Have you ever felt like you were living an aimless life? Like there was nothing significant to make you jump out of bed in the morning; the world would still get by with you staying in all day.
Well, I felt that every single day.
I had some good days, of course, when I had plans with friends or family to go to dinner or catch a movie, but most days I just toiled my life away at work. And most nights I went home to watch TV with my cat next to me.
I hated living like that. It wasn’t like I didn’t have any goals; they were just too far out of my reach. How could I travel the world when I had so much debt accumulated over the years to pay off? How could I find someone to love when I was such a dull conversationalist? So many “how coulds” circled my mind every waking moment.
Then one day I ran into my old buddy Toby from high school. We hadn’t seen each other since graduation because we went to different colleges—him to Yale, and me to a nearby state college nearby so that I could visit my ailing mother frequently. So we decided to catch up overdinner that night and it was then that I found out he was doing really well for himself.
Toby was the head of IT at a multi-billion dollar company, happily married, with a daughter and another on the way, and had the stamps of over 10 different countries in his passport. He was living the dream—no, he was living my dream. I worked as an IT technician in a local organization, and had been stagnant there with no sign of promotion in years. I had noromantic prospects whatsoever, and my passport was tucked away somewhere collecting dust.
The next morning, I checked my email at home and found something from Toby. The subject title read, “Marcus, read this. It will change your life like it changed mine.”
It was called The Amazing You, and after a few pages of chapter one, I was hooked. The experiences narrated by the author were so similar to mine and it seemed like the book was putting my exact thoughts into words! The book had an interesting narrative that captured my attention all the way through. At the end of every chapter, a reflection segment forced me tore-evaluate my life choices, and I began to realize that everything that happened to me wasbecause of me. We were all given control of our own lives, but I had chosen to let it go instead.
It also introduced me to something called the Wheel of Consciousness, and following its concept led me to discover what had been holding me back from living the life I truly wanted. It was mind-blowing how this book seemed tailor-made for me and no one else. But Toby had said that it changed his life, and anyone with eyes could see that Toby has led a much different life from me since college! It didn’t seem to me like he had needed the book at all.
I called him up for dinner again and he explained that he didn’t do well in college, and couldn’t find a job after graduating. His student debt seemed to swallow him whole, and his then-girlfriend left him shortly after. I was incredulous. How did he get from a situation similar tomine to his envious situation now?
He told me it was thanks to The Amazing You. He learnt to take responsibility for himself and stopped blaming the education system for his destitution. The affirmation practices inside the book taught him to re-tune his mindset towards life itself, and it caused a transformation sogreat that even his parents were reading it as well!
I was completely sold. For the next few weeks, I read the book multiple times from cover tocover, while practicing all the techniques it taught.
And I swear: my life has never been better. I miraculously got a promotion last month. My first promotion in six years. And the company got bought over by a larger corporation and with that came new colleagues, one of whom was a pretty, smart girl called Amanda. We’ve gone on afew dates now, and she’s like no one I’ve ever met. Apparently I’m the “funniest guy on earth”to her, which is something I would have never used to describe myself in the past. I actually wake up before my alarm rings in the morning now, and am out the door with a bounce in my step, to be clichéd. Trust me, this is one book you cannot miss.