Not the outcome you wanted, but why brand it failure?

Going through a catastrophic phase in your life? Failure, disaster, pain, loss! As you plod on helplessly, do you doubt if you will ever recover?

Congratulations! You have joined the ranks of the famous who went through an equally if not more difficult phase of life and emerged with their wings stronger. And you know them.

Surely you know Amitabh Bachchan? Oprah Winfrey? Cristiano Ronaldo? Just to name three.

When someone recommended the book by Muralidharran, the title made me suspect it was yet another self-help book. When I plunged into Your Soul Wants To Win: Why Failure Is A Myth, I landed at Resilience Institute. Where FailureSync Technology “tested all humanity knew about failure, success, and the thin thread linking them across time.”

That sounded like some exciting science fiction without the fancy weapons and avatars!

Then I joined every participant in the program as each relived the past of one celebrity. Celebrities considered famous and immensely successful now but had almost never made it in their real world.

Imagine technology that takes you into the very soul of someone who once walked the path that you have now surrendered to irredeemable failure. Then you emerge from the dream as it were, shaken, dazzled and, most importantly, changed for the better, for the positive.

Like Amitabh Bachchan who was almost clinically dead following a severe injury on set that would keep him away from films, some years later found himself 900 million in debt, and then regained his fame and fortune as he became the king of the show Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Like Oprah Winfrey, who was not sure if she would be able to go to school, survived abuse as a nine-year old, became pregnant at age 14, got a job at a radio station at 17 and went on to “become somebody in the world someday” as she had once predicted.
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Like Cristiano Ronaldo, the little son of “nobodies”, who had the ridiculous dream of becoming a footballer, was laughed at as too small and weak, almost lost his place at the academy when he was diagnosed with a heart problem, was derided for his focus on “fancy tricks” during his first game at Manchester United at 18, and went on to train late into the nights until he “could not get it wrong”.

A book born of multiple “failures"

What triggered Muralidharran to write the book was the “failures” he faced in his own life.
 
At 35, a complete financial collapse coincided with the sudden loss of his father and the prolonged illness of his mother, who remained bedridden until her passing. At 40, shortly after the birth of his daughter, a near-fatal accident left him fighting for survival.
 
He decided to put this “second chance at life” to good use.
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“I decided to understand life at a deeper level,” Muralidharran writes. “This led to learning, unlearning and more research about every aspect of life. Studied with many mentors and read lot of books. As I changed myself, I realized that most of the unhappiness in life stems from not realizing our life’s purpose. Probably my life’s purpose is to give more and contribute more to this world. Hence, I decided to add value to other people’s lives through this book.” 

Muralidharran with his wife and daughter

A finance professional all his life, he never considered himself a writer. “But I had wanted to be one since I was a 10-year-old,” Muralidharran said.

It took him five years to complete the book. “The goal was to add value to other people’s lives. Even if I could change one life through this book, I will consider myself successful.” He knows he has to be patient.
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Presently heading the finance operations of a major corporate group in Dubai, Muralidharran has worked with multiple multinationals during his stints in the Middle East, Far East and other locations.

Turn failure into fiction

So, should you read this book? Yes, because there is no telling what life might have for you. Good or bad, this book can help you stay level, teach yourself to take deep breaths and stay on track.

Turn the pages just for the science that may prove to be more than fiction. Imagine technology that reads your biosignatures and seamlessly immerses you in the life and learnings of someone who was (and perhaps still is) very real. As you live that life, your own assumptions about what you are and where you stand begin to melt away. And you reemerge, your mindset reconstructed.

At the end of the book, Muralidharran poses 10 questions that give you food for thought and fuel for peaceful progress. One of those asks, “What would I do if I truly believed success was inevitable? What’s the first step I would take?”
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Perhaps, reading this book and absorbing what it offers could be that first step?

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