Work As a Spiritual Practice
June 18th, 2003by Lewis Richmond
ISBN: 0767902335
At the same time it piqued my interest, this book also made the needle jump on my flakiness meter. The subtitle is “A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job.”
It isn’t enlightenment for cubeville in 10 easy steps (so it wasn’t as flaky as I feared) and it did help me to want to stab people at work less, so it turned out to be a worthwhile read. Some of Richmond’s ideas sound like common sense, some sound kind of wacky, and then there are those in the middle ground, the ones that sound like they might work so I was more willing to try them.
There is a introduction and couple of chapters on “final thoughts” but the meat of the book is divided into four sections: Conflict, Stagnation, Inspiration, and Accomplishment. Richmond is a practical guy: he acknowledges the crap that goes on in the workplace and doesn’t minimize it. What he does is urge people to change their focus — your boss might be an asshole, but you are in control of how you react (and interact) with your boss. One point he makes over and over again is that “you are the CEO of your inner life.”
If you are at all interested in Buddhism, or in exploring spiritual values in a nonreligious context, you would probably find this book interesting. If you are stressed out at work, or just not sure where your job motivation went, this would probably be a good thing to read.
