Wellbeing review
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2012-04-22 14:38:00
Tags: reviews books
Words: 234

Wellbeing: The Five Essential ElementsWellbeing: The Five Essential Elements by Tom Rath
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting book, although it was quite short (the last half is appendices with methodologies and such).

The main premise is that there are five main dimensions to well-being: Career, Social, Financial, Physical, and Community. There's a short section on each, and that's basically it. I would have rated the book higher, but I've read similar stuff before.

Career: Use your strengths (big surprise coming from Gallup :-) ), try to grow, and spend social time with your coworkers. Also: being unemployed for more than a year is really bad for you - the effects last longer than even the death of a spouse!
Social: Have friends, and spend at least 6 hours a day socializing (any sort of communication counts). Mixing socializing and physical activity is good.
Financial: Buying experiences is better than buying things, spending money on other people is good, and set up automatic savings deposits.
Physical: Get 20 minutes of exercise daily, sleep 8 hours a night, eat natural foods.
Community: Join community groups and such.

In the back of the book, they ranked states/cities/countries by wellbeing. For states, Hawaii was #1 (big surprise!), Alaska was #2, and Texas was #8, which is better than I expected. For large cities, Austin was #6! (although San Antonio was #3) Dallas was #8 (boooo) and Houston was #14.


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