Who Will Cry When You Die?

Life Lessons from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

By Robin Sharma

I recently read a great book called Who Will Cry When You Die? Life Lessons from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma.

By the way, I would like to thank my neighbour Jayne for dropping it in my mailbox. She thought it would be something that I could include in my blogs and keynotes and boy, was she right!

Robin Sharma is probably better known for his bestseller; The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari but this addition to the series is also full of great takeaways.

Sharma is one of the world’s leading experts on leadership, elite performance and self-mastery. He’s also Canadian! Yay, eh? He used to be a litigation lawyer. Now he is a popular author and motivational speaker.

The first thing that I will say about Who Will Cry When You Die is the way that the book is laid out.

The chapters are super short, 2-4 pages each.

The chapters fit on four pages. The table of contents fit on five pages. You can flip through them and see what chapters you want to read. The chapters aren’t dependent on each other.

It’s a small book that you can have on your nightstand and refer to on a regular basis.

On so many levels this book is easy. Its full of small, bite sized pieces of wisdom that you can really sink your teeth and mind into. Yes, you may have heard a lot of this advice before but I guarantee you that there are at least, a few things in this book that you haven’t heard.

The titles of the chapters are enticing and just knowing that the chapters are so short is also enticing.

Titles like: Discover Your Calling, Practice Tough Love, Bless Your Money, Remember The Rule of 21 and two of my favourites, Schedule Worry Breaks and Cure Your Monkey Mind.

Schedule Worry Breaks (Chapter 12) tells a beautiful story that Sharma’s father told him.

Sharma says his father was a very wise man who had a lot of influence over his life.

One day he told Sharma that the Sanskrit character for a funeral pyre is strikingly similar to the Sanskrit character for worry. He said that’s because One burns the dead while the other burns the living.

Woah, hello….mic drop! I think I fell off of my chair when I read that.

Also, chapter 40 entitled Cure Your Monkey Mind was a great read and contains a very practical exercise.

It describes the problem that most of our minds suffer from that is jumping from task to task.

As Sharma says, “It’s like unchained monkeys, rushing from place to place without any pause for peace.”

Sharma calls the exercise to fix this ‘focussed reading’. He says every time your mind wanders from the page that you are reading make a checkmark in the right-hand margin of the page. He says that by doing this, you will increase your awareness of how well or how poorly you concentrate. Once you become aware of how much your mind strays, you can then build the skills you need for a quieter mind.

I tried the exercise while I was reading the chapter and indeed, it calmed my ‘monkey brain’ but for some reason, I can’t stop eating bananas.

So now, what about that title, Who Will Cry When You Die?

Sharma addresses this question in Chapter 101, Live Fully So You Can Die Happy.

Sharma says that too many people live their lives backwards. He says that they spend their days striving to get the things that will make them happy instead of realizing that happiness is not a place that you reach but a state that you create.

He says that one of the ways to create this happiness is to commit yourself to making a difference in other people’s lives. To give back – from the beginning. The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Sharma ends Who Will Cry When You Die with a beautiful quote. Here is part of it.  

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose, recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a true force of Nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

~ George Bernard Shaw

While there is still time, I would like to say thank you to writers George Bernard Shaw and Robin Sharma for reminding me of this incredibly important lesson.

If you would like to catch up on any of my other Laugh Long and Prosper episodes, voted one of the best podcasts of 2021 in Canada by CTV, check me out.

Until next time folks, Laugh Long and Prosper!

Feel free to take a listen!

Laugh Long and Prosper podcast on Spotify or Soundcloud

Wayne Gretsky – Hockey and Humour