This year marked Dr. Phil’s debut as a diet book author, so it is more than fitting that the Dalai Lama advises us in a new book on being happy at work. As it turns out, the Buddhist spiritual leader offers good ideas about solving the inevitable problems that people encounter on the job.
The Dalai Lama’s best advice might be to realize some problems can’t be solved–or least not as quickly as we would prefer. He discusses how we can balance good work and self-care (“no matter how satisfying our work is, it is a mistake to rely on work as our only source of satisfaction”). His take on the Buddhist concept of “right livelihood” is a valuable section for anyone struggling with career direction.
“The Art of Happiness at Work” (Riverhead, $24.95) might be just the holiday gift for the chronic worker or lost corporate soul in your life. The book is thin (it won’t be intimidating) and written in clear, concise fashion with co-author and physician Dr. Howard C. Cutler, who adds some mainstream ballast.
What is important, the book stands alone for any reader who has yet to pick up one of the Dalai Lama’s books, including 1998’s “The Art of Happiness.”
The Dalai Lama is not the only health and wellness author with a follow-up book worthy of gift-giving this season. Dr. Herbert Benson, the Harvard Medical School physician who wrote “The Relaxation Response” back in 1975, returns with a well-researched perspective on eliminating stress and creating more happiness in our lives.
In his new book, Benson equates happiness to “making progress” in pursuits ranging from work to love to playing sports. The book’s ambition is evident in its title: “The Breakout Principle: How to Activate the Natural Trigger That Maximizes Creativity, Athletic Performance, Productivity and Personal Well-Being” (Scribner, $25). But Benson delivers the goods in practical terms, especially with his four-step “self-transforming principle.”
Here are the steps: First, we struggle with a circumstance. Next we find a way to “let go” or mentally release the problem. Then it is time to practice a “breakout experience” in which we recognize and completely release typical thought patterns (an example might be not engaging in self-criticism as you replay an event over and over in your mind). The final step is finding a “new-normal” state of mind.
Benson and his co-author, William Proctor, provide many specific ideas for “release triggers” to work through the steps, such as meditating, running, consciously focusing on nature and even folding laundry.
Creativity, one of Benson’s goals, is squarely the focus of an inviting new book by choreographer Twyla Tharp. In “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life” (Simon & Schuster, $25), the prolific Tharp makes all of the right moves. She provides some 30 exercises for working through, say, writer’s block or getting a long-dreamed project actually started. One is called “Build a Bridge to the Next Day” and offers instructions on how to purge a cluttered mind overnight. The exercises help the book live up to the self-help promises of its title.
Yet the strongest part of the book is providing examples from Tharp’s own life and those of accomplished friends (dancers, painters, actors, moviemakers, children’s book authors, chefs, you name it) and noted creators, including references to the Bible, Mozart and Beethoven. This range of real-life remedies and rituals for creative inertia will have readers recalling them for months and probably years.
For instance, one chef friend always takes an early-morning minute on workdays to pick an herb from his urban balcony garden and simply hold, touch and smell the plant. It provides the chef a sense of both inner peace and purpose for the pending chaos of a restaurant kitchen.
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Tharp’s insistence that creativity is a habit–and not a talent only doled out by a higher power–is a welcome gift concept for anyone stuck in a rut. She recognizes that not attempting the new or being afraid to fail only holds us back in our jobs, relationships or self-growth.
“Some of my favorite dancers at the New York City Ballet were the ones who fell the most,” writes Tharp. “I always loved watching Mimi Paul. She took big risks onstage and went down often. Her falls reminded you that the dancers were doing superhuman things onstage.”
Failure is not the negative it is supposed to be, says Tharp: “When you fail in public, you are forcing yourself to learn a whole new set of skills, skills that have nothing to do with creating and everything to do with surviving. [Fellow choreographer] Jerome Robbins liked to say that you do your best work after your biggest disasters.”
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E-mail Bob Condor at [email protected]. Send health and fitness news to [email protected].