How many locally-written books can claim to have a foreword written by the Singapore President S R Nathan? I suspect not too many. "You Can Fly" is one of them. It is a motivational book written by the founder of Propnex (the largest real estate agency in Singapore), Mohd Ismail (Gafoor). To be honest, I have never heard of this book and only came across it by the purest of chances at the National Library. The fact that President S R Nathan wrote the foreword caught my attention and I started browsing through it.
This book is divided into 2 parts and is written in an interesting manner. Part 1 of the book talks about self-motivation, overcoming a defeatist mindset and how to achieve one's goals. At the start of each chapter in Part 1, Ismail Gafoor includes a short story about a little 'chick' named Kit. After the short story, he discusses about the moral of that short story and how one can change his or her own negative mentality to have a more positive self-belief and thus move more purposefully towards achieving goals. I enjoy reading this part of the book very much. The lessons are explained very simply and even from the short story, one can already infer the lesson to be learnt. Concise and very sensible advice given here.
Part 2 of the book talks about money management and entrepreneurship. No more short story but it is now down to the serious stuff about financial planning, savings and investments. It also covers entrepreneurship issues like whether a person is ready to be an entrepreneur and what is needed to succeed. To me, Part 2 is more dry than Part 1 but the lessons to be learnt here are no less important. Financial planning affects each and everyone of us and the earlier one starts, the better. The entrepreneurship portion is also useful even if one is not planning to become an entrepreneur because it teaches us how we can adopt an entrepreneurial mindset even if we are employees. It offers persuasive arguments on how this can benefit us. Look out for the "Moments of Peak". It talks about how one can, with proper planning, do our best on various fronts, juggling many things at one time. It is really insightful to me.
In conclusion, I find this book such a highly inspiring and informative read that I finished it within 2 days. It is written in such an easy-to-read manner that readers should find the lessons to be learnt easy to understand. Coming from an award-winning, locally born and bred entrepreneur, it really is worth investing your time to read this book and draw the important life lessons concisely and simply presented in this valuable read. I doubt readers will find it a pointless exercise. 
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