Keys – The HLP Way To A Regret-Free Life – By Santosh Joshi – Book Reviews

As the life moves on like a wheel, there are ups and downs. We cannot win every time, we have to accept that. We are blessed with a great organ named brain and have a tremendous ability to store memories. But sometimes some memories from the Past life comes haunting us, and we think it will affect adverse on our Future. Which makes our Present full of worries.

We all have experienced such situations. These are the situations where we need to get inspired or motivated externally. The external motivation reinforces our trust in our abilities and we get ready for the battle of life once again!

This external motivation can come from various places, including but not limited to; advise from an elder, support from a friend, words of wisdom from someone else’ inspirational journey of life, motivational article from a magazine, a good book, or attending a seminar by a life-coach,… The list can go on and on.

In short, we often found ourselves in the situation where we cannot see the path clearly, based on our beliefs and experience with the life so far. We need a source of motivation in such time, to re-collect our energy and positive attitude. And, remember, there is nothing wrong in that. It doesn’t ever mean that you do not have the ability to compose yourself without external help. The external source is a simple motivational factor – which works like an agent – it is actually your strength which pushes you forward.

Motivational speaker does the same. They re-minds you the positive attributes, your inner strengths, ignites the flair of self-confidence and makes you believe that – you can.

There are so many motivational books by various life-coach available in the market and we here present our personal reviews for the book Keys – The HLP Way To A Regret-Free Life by first time author Santosh Joshi.

What makes us read the book and review the same is, the phrase in its tagline – REGRET-FREE life.

Now living a life in a healthy way and living it in regret-free manner are the two different things.

This is the first book by Santosh Joshi, but he is an experienced orator. His sessions as a life-coach, his various seminars get him opportunity to meet a lot of people and understand their problems. This is actually a very good thing. It gives him authority to speak on the stuff and the real incidents helps him understand the real problem in better way. In each chapter you find a few examples (may be the names or even incidents are fictional, but definitely inspired from real source) of real people and real situations, which make reader to relate with the same.

Other positive factor is the use of line arts and illustrations. We all know how much we like cartoons in the newspaper. They have the ability to represent your views in better manner with a very few lines of drawing. Each chapter starts with one such full page illustration, giving you glimpses of what you are going to read inside.

The main aspect of the book is to discuss HLP way (as the key to live regret-free life) which means:

• Heal your past
• Live in present
• Plan your future

It is good to read page 12-13 carefully. They are small lines arranged like a rhyme, giving you the essence of the book.

Also the inspirational/motivational stuff cannot be presented effectively without talking some hard-to-digest truths. And the author does it via discussing some myths like “bygones are bygones” and proving them wrong; in early stage of the book. Which is good. As we know that our past is responsible for what we are and what we can be tomorrow. So we cannot detach ourselves completely from the same. The author also affirms that forgiving doesn’t stand for let others do wrong with you and you approve the same. It is interesting to read more (or listen more from him in seminar in this regards) about this stuff from the author himself.

Some of the examples the author comes up with, shows the mind-over-body factor. And he is correct in his analysis about the effect of the mind-state on our current physical state.

Such books have dangers to be more philosophical or even hypothetical if not taken care while writing the words of inspiration and motivation. The author almost took care of not let this book being a boring lecture.

Also the short summary of each section under the heading “Powerful tools to…” works nicely as it reminds you what you have read so far.

We can clearly see the impact of author’s experience in therapy-sessions/seminars in book’s writing. There are some stuff coming repetitively which slows the pace of the book. But for such kind of books might be repeating the key-phrases is a need (like in the seminars). Some incidents the author narrates are natural and some like stories but they remain relevant to the matter of subject.

Considering the book as a summarized yet detailed collection of various sessions by the author, the book price is worth it 🙂

As this has to be kind of interactive book, we personally feel that, there is a need of 2-3 blank pages at the end of each chapter where reader can put his/her “notes”. May be the next edition of the book will have that. Also some heavy words used can be avoided to reach to more and more readers. Also if the author have considered to embed some references to the mythological and historical events/characters; the book could have been more effective. After all, the Shrimad Bhagvad Geeta is the biggest and most read motivational book around the globe.

Overall, a nice book to read when you seek inspiration to move on in the life. And remember it is an ongoing process. So you need to implement this words of wisdom in your life-style; to make the reading worth.