
Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment
Posted by jack_miller | Published 10 months ago

With 119 ratings
By: Peter Buffett and Random House Audio
Purchased At: $16.00
From composer, musician, and philanthropist Peter Buffett comes a warm, wise, and inspirational book that asks which you will choose: the path of least resistance or the path of potentially greatest satisfaction?
You may think that with a last name like his, Buffett has enjoyed a life of endless privilege. But the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that the only real inheritance handed down from his parents was a philosophy: Forge your own path in life. It is a creed that has allowed him to follow his own passions, establish his own identity, and reap his own successes.
In Life Is What You Make It, Buffett expounds on the strong set of values given to him by his trusting and broadminded mother, his industrious and talented father, and the many life teachers he has met along the way.
Today's society, Buffett posits, has begun to replace a work ethic, relishing what you do, with a wealth ethic, honoring the payoff instead of the process. We confuse privilege with material accumulation, character with external validation. Yet, by focusing more on substance and less on reward, we can open doors of opportunity and strive toward a greater sense of fulfillment. In clear and concise terms, Buffett reveals a great truth: Life is random, neither fair nor unfair.
From there, it becomes easy to recognize the equal dignity and value of every human life. Our circumstances may vary, but our essences do not. We see that our journey in life rarely follows a straight line but is often met with false starts, crises, and blunders. How we push through and persevere in these challenging moments is where we begin to create the life of our dreams - from discovering our vocations to living out our bliss to giving back to others.
Personal and revealing, instructive and intuitive, Life Is What You Make It is about transcending your circumstances, taking up the reins of your destiny, and living your life to the fullest.
This is a book that comes from the heart, replete with personal anecdotes and keen insights from every-day life. The style is not pedantic; in fact it’s compassionate. It does not provide any fool proof ways to the wisdom, but gives you enough occasions when you may want to pause and ponder. If at all, it urges you to find your own zen, however troublesome it may be.
The title of the book sums it up well – there is so much in life to look forward to (and live), yet most of us choose to define it with a narrow perspective, in dollar terms or parental/ society expectations. Read it, mark it, and you may feel to go back to it from time to time, to realign your compass.
It makes you think about your life choices in a different light. In all of us, that is going to bring both regret and self-satisfaction, since every life is a mix of both. But the punch line is, evaluate and understand how you got where you are, and then get going in the direction you really want, rather than the direction you thought you should (unless they are already in tune). At my age, I also came away with a sense of "It's not too late to succeed" in my definition of what success is. That's highly motivating.
I would recommend this book to somebody who comes from wealth but has a hard time figuring out what they want to do.
I gave it two stars because it the anecdotes seemed cherry-picked, the writing was repetitive, and there weren’t many novel insights, at least to me.
But if you already have tens of books on self-development you might want to consider passing.
Children born to wealth are often passionless or indifferent: they have little motivation to work because they take everything for granted. Oftentimes, as well, parents misguidedly give to their children in excess, trying to make up for their own lacks while growing up. This little book offers many insights that may help all find the right attitude and perspective to discover true passion and joy in their lives.
No le pongo 5 estrellas por el estado “físico” en el que llego el libro.
N even the cover of book is made of paper.
And they are charging ₹660 for this bad quality 250 pages..