The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work

This is not a traditional business book. It is a self-help book for a business manager, with advice on workplace culture. It is aimed at a very particular patron: a wealthy business owner who wants to become happier, not by cutting back on his working hours, but by making his company a happier place for him to work. Lakhiani (cofounder MindValley; Code of the Extraordinary Mind) offers advice on topics ranging from company vision statements and discovering your “soulprint,” to weight loss and sleep optimization. Like most business books, this one is larded with quotes from other business owners, exercises, and bullet-pointed lists. Lakhiani’s stories are surprisingly humble and entertaining, but there is a strange disconnect between his advice to overthrow society’s artificial expectations and his brags about his celebrity friends, how much money he has made, and how much weight he has lost. This would be appreciated by anyone who enjoyed Ken Honda’s Happy Money but wished for a text more workplace oriented.