What is Your Life's Work?: Answer the BIG Question About What Really Matters...and Reawaken the Passion for What You Do - Hardcover

Jensen, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060766867 ISBN 13: 9780060766863

Publisher: Harper Business, 2005

Synopsis

What Is Your Life's Work? captures a most extraordinary moment in each of our lives—the time when we sit down with loved ones and attempt to answer the big question about what really matters. Bill Jensen has created a wonderfully practical space for you to explore who you are, what you stand for, what you believe in, what's risky, what's not, what's worth it, what you're struggling with, and what you've accomplished.

He has captured the intimate exchanges between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and caring teammates—all talking about what really matters at work, and in life. Their conversations are as real as yours would be:

• "Don't kiss tush, beware carnivorous sheep."
• "Honey, there are no shortcuts."
• "My daughter was limp with pain ... and I'm worried about deadlines. What was I thinking?!?!"
• "Speak up if you don't agree."
• "Be a respectful rebel."

In What Is Your Life's Work? you will discover a new way to see and know who you are in today's more-better-faster world. Exposed is what usually stays private; the raw truths we've all experienced, the personal frailties and mistakes we'd like to hide, and the proudest achievements we'd like to celebrate.

In the letters and work diaries of others, we see ourselves. In their struggles, we see our own.

Bill Jensen has made it his life's work to battle corporate stupidity and help us all simplify our workdays, take more control, and rediscover our passions. As your trail guide and partner, he will take you through five distinct discoveries that thousands have encountered in finding their voices:

1. Finding Yourself
2. Finding the Lessons to Be Learned,the Questions to Be Asked
3. Finding the Choices That Really Matter
4. Finding the Courage to Choose
5. Finding Joy, Serenity, and Fulfillment

While it touches your heart and lifts your soul, What Is Your Life's Work? does not shy away from difficult introspection. You are an active participant in this book. Yes, you will find value here—stories of people like you, new ways of looking at what really matters, or simple confirmation that others have chosen the same path as you.

But the ultimate takeaway asks something of you in return: Take something from this book and pay it forward. Start a new conversation with a loved one about what really matters—about your own life's work.

You will get back even more than you give. You will have brought these pages to life.

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Jensen is an internationally recognized speaker with twenty-five years of experience in consulting. The author of Simplicity, Work 2.0, and other titles, he is also CEO of The Jensen Group.

From Publishers Weekly:

Recent research suggests that 75% of all American workers are disengaged from what they do every day and are seeking new work: they've lost sight (and their employers have lost sight), says Jensen, of what really matters most to them. After advising people on bringing simplicity to their lives, Jensen now uses letters written by people from all walks of life and career stages to show how one can recover that sense of purpose. He presents a wide variety of viewpoints and wisdom illustrating the five discoveries that can come from writing a letter expressing the important life lessons one has learned and taking stock of one's values, from "finding yourself" to "finding joy, serenity and fulfillment." Jensen does a wonderful job of pulling together meaningful, often moving letters gathered in the course of his consulting work, many of them missives to children or grandchildren that reflect hard-earned knowledge: a former police officer and prison guard "bequeaths [her] spirit of unrest"; a one-time Microsoft executive writes to her mentees that "I was so completely seduced by the excitement [of work], the adventure... I often forgot I had a body, that that body had limits...." While not every letter in this book will resonate with every reader, there is an abundance of meaningful philosophy, insight and advice. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060766867
• ISBN 13: 9780060766863
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240