A Meaningful Life at Work addresses a range of issues impacting experiences in the workplace and restricting personal growth in a professional setting. The authors explore employee wellbeing from a Malaysian perspective as a developing country, as well as the broader Asian and wider global context.

L.J. Davis’s 1971 novel, A Meaningful Life, is a blistering black comedy about the American quest for redemption through real estate and a gritty picture of New York City in collapse. Just out of college, Lowell Lake, the Western-born hero of Davis’s novel, heads to New York, where he plans to make it big as a writer. Instead he finds a job as a technical editor, at which he toils away while passion leaks out of his marriage to a nice Jewish girl. Then Lowell discovers a beautiful crumbling mansion in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn, and against all advice, not to mention his wife’s will, sinks his every penny into buying it. He quits his job, moves in, and spends day and night on demolition and construction. At last he has a mission: he will dig up the lost history of his house; he will restore it to its past grandeur. He will make good on everything that’s gone wrong with his life, and he will even murder to do it.

This book examines the importance of work in human well-being, addressing several related philosophical questions about work and arguing on the whole that meaningful work is central in human flourishing. Work impacts flourishing not only in developing and exercising human capabilities but also in instilling and reflecting virtues such as honor, pride, dignity, self-discipline and self-respect. Work also attaches to a sense of purposefulness and personal identity, and meaningful work can promote both personal autonomy and a sense of personal satisfaction that issues from making oneself useful. Further still, work bears a formative influence on character and intelligence and provides a primary avenue for exercising complex skills and garnering esteem and recognition from others. The author defends a pluralistic account of meaningful work, arguing that work can be meaningful in virtue of developing capabilities, supporting virtues, providing a purpose, or integrating elements of a worker's life. In light of the impact of meaningful work on living well, the author argues that well-ordered societies provide opportunities for meaningful work, that individuals would be well advised to pursue these opportunities, and that the philosophical view of value pluralism, which casts work as having no special significance in an individual's life, is false. The book also addresses oppressive work that undermines human flourishing, examining potential solutions to mitigate the impact of bad work on those who perform it. Finally, a guiding argument of the book is that promoting meaningful work is a matter of ethics, more so than a matter of politics. Prioritizing people over profit, treating workers with respect, respecting the intelligence of working people, and creating opportunities for people to contribute developed skills are basic ethical principles for employing organizations and for communities at large.

Toward a Meaningful Life is a spiritual road map for living based on the teachings of one of the foremost religious leaders of our time: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Head of the Lubavitcher movement for forty-four years and recognized throughout the world simply as “the Rebbe,” Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in June 1994, was a sage and a visionary of the highest order. Toward a Meaningful Life gives people of all backgrounds fresh perspectives on every aspect of their lives—from birth to death, youth to old age; marriage, love, intimacy, and family; the persistent issues of career, health, pain, and suffering; and education, faith, science, and government. We learn to bridge the divisions between accelerated technology and decelerated morality, between unprecedented worldwide unity and unparalleled personal disunity. Although the Rebbe’s teachings are firmly anchored in more than three thousand years of scholarship, the urgent relevance of these old-age truths to contemporary life has never been more manifest. At the threshold of a new world where matter and spirit converge, the Rebbe proposes spiritual principles that unite people as opposed to the materialism that divides them. In doing so, he continues to lead us toward personal and universal redemption, toward a meaningful life, and toward God.

A Meaningful Life at Work addresses a range of issues impacting experiences in the workplace and restricting personal growth in a professional setting. The authors explore employee wellbeing from a Malaysian perspective as a developing country, as well as the broader Asian and wider global context.

The founder and CEO of Askinosie Chocolate, an award-winning craft chocolate factory, shows readers how he discovered the secret to purposeful work and business − and how we can too, no matter what work we do. Askinosie Chocolate is a small-batch, award winning chocolate company widely considered to be a vanguard in the industry. Known for sourcing 100% of his cocoa beans directly from farmers across the globe, Shawn Askinosie has pioneered direct trade and profit sharing in the craft chocolate industry with farmers in Tanzania, Ecuador, and the Philippines. In addition to developing relationships with smallholder farmers, the company also partners with schools in their origin communities to provide lunch to 1,600 children every day with no outside donations. Twenty-five years ago, Shawn Askinosie was a successful criminal defense lawyer trying his first murder death penalty case that would later go on to become a Dateline special. For many years he found law satisfying, but after several high profile trials he reached a breaking point and found solace in the search for a new career. In this inspiring guide to discovering a vocation that feeds your heart and soul, Askinosie describes his quest to discover more meaningful work – a search that led him to volunteering in the palliative care wing of a hospital, to a Trappist monastery where he became inspired by the monks focus on “being” rather than “doing,” and eventually traipsing through jungles across the globe in search of excellent cocoa bean farmers to make award winning chocolate. Askinosie shares his hard-won insights into doing work that reflects one’s values and purpose in life. He shares with readers visioning tools that can be used in any industry or field to create a work life that is inspired and fulfilling. Askinosie shows us that everyone has the capacity to find meaning in their work and be a positive force for good in the world.

