Balancing spirituality and material success

Recently I came across a wonderful and brief TED Talk of about five minutes on the subject of "Eulogy versus Resume". The question being taken up is whether we should focus our time and energy on building our resume, or if we should live our lives in such a way that it gives people good things to say as part of our eulogy?

The speaker is David Brooks, who is the author of several books and appears as the balancing / conservative voice in several forums such as NY Times, PBS and NPR. While I have not read any of David's books, I have come to admire his perspective even though my politics can be different than his at times. In this talk he appears emotional (based on what I know of his voice on weekly NPR programs) at times, almost as if he is choking up at times. I certainly got choked up listening to what David had to share. I would welcome you to take a few minutes to take in this wonderful conversation around what ought to be important in our lives, given our brief time on this planet:

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_should_you_live_for_your_resume_or_your_eulogy

I think that it is important that we not only take care of meeting our objectives in the workplace, and in our personal lives, but that we also take care of the relationships and situations in which we find ourselves.

How do we balance this huge pressure that we face in our culture to be successful in a worldly sense, with the need to stay connected or grounded in the spiritual reality of our lives?

Are worldly success and spiritual success incompatible?

What does this mean to you:

"Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else will be added unto ye."

The Science of Happiness

The fields of Positive Pyschology and Neuroscience continue to examine the data around what constitutes "happiness" and "peace" in a scientific sense, and the kinds of behaviors and neural patterns that are associated with such states. This has implications not only for our ability to manage stress and be productive in a world of increasing complexity, but more importantly it addresses in a way the very fundamentals of "Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness".

Lately TED Talks has been providing us a huge service by allowing experts from this field who have been laboring for many years, and some for decades, to share their findings and perspective from the field of Positive Psychology, and allied fields in neuroscience and psycho-neuro-immunology.

NPR's TED Talk Hour has recently covered this subject and provided a high level view of some of the key researchers in this emerging field of study. This 1-hour program is a wonderful launching pad to a variety of TED Talks for anyone who wants to take in some of the data as well as inspiring perspectives from not only scientists but also people involved in other fields such as journalism and religion:

http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/267185371/simply-happy

There are many wonderful speakers and ideas referenced in here including:

- The positive impact of slowing down on our productivity and happiness
- The positive impact of misfortune on our overall satisfaction in life
- The role of gratitude in generating happiness
- The correlation of "being in the moment" with happiness and productivity

I would encourage anyone who has interest in their health, happiness, productivity and success to take a moment to explore some of these TED Talks and then possibly conduct further research into the work of some of these scientists and/or speakers.

Here are the original TED Talk home pages and videos of some of these speakers:

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_killingsworth_want_to_be_happier_stay_in_the_moment

http://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_praises_slowness

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful

https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend