The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari is a book about the purpose of life and how to achieve it. While Sharma is of course unable to pinpoint what each reader’s specific purpose in life might be, he continually refocuses the narrative around fulfilling purpose and the consequences of ignoring whatever mission we have been put on the Earth to do.

Early in the narrative, John notices that Julian appears to be a workaholic living without purpose. Before his courtroom collapse, John suggests that Julian “had lost all sense of purpose […] Julian’s spark of life had begun to flicker” (6). This wasn’t always the case; earlier in their relationship, Julian considered himself a “force for good” who enjoyed helping others, which “gave him a purpose and […] fueled his hopes” (6), but this was lost over time. John repeatedly laments his own loss of passion over the course of his career, which “had dulled [his] creativity and limited [his] vision” (35) and wonders if the wisdom of the Sages of Sivana could be the antidote.

Julian solves the greatest riddle in human history quite neatly in Chapter 7: “…the secret of happiness is simple: find out what you truly love to do and then direct all of your energy towards doing it” (55).