The instant New York Times bestseller Supermodel and philanthropist Gisele Bündchen shares personal stories, insights, and photos to explore lessons that have helped shape her life. Gisele Bündchen's journey began in southern Brazil, growing up with five sisters, playing volleyball, and rescuing the dogs and cats around her hometown. In fact, she wanted to become either a professional volley player or a veterinarian. But at the age of 14, fate suddenly intervened in in the form of a modeling scout, who spotted her in São Paulo. Four years later, Gisele's appearance in Alexander McQueen's memorably rain-soaked London runway show in the spring 1998 launched her spectacular career as a fashion model, and put an end to the "heroin chic" era of fashion. Since then, Gisele has appeared in almost 400 ad campaigns and on over 1200 magazine covers. She has walked in more than 470 fashion shows for the most influential brands in the world. Gisele has become an icon, leaving a lasting mark on the fashion industry. But until now, few people have gotten to know the real Gisele, a woman whose private life stands in dramatic contrast to her public image. In Lessons, she reveals for the first time who she really is and what she's learned over the past 37 years to help her live a meaningful life--a journey that takes readers from a childhood spent barefoot in small-town Brazil, to an internationally successful career, motherhood and marriage to quarterback Tom Brady. A work of great openness and vulnerability, Lessons reveals the inner life of a very public woman.

What are the elements of good character? The Values in Action (VIA) project identified 24 qualities such as creative, authentic, loving, forgiving, kind, persistent, prudent, and brave, calling them character strengths. Character strengths are elements of good character valued across time and around the world. If you are curious about your own strengths, join the 3 million people that have taken the free online survey at www.viacharacter.org. Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life brings the 24 character strengths to life with stories involving children, teenagers, adults, and elders and occurring in family life and business settings, in the present and in the distant past, in locations from China to the United States to the Middle East. Research shows that using character strengths in new ways for a week makes people happier up to six months later. This book includes many ideas for using your character strengths in new ways. Based on the unusual premise that a key way to build strength is to act 'as if' you have that strength already, this book includes short passages to read aloud to try on particular character strengths. This concept is well known to actors and elite athletes, but less well known to the rest of the world. Look inside the book to see whose words are used to embody hope, gratitude, leadership, creativity, kindness, love and all the rest. More than 30 authors contributed stories to this book, including George Vaillant, the 35-year director of Harvard's Study of Adult Development. Many leaders in the positive psychology field endorse the book, including the 'father of positive psychology' Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman. He writes: "My friend, Chris Peterson, would have loved this book. It brings to life with personal stories, practical recommendations, wisdom, and humor the dry scholarship that he (with an assist from me) did in Character Strengths and Virtues. Chris was very down-to-earth and I am sure he would have concurred in my enthusiastically recommending this book to everyone who works with character strengths in the real world." Martin E. P. Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness and Flourish Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to a scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania in honor of the lead researcher of character strengths, the late Christopher Peterson. This scholarship supports the education of future practitioners of positive psychology. This is the third book in the Positive Psychology News series, joining Resilience: How to Navigate Life's Curves and Gratitude: How to Appreciate Life's Gifts. Bottom line, this book is bound to make you learn something new, be inspired about humanity and have a chance to play with character strengths. This book will make you happier.

Not all who wander are lost… Paul thought he was on his way. From a small-town Connecticut kid to the most prestigious consulting firm in the world, he had everything he thought he wanted. Yet he decided to walk away and embark on the "real work" of his life - finding the work that matters and daring to create a life to support that. This Pathless Path is about finding yourself in the wrong life, and the real work of figuring out how to live. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and contemplating the deepest questions about life, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to a life he is excited to keep living. The Pathless Path is not a how-to book filled with “hacks”; instead, it is a vulnerable account of Paul’s journey from leaving the socially accepted “default path” towards another, one focused on doing work that matters, finding the others, and defining your own success. This book is an ideal companion for people considering leaving their jobs, embarking on a new path, dealing with the uncertainty of an unconventional path, or looking to improve their relationship with work in a fast-changing world. Reader feedback: “It’s a rare book in that it is tangentially about careers and being more focused and productive, but unlike almost every other book I have read about these topics, I finished this one and felt better about myself and my career.” “The themes are timeless. The content is expertly written. The advice is refreshingly non-prescriptive.” “If you have questioned your own path, or a nagging lack of intention in your choices you need this book. If you have felt a gradual loss of agency in your direction you need this book. You are in the grip of an invisible script that was not written for you.” “The writing is fantastic - Paul's writing is approachably poetic; a quick read that weaves together his own experience moving from a 'default path' overachiever to a 'pathless path' seeker of passion and curiosity, deep research into the history of work and collections of perspectives from years of podcasting, friendship, conferences, and meetings with other 'alternative path' life-livers."