The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny

The sages taught Julian that the way to fulfill one’s purpose in life is through self-mastery, including mastering one’s own mind and achieving self-responsibility. Practically speaking, this involves creating healthy habits in service of one’s purpose. This is easier said than done, as the primary pitfall of self-improvement endeavors is the danger of slipping back into old habits. 

Self-mastery involves “the consistent care of one’s mind, body and soul,” and this is “essential to finding one’s highest self and living the life of one’s dreams” (30). Caring for one’s mind requires mastery over one’s thoughts. First comes the problem described by the sages as “the tyranny of impoverished thinking” (42); we frequently think the same thoughts day in and day out without variety and thereby trap ourselves in routines without imagining the vast possibilities available to us at all moments. Next comes the problem of negative thoughts, which the sages take extreme pains to avoid, even punishing themselves under icy waterfalls if they fall prey to negativity. A single negative thought grows and “takes on a life of its own” (64), potentially undoing years of hard-won mental training. 

Mastering one’s body requires regular physical exercise, which the second Ritual of Radiant Living outlined by Julian in Chapter 9 addresses. Many kinds of activities, from yoga to walking, can satisfy this ritual; the point is regular practice and understanding that “as you train your body, so you train your mind” (110). These practices reinforce each other. Mastering one’s soul is in large part a function of mastering these other self-care routines but also includes self-knowledge about one’s own direction in life and knowing that one is spending time doing important things on Earth. Julian advises John that caring for oneself in this way is in the best interest of everybody around you: “…when you nourish your own mind and your own spirit, you are really feeding the Soul of the Universe. When you improve yourself, you are improving the lives of all those around you” (139).

None of these practices is truly helpful unless one can adopt them into a sustainable set of habits. Erasing bad old habits and gaining healthy new ones are equally important. Because thoughts are within our control (even though most of us are untrained in thought-control and don’t realize this), we can, for example, train ourselves to fight off the habit of snoozing our alarm during cold winter mornings by visualizing ourselves with strong healthy bodies achieved through morning exercise. Developing healthy habits takes hard work at first but will eventually become easier; Yogi Raman proposed “The Magic Rule of 21,” meaning that “for a new behavior to crystallize into a habit, one [has] to perform the new activity for twenty-one days in a row” (87). The first few weeks of training for self-mastery are crucial for long-term success, and our destinies depend on making it work.