Book review of YOU CAN WIN by Shiv Khera You can win, by Shiv Khera, is a manual for success.

The book gives the tools to build successful and rewarding life. It also inspires the readers to become good human beings. The principles given in the book are universal and are applicable to all human beings, organizations and countries. The author has emphasised out that most people fail not because they do not have capabilities or they are less intelligent than others built because of the lack of desire, direction, dedication and discipline. In the book, author has dealt with the important aspects like positive attitude, success, motivation, self-esteem, inter personal skill, steps to build a positive personality, goal setting and values in its eleven chapters. Each chapter has gone into details of these qualities and what actions are needed to imbibe these qualities in the individual to get achieve success and building pleasant personalities. The book contains many examples, stories and anecdotes and the author has used these examples and stories to bring home his point. The anecdotes included in the book are highly motivating and inspirational The book has laid a great emphasis on the positive attitude which plays a major role in shaping our lives. Author writes that attitude is made up by what is inside our own self and can be changed . The foundation of success regardless of the chosen professional life is attitude and most of the attitude is built up in our formative years. However, the major factors that determine our attitude are our environment, experience and the education. The environment that we get at our home, in school , universities & the cultural , religious and political environment that we live in , all have a great influence in making our attitude. Similarly the experiences and the major events become the reference points in our lives. We draw conclusions and guidelines for the future and this is what affects our attitude. As per the author education both formal and informal plays a very important role in the development of our attitude. The author further observes that a person with a positive attitude is like a fruit of all seasons and is always welcomed whereas a person of negative attitude creates an

unpleasant environment at home or at work place and becomes a liability to the society. Book lays a great stress on changing ones attitude to positive attitude and has given steps for changing the same. This can be done by changing the focus to positive things in our lives and avoid thinking and focussing on negatives. Author asks us to realize that each one of us is gifted with some strengths and it is important to identify these and put them into use to become successful. Application of education and knowledge should be done with common sense. The best education without common sense is worthless. The abundance of common is the wisdom. Continuous positive education leads to positive thinking and author Shiv Khera stresses on the fact that we have to continuously feed our mind with pure positive thoughts to stay on the track. The book has identified success as another important aspect that play a major role in our life. Author writes that success is not an accident but is a results of our attitude and attitude is a matter of choice. Therefore success become a matter of choice and not chance. He has defined success as the progressive realization of a worthy goal. He has observed that success is a manifestation of good luck that results from inspiration, aspiration, desperation and perspiration. The major obstacles to success comes from fear of failure/success, lack of self esteem and clearly defined goals and objectives, ego, etc. He underlines desire, commitment, responsibility, hard work, good character and positive feeling etc. as the qualities that make a person successful. Author has dealt with motivation as another important aspect for achieving a successful and rewarding life. As per the author motivation is a drive that encourages action or feeling. It means igniting the spark for action. Motivation is a powerful tool and it can persuade, convince and propel us into action. It is a force that can literally change our lives. Motivation comes from desire to succeed and the greatest enemy of motivation the complacency. Author has categorized motivation into two: external and internal motivation. The external motivation comes from factors like money, fame, fear etc. The internal motivation comes from within such as a pride of achievement, responsibility and belief.

Self- esteem is one quality that author believes has direct relation to our success and productivity. Self esteem is the way we feel about ourselves and we see ourselves. When we feel good we experience that the world around us is very nice and the productivity goes up and our relationship are lot better. The reverse is equally true. Next important aspect the book has dealt with is the inter personal skill and the author Shiv Khera has given a great importance on the development of pleasing personality. He has clearly brought out the difference between ego and pride. As per author ego is self intoxicating and destructive and the pride is the feeling of pleasure of accomplishment with humility. He has also dealt with selfishness and self interest. Selfishness is negative and destructive whereas self interest is positive. In order to develop positive personality author has given twenty five steps. Accepting responsibility has been given as the first step. Showing consideration to others, think win-win, avoiding criticism and complaints, good listener, honesty and sincere approach, keeping promises, loyalty, humility are the other major steps towards building a pleasing personality. The book has nicely dealt on the topic of subconscious mind and our habits. It has been brought out that most of our behaviour is habitual and comes without thinking. Our character is a sum total of habits. If we have positive habits then we have a good character and the author has emphasized on forming positive habits. As per the author goal setting is very important to achieve success in our lives. Unless there is a focus the goal cannot be achieved. It is also important that the goals are balance between the family, physical, mental, social and our spiritual requirements. The goal sould also be consistent with our values. Values play a very important role in our lives. Author comments that the character and true values are priceless and should not be compromised at any cost. Values and virtues are not hereditary and they are learned. We need to get our priorities right. Vision is very important and due to lack of vision or limited vision people are not able to achieve excellence.

Author Shiv Khera did not write any new concepts for achieving success. He wrote only all the prevalent ideas by many other authors in new, fresh words writing in simpler language. This is for the people who have never read any success book . Shiv khera have taken all the essential substance from many author and it is a real treat. The book helps the readers to remove the hurdles that block the path to success. The book is an international best seller because of its top class content. I recommend this book to all those who wish to achieve success in life.