UPDATE: See my Art of Self-Coaching archive for all current course materials, including slides, class readings, and additional resources.
Here's a condensed set of slides from the seventh session on Unhappiness in The Art of Self-Coaching, a new course I'm teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business this Spring, and the readings for this session are shown below. If you'd like to learn more about the topics being covered, here's my syllabus.
CLASS 7: UNHAPPINESS
- The Antidote (Oliver Burkeman)
- Chapter 2, pages 23-50, “What Would Seneca Do?"
- For further reading: Chapter 3, pages 51-74, “The Storm Before the Calm"
- When Things Fall Apart (Pema Chödrön)
- Chapter 11, pages 84-94, “Nonaggression and the Four Maras"
- Chapter 21, pages 177-183, “Reversing the Wheel of Samsara”
- Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
- Pages 108-115: "The Meaning of Life," "The Essence of Existence," "The Meaning of Love," and "The Meaning of Suffering"
- For further reading: Pages 97-107 and Postscript, pages 137-154.
Here are some other readings that I referenced in class or that have informed my approach to today's topic:
- Letters from a Stoic (Seneca)
- On the Shortness of Life (Seneca)
- Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
- Discourses and Selected Writings (Epictetus)
- Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Pema Chödrön)
- Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion (Pema Chödrön)
- What Took You So Long? (Sheldon Kopp & Claire Flanders)
- Radical Acceptance (Tara Brach)
- There's More to Life than Being Happy (Emily Esfahani Smith)
- Viktor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning (Maria Popova)
- The Consolations of Philosophy (Alain de Botton)
And here are some additional related posts of my own:
- Adult Thumb-Sucking
- The Layer Cake of Working Life
- On the Shortness of Life
- Marcus Aurelius, 3,000 Years and the Present Moment
- Pema Chödrön on Patience and Letting Go
- Pema Chödrön and Mario Andretti on Control
- Pema Chödrön on Patience
- Viktor Frankl on Love, Suffering and the Meaning of LIfe
- Appreciating Life at Point Reyes
- Surviving in a Toxic (or Merely Dysfunctional) Culture
- White Bears and Car Crashes (Thinking About Thinking)
- Time Horizons
