contributor | aditya kothadiya

ADEOLOGUE blog
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one page book review
The Present
By Spencer Johnson
www.adeologue.com
Amazon Rating: 4/5 | 112 Pages | ISBN-13: 978-0385509305
This book explains very common yet powerful concept in very simple manner. The crux of the
book is how to live in the present while learning from the past and planning for the future to
achieve happiness in work and personal life. It explains The Present (gift) is not the past, and
not the future, it is the present moment, it is ‘now’. It means to focus and pay attention to what
is happening right now. Usually when you are in the office, you think where else you might
enjoy working more, or what you will do when you go home. When you are in the meeting or
chatting with friends, your mind wanders somewhere else. So this concept explains very
powerful strategy to focus on the present moment and concentrate on the activity which is
happening in that moment.

Now focusing on present doesn’t mean that you should forget the past. Everybody does some
mistakes in the past but you shouldn’t keep worrying about it. You might keep thinking about
those past mistakes in the present and may spoil the present. It is hard to let go of the past if
you have not learned from the past. As soon as you learn from your mistakes, you can easily let
that go away and move on in the present. Once you learn from the past, it is easy to enjoy in the
present, which eventually enhances your performance in the present. When you are feeling
unhappy in the present, then it is time to learn from the past or plan the future.

To achieve happiness in work and personal life, live

in the present, learn from the past and plan for
the future.
The common behavior of people is to live in the future and get anxious about the events in the
future. This book explains that we should plan for the future but we should not live in the
future. Only way we can make our future better than our present is to plan for the future.
Planning for future reduces the uncertainty, anxiety and fear about future events as you are
actively working on your plan to achieve your goals in the future. So we should visualize a
wonderful future, create a realistic plan to help it happen and then take actions in the present
to achieve the desired success.

It also explains living in the present, learning from the past, and planning for the future is not
all there is. It is only when you live with the purpose, and respond to what’s important about
the present, past and future, has all the meaning. Living with purpose means not only knowing
what to do, but also understanding why to do. It means rising each day and seeing what
meaning it will hold for you and for others as a result of your actions.

My $0.02s: I strongly recommend to read this book if you can get a copy of it from
friend or so. The theory is very simple to read but can be equally challenging to
implement. But it will be highly rewarding to adapt this theory in to practice.

Feel free to forward this review to your friends for them to gain more in less time.