A book for communication

The best way to invest our money is investing in ourselves.

The best way to invest in ourselves means to invest in such activities which brings happiness and peace in our life.

After leaving our enjoying life of college behind and entering into the professional world definitely fills our wallet and career satisfaction but sometimes leave us with a bit of emptiness in our life. We may have to stay away from our loved ones in order to keep them happy but this condition should not exist at the cost of our own happiness. I have find the solution and that is READING.

Some people take precautionary steps in pursuing their habit of reading. There are two categories of people associated with this habit.

First-Smart person:

They go for window-shopping in the book stores and then order from Amazon to get the high discount unlike me.

Second- like Me:

I go to bookstore. I stroll from fiction to non-fiction section and then finally stuck in the spiritual or self-healing section. I pick some random book and read it for few minutes. I pay and purchase the same book. It is exactly the same way I buy my clothes i.e. the first or second option which salesman shows is always the one I ended up buying.

I realise the above mentioned categories recently when I was wandering in the book store of airport. I was very impressed with the architecture of store. Their shelves seems as if it has been recently constructed just in the mid of passenger route. By default, you can’t go to Gate No. 22 without getting attracted to the smell of papers (books). All the books were kept in open and hence seems to be easily accessible though that’s not the case in real (you can’t pick and move ahead as it is different from the airport newspaper & magazines). Standing in between and surrounded by books gives a strange relief. The world looks beautiful. You just stand still for few minutes and scroll few pages of any random book and the salesman will definitely come for interruption to ask for your interest (genre). Our left over humanity urge us either to leave that place or to purchase at least one book.

I started one book. I read one chapter which was of only 2 pages. The chapter name was – “The six-word rule: How to sum up whole life in six words.” I looked at the beautiful illustration and started relating it to my life. The most touching line of this chapter were –

In 2006, Larry smith, founder and editor of SMITH magazine, asked: ‘Can you tell your life story in six words?’

A dumped 27-year old guy wrote: ‘I still make coffee for two.’ ‘Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends.’ Came from a nine-year-old cancer survivor. The singer Moby confessed: ‘dad died, mom crazy, me, too.’ And George Saunders summed life up beautifully: ‘Started small, grew, peaked, shrunk, vanished.’

The chapter ended with a beautiful message for effective communication. The message was- If it’s important, keep it short. The moment I finished reading the chapter, I came up with my story which was – Toastmasters is family. Family is earned. The very moment I moved towards the counter for billing.

The book is – The communication book. 44 ideas for better conversations every day. It is written by Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschappeler who are authors of the international bestseller The Decision Book. The whole book is divided into major areas –

1. Job and career
2. Self and knowledge
3. Words and meanings

It covers topics like persuasion, motivation, listening, talking to strangers, sorry matrix, telling lies, relationships, audience connect, Medium is message, fake news, etc. The book is full of beautiful and creative drawings. All the complex theory are explained in an easy way.

I was very happy after reading it but my happiness was a short-term gain acting giving signal to arrival of shock. After 2 days, my friend Mohit called me and I asked him to read this book. He is a smart person (Category first) and purchased it for INR 90. I bought it at MRP of (only) INR 299 (obviously not three hundred!). After this comparison, I also analysed a bit more that speed reading is a gift and a curse too. It is a gift because I get the sense of whole book in short time period and at the same time curse because I have to pay full money (MRP) just to read remaining 75% pages.

I totally recommend it to everyone and be the first category of reader unlike me. My short air journey turned into a wonderful one because of this book.