Failure is the key to success. A phrase often heard but seldom experienced. Failure helps us understand where we went wrong, where we can improve and where we can try again. But the most discomforting part of looking into failure is confronting the feelings of embarrassment and fear.

What do Satya Nadella, Jeff Bezos, Beingful Work and Beingfulness have in Common?

A CNBC article this Dec 24th that draws on several press interviews by Satya Nadella and Jeff Bezos regarding their approach to work is thought provoking. The Microsoft CEO had said to the Australian Financial Review in a November 2019 interview, “What I’m trying to do is harmonize what I deeply care about, my deep interests, with my work.” Nadella was talking about work-life harmony rather than work-life balance because he saw his work at Microsoft as a way to pursue his passions and create deep meaning in his life.

A holistic view of well-being, where the whole human being behind the employee badge is considered, is at the core of beingful work. Moreover, just as the concept of eudaemonic well-being draws from Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, the concept of holistic well-being at work draws from the concept of the whole person in ancient Indian philosophy. We can then build on this concept and adapt it to the modern workplace/workspace using more recent theories of the self in organisational psychology.  

“Beingfulness” may sound like just another buzzword for “mindfulness,” but the two concepts differ in significant ways. While both approaches ultimately aim to promote our well-being and reduce our suffering, they differ on their ends, ways, means, notions of time, change agency, religious origins, sense of self and the nature of ultimate reality. In fact, the two can be seen as a complementary set of ideas and practices that together can relieve suffering in today’s world.   

How do we know that we are on the right path to reducing our suffering and increasing our well-being?

Mindfulness says we can achieve the right state of awareness by letting go of our judgments, entanglements and history. Over time, we can then experience the world and ourselves through a pure, unsullied mind. The means test is therefore our dispassionate and non-judgmental attention to our mind that just lets things be.