We all know Jay from his motivational videos and from his podcast, On purpose. We all love Jay but is his book actually worth the read?? We are going to dive into that in this post.

Think like a Monk :

The title isn’t exactly the most eye catching title and if I’m being honest if I didn’t know the author I probably would never have picked up the book. Okay that goes for most of the books I’ve read this year but particularly this one.

Let’s break down the title, what is a monk. A monk is a man who has dedicated his life to religion, partly by giving up some aspects of regular worldly life.

Why would you want to think like a monk??

Well, monks have inner calm and inner harmony. They can focus on one thing at a time. They have learnt how to combat negative thoughts. They have accessed stillness and are deeply rooted in their purpose.

What did I think about the book??

Considering the amount of self-help books I have read, the articles I have read, the podcasts I have listened to and the videos I have watched… I am going to say the book was pretty repetitive. However the way the information was articulated was totally fresh and brand new. The concepts were pretty the same but the way they were presented was refreshing.

And let me just say that this book was the most practical book I’ve read. Jay walked you on how to apply what you’ve just read into your life.

At first I didn’t want to read the book cause I felt that I already knew what was in the book. Coincidentally Jay covered the resistance that I was feeling towards reading the book in the book. How we close ourselves off because we feel like there is nothing more that we can learn.

That is one of the tendencies of the ego. Feeling like we can’t learn anything new about something because we think we know enough about it.

Even though I felt like nothing in the book was particularly new to me, I however started actually implementing the things in the book in my life. There’s a difference between knowing something and actually doing it and I knew about meditating, about forgiving and about serving others but I wasn’t doing them, at least not intentionally. After reading this book I actually started doing them.

Things I started doing after reading the book :

🔷 Stopped Gossiping :

We all know we shouldn’t gossip and the book emphasizes that. I was already not gossiping but I couldn’t stop the people around me from doing it. Whenever people around me started talking ill about somebody, I would instantly get a headache and get so frustrated but instead of that, I started pointing out all the good things about that person. I’m sure it was annoying but it made me feel good.

🔷 Breathed More :

Have you noticed that when you suddenly feel anxious, stressed or afraid the first thing that changes is your breath. I started monitoring my breathing. I started taking more deep, intentional breaths rather than shallow ones.

🔷 Served More :

We were all created to serve others in one or another and it is then up to us to find how we can serve others. I now serve others in every possible way that I can. It seems like there is an abundance of people to serve and I’m totally loving the process of doing it.

🔷 Judging Others :

Now I’m one of the most open minded people I know. I’m open to new ideas and I don’t judge other people’s beliefs. I’m not quick to judge anyone, if I don’t agree with something I try to look at it from that person’s perspective. That however doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes judge other people for choosing different things, for having different priorities or for handling situations differently than I would have.

Whenever I think something bad about someone, I come up with five to ten things that I love about them or compliments. This has significantly reduced the number of negative things I think about people on a daily basis.

All in all…

It’s a great book and I would totally recommend everybody to read it. Well not everyone, people who are into self-development because people who are not into self-development would not implement the things they’ve learnt in the book which defeats the whole purpose of reading it.

So yeah this month I went with Think like monk.

If you are new to my blog, welcome. We have a segment where we review books. We’ve done The Power of Habit & Surrounded By Idiots .

This month’s book is Becoming by Michelle Obama.

Let me know, have you read Think Like Monk?? If you did, what did you think of it??