Why Did I Read This?
I love this book — Karmic Management: What Goes Around Comes Around In Your Business and Your Life. As mentioned in my book review for The Diamond Cutter, I attended a talk in Singapore on 16 July 2015, by the author, Geshe Michael Roach. Long story short, before the talk ended, I bought 3 of his books on BookDepository.com, including this one.
On the back cover, it says,
Let’s face it: life is one long string of jobs. We need a way to get them done right; we need a surefire recipe for success. Financial success, sure—that’s what we’re talking about. But at the same time we want to be a success as person: a good person, a truly happy person, a person who’s mentally and physically healthy. And if we’re doing things right, we also help all the people around us—the world—at the same time.
This little book gives you a completely new way of getting tasks and projects done. It’s not something you’ve ever heard before, but it works—it always works. Give it a try.
And I’m hooked.
A surefire recipe for success? Wow. That’s one big promise there. And then it says, it always works.
So what am I waiting for if there’s a surefire recipe for success that always works?
Devour the book.
What’s The Book About?
Karmic Management serves as a workbook, or “executive summary” to it’s prequel, The Diamond Cutter.
Simple, easy-to-read and follow, the book guides you to apply the strategies to achieve financial and personal success from ancient wisdom in your business and personal life.
Using 8 rules, with an introduction and conclusion, of course, Karmic Management distills the essence of The Diamond Cutter for practical daily use. As it promised, “Karmic Management is the long-awaited sequel to The Diamond Cutter. It’s designed as an “executive summary” book that you can finish off in a single plane ride and still get all the information you need to stop stressing over decisions. Instead, you’ll simply know how to make things happen.”
My 3 Biggest Takeaways
Biggest Takeaway #1
“Karma” just means anything you do or say or think.”
Growing up in Singapore, as a Chinese, and with my late Grandma who volunteers almost daily at a Burmese Buddhist Temple, the word karma is really close to heart.
But there’s often a negative connotation and an air of mystery that’s attached to it until I read Karmic Management, which finally demystified and simplified the word “karma” as anything we think, say, or do.
Not only did the book do that for me, I love how it showed me that this word karma is not exclusive to religion but really it’s a universal idea and concept that people around that world have been using, only that we don’t necessarily call it karma.
Like how the book puts it, “If you do something good for someone, then only good can come back to you, and vice versa with the bad.” Simple, straightforward, common sense.
Sounds like a basic law of the universe. If we plant bananas, we get bananas.
Biggest Takeaway #2
“And just because of the way KM works, you’re always making other people successful too—which makes them happy, and makes you happy about yourself. and makes everyone happy about you: Everyone, happy. Everyone, successful.”
The focus of this book really is to use the principles of karma to create success in every area of your life.
If we want success, then we have to make other people successful. Of course not in a dreamy and idealistic way, but in a grounded and doable way. For example, stop squeezing your suppliers dry—instead of pushing their profit margins to a bare minimum because you are trying to push prices so low, think of win-win.
Because if we just apply some common sense, pushing our suppliers into a tight spot is just going to bring possibly inferior quality products and worsened supplier relationships into the equation.
Karmic Management really shifts our perspective and gets us thinking and looking at how we have been sabotaging our own success and what we should and can do to achieve the success that we want.
Biggest Takeaway #3
“Re-invest the Karma”
This is one of my favourite chapters in the book because it has clear diagrams that illustrate the typical life-cycle of every successful company, from its start, peak to fold.
The best part, it explains why it goes through every stage of its lifecycle. Since karma is anything we think say or do, and according to Karmic Management, in order to be always successful, we need to make others successful.
And it all boils down to one fundamental idea—we need to have the habit of making others successful; think about how to make them successful, discuss ideas that would help them, we can talk about it all we want but lastly, we must walk the talk—do what we can to make them successful.
And that’s reinvestment to ensure our sustained success.
Should You Read This?
If you’ve had enough of figuring out how to really secure your success and you’re open to one last shot of, as the book says, “a completely new way of getting tasks and projects done,” this book is totally for you.
No more wondering how things really work, stressing ourselves out because one strategy that worked before stopped working now, and figuring out how on earth do we really create and sustain our success.
8 rules, simple and doable to-do lists and a 7-point program, Karmic Management helps you get started and used to this new way of doing things, because it wants us to become an all-rounded, successful individual.
“So we need to convince ourselves that being more and more busy is not the same as being more successful. If you can learn to be busy with a very clear mind when it’s really required, and then not be busy so you can dream and be creative when that’s required, then you’re going to be a sure-fire KM success.”
Yes the book challenges our old ways of chasing after success, but it also illustrates with clear diagrams and compelling arguments why those old ways didn’t work out for it… but most importantly, and thankfully, it proposes practical solutions that we can apply and create the results we want to see in our life.
But, be warned, I’m biased because I love this book and have been using the principles to solve problems in my life and to create successes in my life. Almost 3 years since I started reading this book and I’m still using it, and I plan to use it until I’m done.
If you’re interested to find out more, check out The Success Experiment.
Buy or Borrow?
Buy a copy, look for the nearest Karmic Management book club and join it.
If you can’t find one near you, get an accountability partner who shares a similar goal, read this book together, use it as a success experiment manual and work towards your goals together.
Remember: your job is to make your accountability partner successful.
You got it, tiger.
Thanks for reading and supporting my challenge!
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