories with their day to day life. They could derive life valuable learnings and solutions to challenges they were facing. The positive response from all quarters convinced me and motivated me to write the book. The book is available on Amazon.
Conclusion
I hope that the book will make a positive impact in your life. I am sure that the stories and its underlying takeaways will make you pause, reflect and do things differently. By the time you finish reading the book, it will make you a better person. A better version of your older self.