I was asked by TLC Book tours to review the book, How We Work By Leah Weiss, Ph.D. As I was reading through this book, I couldn’t help but think this is the perfect book for the recent or upcoming college graduate.
The subtitle Live Your Purpose, Reclaim Your Sanity, And Embrace The Daily Grind, really says it all. How many recent college graduates do you know that actually like their job? I haven’t met very many lately.
It seems like a lot of the recent graduates get out of school and they aren’t even sure what they want to do. Actually, I think this is pretty normal. The problem I see is they take a job and decide they don’t like it and then it feels like a job. Something they dread every day.
Leah Weiss teaches courses on compassionate leadership at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and she created a course at Stanford Graduate School of Business called Leading with Mindfulness and Compassion. Now since we all can’t go take this class, we should either read this book or at the very least give it to an upcoming college graduate.
In the first part of the book, Leah talks about having a purpose at work. I think to find your purpose in your life, in general, is the key to a more meaningful and joyful life. She says, “Mindful purpose allows us to conjure the possibility of our best selves, our best work, and our best lives.”
Leah goes on to talk about compassion to others and to ourselves. She says, “compassion empowers us to act, to help, to solve problems rather than simply feel what another person is felling. As it relates to work, this means being able to see things from someone else’s perspective and be able to puzzle through other points of view we may not agree with.”
I have always told my boys to find something you love to do for work because you will spend more time there than you will spend any other place. Leah confirms this to me even more in this book. She “explains why the false “work-life” dichotomy may be destructive to both our mental health and our professional success.”
