Halley Bock - Life, Incorporated: A Practical Guide to Wholehearted Living

PRAISE FOR

LIFE, INCORPORATED

I readand wrote all overmy copy of Life, Incorporated in two backto-back sessions. The reason it was two sessions rather than one was that I had to stop, gather myself, and reflect on the lessons Id already learned from the first two chapters alone. Halley Bock hasnt written just another self-help tome for a narcissistic generation; shes written a searingly honest, immediately practical road map for anyone who wants to find, rediscover, reposition, or just polish their North Star. Buy it, learn the lessons, work the exercises, and I guarantee youll put down Life, Incorporated with a renewed sense of who you are and what youre here to do.

LES MCKEOWN , best-selling author of Predictable Success:
Getting Your Organization on the Growth Trackand Keeping It There

Our work has always supported the fact that living with purpose and intention and staying connected to the process will drive results. In Life, Incorporated, Halley proves yet again that you can choose your life and daily action to drive your success.

BEN NEWMAN , performance coach for five straight NCAA
Division I Football Champions and author of Leave YOUR
Legacy: The Power to Unleash Your Greatness

Mindfulness may not be an easy skill to master, but Halley Bocks Life, Incorporated will help you get there. Through personal anecdotes and practical tips anyone can employ right now, she takes the reader on their own journey of self-discovery in the process.

KRISTIN MCGEE , celebrity yoga instructor

At last, we have an author who has taken the genre of self-help and completely transformed it into what it should be: a real, practical, and essential roadmap for life. Halley tells a story that will engage you and then backs it up with approachable, actionable, and most of all, doable steps you can take immediately to take control of your life and make it what you want it to be. Halleys tested and well-researched guidance, combined with an easy-to-read style make this book a must-have for anyone looking to make their lives better.

ANN HERRMANN-NEHDI , CEO and coauthor of
The Whole Brain Business Book

Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press
Austin, Texas
www.gbgpress.com

Copyright 2017 Halley Bock

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Distributed by Greenleaf Book Group

For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Greenleaf Book Group at PO Box 91869,
Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.

Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group
Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group

For permission to reprint copyrighted material, grateful acknowledgment is given to the following sources:

Many Rivers Press, Langley, WA: From What to Remember When Waking from The House of Belonging by David Whyte. Copyright 1996 by Many Rivers Press.

Seth Godin: Linchpin Manifesto by Seth Godin.

Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC: From Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown with Christopher Vaughan. Copyright 2009 by Stuart Brown.

TED: From Serious Play by Stuart Brown, 2008.

Hal Leonard LLC: Excerpt from lyrics from Any Road, words and music by George Harrison. Copyright 2002 by Umlaut corporation. All rights reserved.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

Print ISBN: 978-1-62634-355-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62634-356-6

Part of the Tree Neutral program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

16 17 18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

For Niko and Uma, whose infectious curiosity and exquisite courage make it absolutely impossible for me to play it safe.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

In spring of 2014 , I was asked if I would write a book on behalf of the training company I led at the time. Its typical in the training industry for resident thought leaders to churn out a book every few years as a means to market their companies and remain relevant. After a little hemming and hawing, I agreed, even though I struggled with what I would write about. I didnt want to write about being a female executive. Gag me. I didnt want to write about the nuts and bolts of business. Snooze. There was a brief moment when I thought I wanted to write about risk, but it turned out to be a fleeting affair.

For nearly a decade, I both taught and studied human dynamics, specifically relationships and their impact on personal and business success. My organization focused on developing the art of conversation as the vehicle for creating connection among teams, employees, leaders, and individuals. I repeatedly found that organizations that created deep and meaningful connections with their employees financially outperformed their peers year after year. The more time I spent in the field, the more it became clear that successful leaders put people first.

I, too, shared a penchant for prioritizing the well-being of my employees, and every quarter I challenged myself to create an even more supportive workplace. The goal was to foster a trusting, respectful environment that honored how incredibly wicked smart and dedicated we all were yet also tended to the very realness of life, how terribly unpredictable it could be.

If my employees could deliver excellence in their work, then they could certainly manage their needs when life inconveniently occurred at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday or 9 a.m. on a Thursday, laying waste to the well-intentioned plans of living a neat and tidy life. Flex schedules, unlimited paid time off, full medical benefits for employees and their children, and telecommuting options all became part of the fabric of my company. We were named a best place to work year after year while concurrently landing on Inc. magazines annual list of fastest growing companies. You put people first, and the profits will come. You put profits first, and your people will leavealong with some profit.

Creating sustainability in the workplace was what I knew, and thats what I began writing about. I see organizations as ecosystems that thrive or become diseased based on the strength of the connection they build with their employees, their mission, and their customers. If weak links exist along this chain, problems arise, such as low employee engagement, high employee turnover, poor profits, and low customer retention. Any one of these can be fatal to an organizations ability to grow.

But as I spent more and more hours out on the road speaking with business leaders and employees on the topic of connection, I noticed something disturbing: I was working to create healthy ecosystems within organizations, yet many of the individuals who worked in those organizations were operating on shaky footing themselves. So many people were lost. Stressed. Unwell. Beleaguered. Spent. Raw. At sea. I realized this malady was not a flash-in-the-pan problem or one that afflicted only a few. It was an epidemic. We have become a nation lost to ourselves; our focus is more and more centered on who or what can fix usgive us a sense of worthinessinstead of fostering our own ecosystem of total well-being that generates its own self-worth.