Striving to live a better, more balanced life
Reviewed by D S Cheema

Business, Balance & Beyond
By Azim Jamal. Jaico.
Pages 190. Rs 275

THIS book is based on the Corporate Sufi philosophy which Azim Jamal, the author, promotes through his writings and sharing his experiences through lectures and presentations in many countries. For this purpose he has also founded a company named Corporate Sufi Worldwide Inc. He shares with the reader the significance of the concept when he says that Corporate Sufi, which though an oxymoron at the face value, yet profound when fully understood, is at the nexus of his belief and being. The author is a well-known inspirational speaker and is eminently suited to writing on the subject of self-development.

Business, as discussed in the book, covers a wide spectrum of many components of business as commonly understood, such as engagement, empowerment, efficiency, effectiveness, leadership and capacity building. Similarly, Balance essentially means internal as well as external richness and Beyond includes concepts like success and happiness.

The chapter on Commitment to the Power of Giving, stresses on various virtues of giving to others in any form. Giving through relationship building involves Ethos (spiritual quotient), Pathos (emotional quotient) and Lagos (logic or wisdom quotient). In the chapter, Commitment to Opening Your Innate Gift, the author wants the reader to appreciate the enormous potential gifted by God and why one should make every effort to realise one’s full potential.

He also lays stress on the fact that alignment of ethics and principles with business is the right thing to do and only by sticking to them can one get unique long-lasting rewards. Another chapter has the focus on a winning attitude. Jamal discusses different ingredients of winning and shows how the right attitude towards success, wealth, goals, self-assessment, ego and fear etc. can give one happiness, which is the ultimate goal of all living beings. Enlightened Persistence is the subject matter of yet another chapter of the book. It is said, "Infinite patience produces immediate results" and "It is always too soon to quit". The power of ‘a little extra’ is all that takes to succeed. Jamal’s fifth commitment is the Commitment to Rejuvenation, which is about understanding the importance of balance in life.

Most of the self-help books dishing out nuggets of wisdom tell you ‘what to do’ but don’t disclose ‘how to do’ part, either because the author has no suggestions to offer or he purposely keeps it back for using in his lecture sessions.

However, Azim Jamal’s book has certain unique features like ‘ask yourself’, ‘your potential challenges to implementing a Commitment’, ‘in this chapter we explore the following ideas’ at the beginning of the chapter and ‘key points’ and ‘how to get started?’ at the end of the chapter. Another salient feature of the book is that one page at the end of each chapter pictorially lists various components of each Commitment.

Though what is contained in most of the self-help books is not something which is out of the world, yet if the book can provide doable insight in to what really matters, it can change any one’s life. The utility of such books depends on simplicity of the language, style and presentation. Based on these parameters, this simple-yet-eloquent book is more than a good read.

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