A clear starting point, says Style Essentials
Shweta Dhyani reviewed You Are Capable of More for Style Essentials, the independent global lifestyle magazine, in its Books & Art section. Here is what her review said, with a link to the original.
“His message is direct, sometimes demanding, but easy to understand.”Shweta Dhyani • Style Essentials Magazine
Style Essentials published its review of You Are Capable of More as a featured piece in the magazine’s Books & Art section in October 2026. The review was written by Shweta Dhyani.
Dhyani begins where the book begins, with a college prank that went wrong, and calls it an unlikely opening for a book about personal growth. She explains why it works: the story sets up one of the book’s central concerns, that the decisions we make without thinking them through can shape our lives far more than we expect.
She reads the book as an argument about taking responsibility for the direction of your life. Sund, she writes, is not selling positive thinking or big goal setting. He keeps coming back to the choices people make every day, the habits they let continue and the excuses that make hard decisions easier to put off, and his emphasis is on putting the principles into practice when circumstances are uncomfortable. She singles out the line “Responsibility is where power lives” as the book’s central argument in a single sentence.
Dhyani finds the chapter on time among the most relatable, especially the distinction Sund draws between being present and being available. In an age when anyone can answer a message from anywhere, she notes, being reachable is easily mistaken for being attentive. She also points to the more personal passages on fatherhood and on the loss of his father, which she says give the book more depth than its firm language of discipline might suggest, and to the chapters on feedback, follow-through and leaving the people around you better supported.
She is candid that some of the advice will be familiar to readers of the genre, and that the direct, no-excuses tone may not suit readers who want a more exploratory treatment. But she argues the book does not need every idea to be new to be useful. Its value is in putting familiar questions back to the reader: how you spend your time, what you are avoiding, whether you will hear an uncomfortable truth, and whether your actions match the priorities you claim.
Her conclusion is that the book is about the gap between wanting to change and doing the work change requires, and that for readers ready to examine their habits, take more responsibility and live more deliberately, Sund offers a clear starting point.
About Style Essentials
Style Essentials is an independent, digital-first global lifestyle magazine. It started as a blog in January 2024 and became a full online magazine in January 2025, covering design, fashion, food and travel, beauty, books and art, and culture for readers from Mumbai to Milan.
Its editorial stance is that coverage is earned, not bought: the magazine says it does not publish press releases and writes about work because there is something underneath it worth understanding. Roughly half of what it covers is rooted in India and the other half comes from everywhere else, held to the same standard. In 2025 it also launched Design Diary International, a sister magazine on architecture and design.
The review of You Are Capable of More sits in the magazine’s Books & Art section, alongside its other book reviews.
What other reviewers said
You Are Capable of More
Ten chapters on ownership, discipline and growth, with a playbook at the end you can keep coming back to. Available in paperback, hardcover and ebook.
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