Author: Sanjay Desai| Rating: 4 / 5
About the Author: Sanjay is an entrepreneur, an ex-banker, an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, and a Chartered Accountant. During his successful career, Sanjay has been integrating the essence of a parallel spiritual journey with his material pursuits. He has now set out to share the ways and means of seamlessly traversing through the material and spiritual world, thereby enriching each journey.
First Impressions: Self help books are one of the genres’ I have liked to read. First impression was that this book would be nothing less than what I had read earlier. The name of the book made me think that this could be something to do with Jasmine – The Flower and some tips to get the learnings out of it. 🙂
Until I read the blurb where Jasmine is the protagonist. So this self-help has a story in it as well. I was intrigued to read it as soon as I get my hands on it.
Summary: After Robin Sharma, Sanjay is the author who could successfully mix Self-Help with a fictitious story. Also he has imbibed the 4 micro learnings at the right time of the storyline. You can access this by scanning the QR Code giving on the page.
- How to manage Social Media distractions for success
- Learn to decode Failure with Jasmine
- How to manifest your dreams
- Consciousness Integrated Lifestyle
The story has two different situations – one of the author and his spiritual guru and another- story of Jasmine. Prologue starts with author narrating his visit Kedarnath to meet his spiritual guru Ma Krishnanandgiri. He has exquisitely described each minute details of the trip starting from the trek, surroundings, shops, temple, views and all. So good it is, that you are transported to the back drop of Kedarnath. His visit to Kedarnath is important as he wants to find answers to his questions on manifesting the world. Prologue consists of the conversation between the author and the guru which I enjoyed to read and epilogue ends with the author taking the learnings from the story and conversation
The book is divided into 19 chapters that consists story of Jasmine, who is a topper in academics and later gets into modelling, fashion industry. The story starts with Jasmine and friends at the inter college competition where their college has won all awards except Fashion Show. Jasmine is then selected to perform and luckily they win the competition, giving an extra edge to Jasmine who never thought of modelling. Later she wins Miss Mumbai title and gets into fashion industry with the help of her mentor Shaheen Jaiswal who is one of the prominent names there. First half of the story revolves around Jasmines ups and downs in modelling career. Ends with her frustration and lost focus till Bala enters her life. Second half of the story revolves around Jasmine and Bala, a legendary fashion photographer who is tasked to get Jasmine back on her path to success. Bala outlines few rules for Jasmine to start with as he is a believer in manifestation. They start working together on an assignment.
Does this help Jasmine? Will she be able to attain success?
Answers to the above forms the rest of the story. I loved reading it in a one go. However the learnings are something you can go through/focus later as well.
My Favourite Part of the book: I loved to read prologue and epilogue – The conversation between the author and his guru. Secondly, I was impressed with the micro learning put in after few chapters relating to how can you overcome the mistakes done by protagonist – Jasmine. One of my favourite quotes:
When you FOCUS on something with a sustained WILL of required STRENGTH, you can stay absorbed enough to MANIFEST
My Opinion: One of the good books I have read with a mix of fiction+SelpHelp after Robin Sharma. Learning with story is always much better than just putting the learning tools together. Few framework explained through images and diagrams are quite good. Author is able to pull this quite well. Also he has been crisp and clear while writing to-the-point scenes and not over describing it. #MustRead
My Recommendations: I liked this book and will also go through the micro learnings. One of them I have completed, is quite good. A good read and also can be used later for self help lessons as well. I recommend reading it and is a good book to be part of your book shelf.