If I were to sum up the essence of Gaur Gopal Das’s debut book, Life’s Amazing Secret, it is nothing but to be happy in any situation. One of the most popular monks and life coach, Gaur Gopal Das- also known as Gopal Prabhu, shares his precious insights, broadly on four wheels on which human happiness resides. These are precisely on our Personal life, Relationships, Work life, and Social Contributions. Did he succeed in helping us find the key to happiness? Let’s find out.
What appealed to me the most is Prabhu’s narration, done
through his conversation with his wealthy young friend Harry, while navigating
their way through Mumbai’s horrendous traffic. It subtly points at the fact
that wealth alone cannot make one Happy. While doing so the writer not only
tells us the importance of life as a journey but also helps us understand the
fact that happiness is not solely depended on external environment. During the course
of the conversation he touches upon all the possible concepts associated with
ultimate human happiness. These range from gratitude, worries, spiritual
practice, relationships, amalgamation of spirituality and integrity at work,
competition, selfless sacrifice, etc. 
Gopal Prabhu skillfully establishes that happiness is
knowing ourselves and our expectations well. He weaves in short chapters that
are packed with captivating stories, humor and sound advice. They are aimed at helping
readers identify and get rid of their self-sabotaging thoughts and habits that
prohibit them from achieving the success that they want. One such chapter is
Das propagating readers to view life on the spectrum with an ice cream on one
end and a candle on the other. The philosophy of an ice cream is to enjoy life
before it melts and that of the candle is to give light to others before it
melts. Hence in order to be happy throughout our existence, we should shift our
attitude from being an ice cream to a candle. Which simply means starting from
being selfish to becoming selfless.
However, this can be achieved by individuals who know their
purpose, which can be discovered with four traits explained in the Japanese
model ‘ikigai’ reason to live. So, if you haven’t figured out your purpose yet
answer a few questions – What do you love? What are you good at? What can you
get paid for? and What does the world need? Honest answers to these will
definitely lead you towards a balanced and purposeful life.
Perhaps the book also helps you re-define success or
identify what success means to you. After reading this book, you will have a
better understanding of why you act the way you do and how to accept the things
that you cannot change. Examples like the founders of WhatsApp did not get jobs
at Twitter and Facebook when they applied and later the app was bought by
facebook, drives the point that, what we may see as a failure for us currently,
shall turn to be the best thing to have happened to us! Gaur Gopal Das also
attributes how he could not control the virality of ‘his out of context’ video
that was circulated on whatsapp which later made him the internet sensation
that he is today. This was possible only because he saw both good and bad side
of the video but chose to focus on good and neglect the bad! Only if all of us
could do that, each one of us would perennially be happy.
