University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Wellbeing
Book

Wellbeing

The Five Essential Elements

Tom Rath and Jim Harter
Gallup Press, 2010
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Editorial Rating

6

Recommendation

Gallup Inc., the world’s most experienced polling organization, set out to determine what makes people happy. In this book, Tom Rath and Jim Harter, two Gallup professionals, dissect the organization’s complex research findings. Real well-being depends on a blend of satisfaction in five distinct areas: work, money, health, social life and community. For entirely practical reasons, not everyone can follow Rath and Harter’s advice, no matter how sound it may be. For those who can adhere to its precepts, this is a solid, revealing and useful text on happiness. getAbstract recommends the authors’ all-inclusive philosophy of well-being and notes that this book comes with another bonus: special access codes to Gallup’s online “Well-being Finder,” which readers can use to measure their leadership strengths and track their well-being quotient.

Summary

The Secret to Happiness

Do you experience a strong sense of well-being every day? Such contentment depends on more than just financial security, physical health or some other beneficial attribute. If you work to improve in one or two areas, but ignore the others, you will not be happy.

Yet people commonly take a shortsighted approach. They buy books or purchase videos with the specific goals of getting rich, becoming thin, finding love, gaining respect or building relationships. Faithfully following the rules these guides lay out for them, they make concerted efforts to improve their lives in discrete areas. Then they give up, because having an exclusive focus on one or two of life’s aspects interferes with its other important elements.

People are not just money accumulators or health builders or romance finders; they are all these things, and more. Money alone will not increase your sense of well-being; research studies show that an annual increase of $10,000 in salary produced only a 2% increase in happiness in return.

Gallup Inc.’s research, conducted around the world and over many decades – including recent findings – indicates that people...

About the Authors

Tom Rath directs workplace research and leadership consulting activities for Gallup, Inc., where Jim Harter, PhD, is chief scientist for international workplace management and well-being.

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