The Art of Happiness at Work

• Publisher:   Simon & Schuster Audio
• Number Of Pages:  
• Publication Date:   2003-08-01
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   074353557X
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780743535571

For the first time since The Art of Happiness, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has teamed up with psychiatrist Howard Cutler to continue the discussion about what makes life meaningful.

In conversations with the Dalai Lama over the past several years, Howard Cutler has asked the questions we all want answered about how to find happiness in the place we spend most of our time -- work. Beginning with the basic need to find satisfaction in our careers, Dr. Cutler questions His Holiness about the nature of work. In psychiatry and according to the Dalai Lama, our motivation for working determines our level of satisfaction. The Art of Happiness at Work explores these three levels of focus:

• Survival: focus on salary, stability, food and clothing• Career: focus on advancement• Calling: focus on work as a higher purpose

Dr. Cutler probes the Dalai Lama's wisdom by posing these questions: What is the relationship between self-awareness and work? How does lack of freedom at work affect our levels of happiness? How can we deal with boredom or lack of challenge? Job change and unemployment? How much of our misery comes from our identity being tied up with work?

Dr. Cutler walks us through the Dalai Lama's reasoning so that we may know how to apply his wisdom to daily life. The Art of Happiness at Work is an invaluable source of strength and peace for anyone who earns a living.

In their 1998 book The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and co-author Howard C. Cutler, M.D., explored how inner development contributes to overall happiness. In their second collaboration, the authors considered how they could best follow their highly successful first book. They chose a subject that affects millions of people around the world and produced. In this very readable, useful book, the authors attempt to discover the following: "Where does work fit in to our overall quest for happiness?" and "To what degree does work satisfaction affect our overall life satisfaction and happiness?"

peace and happiness in every word. even the most cynical of us can appreciate the Dalai Lama. narration is tedious at times but thoughtful

Poorly written.
While the book does contain flashes of insight from the Dalai Lama, it is connected by randomly written, meandering, pointless, drivel.
This book is a pathetic waste of time.

It is difficult to pull out substance from this book because there is too much unnecessary dialouge, mostly on the part of Howard Culter. What points the Dalai Lama does try to make are buried in Culter's commentary.
Most of Dalai Lama's books are enlightening, however this one is not.

This book resulted from an earlier work, The Art of Happiness, written by the same authors which took a more global look at the issue of happiness. Why look at the issue of happiness at work? A 2005 study by the Gallup Organization shows that just 20% of us are passionate about the work we do. A terrible statistic given that we spend at least one-third (and in many cases much more) of our day working. I picked-up this book because much of my work as a consultive coach revolves around the arenas of worksite wellness and life-work integration, both of which are impacted by one's level of happiness. While this book does have some challenges, overall, I was not disappointed. For each of the topics presented, I liked how the book integrated Western psychological research and thinking with Eastern Buddhist philosophy. This book clearly has a big picture - high level type of focus. If you are looking for daily practical tips and advice as to how to be happier at work, you will be disappointed by this book. If you are interested in learning about an overall happiness framework you can use to guide your life's journey towards a greater level of happiness, then I believe you will find the book valuable. I found the book to have two challenges:
1. The book does drag along at times
2. I sometimes found it difficult to determine which of the authors was speaking. Was it the Dalai Lama or Dr. Cutler?

I have read quite a few books by the Dalai Lama and/or co-written by the Dalai Lama and, unfortunately, this is my least favorite. The majority of the book focuses on common sense ways to find happiness at work: such as finding balance between challenge and capabilities and having oulets outside of work for your happiness. This being said the best readers of this book would be employers. Employers could certainly read some of the actual complaints and studies about workplace satisfaction to try and improve working conditions. Besides my feeling that this would be an interesting read for anyone in management, I can not highly recommonend this book which is disappointing.

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