Awake at Work

Book excerpt: A collection of pithy Buddhist slogans on how to approach everyday workplace stressors as valuable opportunities for growth and learning When we think of work, we often think of drudgery, frustration, and stress. For too many of us, work is the last place in our lives we expect to experience satisfaction, fulfillment, or spiritual growth. In this unique book, Michael Carroll—a meditation teacher, executive coach, and corporate director—shares Buddhist wisdom on how to transform the common hassles and anxieties of the workplace into valuable opportunities for heightened wisdom and enhanced effectiveness. Carroll shows us how life on the job—no matter what kind of work we do—can become one of the most engaging and fulfilling areas of our lives. At its heart, Awake at Work offers thirty-five principles that we can use throughout our day to revitalize our work as well as our understanding of ourselves and others. Carroll invites readers to contemplate these slogans and to use them on-the-spot, in the midst of work’s chaos, to develop clarity, wisdom, and inspiration. Along the way, Carroll presents a variety of techniques and insights to help us acknowledge work, with all its complications, as “a valuable invitation to fully live our lives.” In an engaging, accessible, and often humorous style, Awake at Work offers readers a path to rediscovering our natural sense of intelligence, confidence, and delight on the job.