How to be an everyday hero - tips and more from the iconic Robin Sharma

As a leadership icon and mentor to corporates and professionals alike, Canadian writer Robin Sharma encourages everyone to channel their innate potential to be an everyday hero. Once this happens, he feels the world won’t need to wait for traditional heroes to rise, as everyone can stand up to the volatilities of an uncertain life. Hence, he shares his wisdom in the hope of teaching people to become their best selves in his new book ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’, published in India by Jaico Publishing House.

“Each one of us has gifts and talents within us, but they are affected by the micro and macro traumas we undergo in life. We pick up subtle messaging from our teachers, parents, peers, and later from media and society. This messaging makes us forget who we really are. We are hypnotised to chase money, make sure we get likes on social media, follow the crowd, don’t think for ourselves, become doctors or lawyers. In all this, we forget our instincts. My book is a wake-up call to incorporate exponential productivity in life, but also to remember who we are, so we can live better lives,” says Robin as he joins YS Weekender on a Zoom call.

The hero who sold his proverbial Ferrari

Born and raised in Canada, Robin hails from an Indian-origin family. He worked as a litigation lawyer until the age of 25, when he self-published his first book ‘MegaLiving! 30 Days to a Perfect Life’ in 1994. The book spoke about managing stress through the tenets of spirituality.

In 1997, he self-published his seminal work ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’, which became a sensation purely through word of mouth. It was later picked up for wider distribution by HarperCollins. The success of this work led Robin to quit his legal career and become a full-time writer. He has published twelve books since then, and founded Sharma Leadership International - a platform where he teaches courses on leadership and maximising productivity.

As a renowned public speaker and life coach, Robin has mentored clients that include NASA, Microsoft, Nike, Unilever, General Electric, FedEx, HP, Starbucks, Oracle, Yale University, PwC, IBM Watson, and the Young Presidents’ Organization.

Many of his books have become international bestsellers, selling millions of copies in over ninety-two languages and dialects. These include ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’, ‘The 5AM Club’, ‘Who Will Cry When You Die?’ and more recently, ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’.

The sheer number of books he has sold make him one of the most widely read writers alive, and worthy of the praise he has received from other world leaders. Writer and life coach Deepak Chopra calls him, “a major influencer of our time”, and writer Paulo Coelho says, “Robin Sharma’s books are helping people all over the world lead great lives.”

The Everyday Hero Manifesto

His latest work, which he describes as his most personal one yet, was written over sixteen months in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. In a career spanning twenty-five years, Robin has taught skills of leadership and performance to business titans, professional sports superstars and entertainment royalty through his proprietary methodologies. These systems devised by him have helped these luminaries translate their ambitions into visible results. Robin wanted to present these methods to a larger global audience, and enable everyone to identify their native talents.

In ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’, he distils the best principles, protocols and tactics from his mentoring method into a book that is “part playbook for explosive productivity, part instruction manual for leading a world-class life and part universal guide to becoming a spiritual heavyweight that lifts the world.”

Robin started writing the book in February of 2020 in Tribeca, New York City, when the world was quite different from the one we live in today. He asserts that the onset of the pandemic, and the geopolitical events currently shaping the world, have reasserted the volatility of life, making this book an important one for the times we live in.

However, the writing of this book was significantly different from everything he has done before. He says,

“Usually I travel a lot while I write, but during this period I was at home. My whole life changed, it allowed me to become an artist again. I had the time to go very deep into the book I wanted to write. The result is very vulnerable and personal. I’ve highlighted many of my personal trials and lessons in teaching these principles of life. As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan has said – ‘what is most personal is most universal’. I can only hope and pray that this book has an extraordinarily powerful impact on people.”

The writing process

Robin shares that his writing process differs with each book. The ‘5AM Club’ took four years to write and was written in different places. He feels the locations he writes in fuels his writing. As he couldn’t travel while writing ‘The Everyday Hero Manifesto’, he followed a different routine while working from home.

He would write for a few hours every morning without phones and interruptions while listening to soulful country music. The evenings saw him take a break from writing where he spent time with family, went on long walks or mountain bike rides and ended the day with a movie. These rituals allowed him to shut off from the work he had done during the day.

Robin derives inspiration for his work from travels around the world and soaking in art and culture claiming that, “Exposure to artistic greatness allows a little bit of stardust to fall upon us.” He is also inspired by great conversations and nature. He adds, “I’m always researching – I read a lot, study various subjects, I journal a lot and I’m always creating models and capturing insights in my moleskin notebooks. When it’s time to write the book, I assemble the manuscript based on these notes.”

In The Everyday Hero Manifesto, short, crisp chapters outline individual models to deal with various problems in personal and professional settings.

“I haven’t focussed solely on the ‘tactics’ because I believe there is no point in learning the tactics if you’re climbing the wrong mountain! Tactics must go hand-in-hand with the philosophy behind them, so people can imbibe the teachings properly,” he shares with candour.

While some chapters are heavy, others are entertaining. The inclusion of stories ensures the writing remains engaging throughout. Robin has also included photographs to add the touch of a memoir to the book. He laughs that he reworked it close to twenty times, till he was absolutely satisfied with the final outcome.

This attention to detail is evident in his book and in its accompanying standalone digital course that one can take on the website www.everydayheromanifesto.com. He signs off by describing the book in a line, “The Everyday Hero Manifesto is a transformational instruction guide to help people live their natural heroism in a very volatile world.” Here’s hoping more people make use of it.