An interesting thing has happened down at your local bookstore and library. There was a time when if you were looking for a book on something like achieving personal fulfillment at work, you would wander over to the spirituality, psychology, or self-help sections. Today, you'd look in either in the general business category or even in the non-fiction aisles.This isn't a case of someone not understanding the Dewey Decimal system.
What is happening is that bookstore owners and librarians -- just like the publishers who sell to them -- are recognizing that members of today's workforce (especially baby boomers) -- want more out of life than just a paycheck. They may not have taken Philosophy 101 back in school, but it's clear from looking at the bestseller lists that they are looking for meaning in all aspects of their lives, and not just during the hour or so they spend in church on Sunday. That's why "how to" books are picking up spiritual overtones, and spiritual books now often come complete with "how to" sections.
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There is no doubt about it, argues Tom Morris, a philosophy professor turned business lecturer. In "If Aristotle Ran General Motors: Four Timeless Virtues and the New Soul of Business" Morris argues that if business people really want to return to basics, as they so often preach, they should go all the way back -- to the classics.
While he sprinkles his book with scores of quotes from other philosophers, it is clear that Morris wants the reader to return to the four fundamental beliefs that Aristotle extolled 22 centuries ago -- truth, beauty, goodness and spirituality.
For Morris, truth can include opening the books to employees. A more beautiful workplace increases productivity. Goodness means behaving ethically, and unity means meeting employees spiritual (not religious) needs on the job. These four virtues are what the readers who are now prowling the business aisles in search of fulfillment are looking for.
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Tobias, the author of "Fire and Ice," "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need" and "The Only Other Investment Guide You'll Ever Need," finds meaning through making money. Actually, that's not quite fair. For one thing, Tobias stresses that making money allows him to fund causes he finds worthwhile -- automobile insurance reform; gay and lesbian rights; the care and feeding of children in Third World countries -- and for another, he readily admits that money is just a good way of keeping score, once you have more than you need.
And it is clear that Tobias has more than he needs.
While he never exactly reveals how vast his fortune actually is ("my IQ and my net worth are the two numbers I try to keep to myself, being substantially lower than I'd like them to be") it is clear that Tobias has made a lot of money not only from his books, but his best-selling software program, "Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money." How much money? Well, he contributed $250,000 to automobile insurance reform in California without batting an eye. And he owns an awful lot of houses for a business writer, this business writer writes enviously. But it is the fact that Tobias has done so well, that makes his adventures in capitalism so funny.
After all, without having that excess capital, he would not have been able to purchase a Miami apartment sight unseen; buy a series of ads on Russian television designed to combat smoking, and become an Iowa farmer in part so he could echo the preamble to "Out of Africa" ("I . . . had a farm . . . in Iowa.") While Tobias drops in some investment advice along the way (invest in index funds; fund your retirement today; buy when items -- be they stocks, Iowa farmland or Miami apartments -- are out of favor) and is preachy on the issue of insurance reform, he makes it clear that you can do far worse than search for meaning through the ways you make -- and spend -- your money.
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In order to figure out how to achieve meaning in life, Leider, who wrote "Repacking Your Bags," interviewed people near the end of their lives and asked: What would you do differently, if you had a chance to live your life over again?
Three themes are present throughout the conversations:
"Look ahead. How old do you think you'll live to be? Imagine you're that age. As you look back on your life, what would you like to be able to say is your legacy -- how you became the someone that you were destined to be? What might you do with your remaining time so that you can look back over your life with no regrets?"
Implicit in that is figuring out exactly where work fits in. Leider quotes James Autry on this point: "Work can provide the opportunity for spiritual and personal as well as financial growth. If it doesn't, we're wasting far too much of our lives on it."
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How do you do that? The authors of "Raving Fans" lay out a simple three-step strategy in this nonfiction work that they tell in terms of a fable:
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