YOU WIN WHEN YOU DON'T PLAY BY SHARMILA SENGUPTA (2025)

Hard work, perseverance, and dedication are three of the most rewarded and glorified traits, and they should be. After all, its these traits that fuel our strength and bring us closer to success. But what is success? Is success defined by the accolade that acknowledges your hard work at workplace? Is it an acceptance letter from your dream university? Is it about a personal milestone, like getting married and starting a family? Or is it about becoming the perfect conflict resolver in the room?

Any of these reasons can inspire you to be a more hardworking individual, but do these reasons also ensure that you stay at peace? This is exactly the kind of question Sharmila Sengupta sets out to answer in her book.

In Sengupta's words, this book is for people who are:

1. Fighting silent battles

2. Feeling responsible for everyone else's happiness

3. Believe that peace comes after they have fixed everything else or

4. Have achieved a lot, but still do not feel at peace.

This book accurately captures the problem that plagues almost every individual in different ways: habitual unkindness towards self. As mentioned before, hard work, dedication and perseverance are commendable traits, but they also pull us down, especially when we refuse to stop and breathe. Sengupta provides some very precise and useful tips to tackle burnout, draw boundaries for people that shift their emotional baggage to loved ones, and to find kindness for self, especially when life gets too hectic for people to enjoy their lives.

Sengupta's tips on drawing boundaries to foster inner peace have been personally encouraging, and I aim to keep all her useful techniques in mind to constantly remind myself the importance of prioritising peace over hustle.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO WIN EVERY BATTLE. YOU JUST HAVE TO STOP PLAYING THE ONES THAT COST YOUR PEACE.- SHARMILA SENGUPTA

This quote from the book, really encapsulates what this book tries to convey, but you can only understand the true essence of this message after reading the book. You Win When You Don't Play is like a balm on an old, yet invisible wound we never tried to heal, and that is why I would like to give it a rating of 5/5.

This book is available to read for free with a subscription for Kindle Unlimited!