Metaphysical practioners seeing good in the “thick of it.”

SEEING GOOD AT WORK, a review by Julia Vose McClung

One day a small, wheat-gold book, with red and black letters, called to me from a bookstore shelf: SEEING GOOD AT WORK—52 Weekly Steps to Transform Your Workplace Experience, by Reverend Doctors Joyce Duffala and Edward Viljoen, Assistant and Senior Ministers at Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, California. At last, I found that sage mentor I so long to turn to when I need a course correction by morning, or by afternoon-- slim enough to slip into my purse, keep in my car, or skim off a bedside table to read in bed. Unbiased, this work quotes wisdom from modern and ancient ages.

We labor at work or school for our livelihood in the tides of ambition, risk-taking, competence, accomplishment, mistake, failure, goals gained and goals recalibrated; in the interpersonal “sandbox” of creative cooperation, productive alliance, or jealousy and competitive threat. In any relationship context, the good at work between us is vitally about me, and also about you-- us! We know this intuitively, yet the tightness in our chest or stomach makes us search for how.

SEEING GOOD AT WORK is no glassy-eyed tome of recycled self-help themes. Inherent in the 52 weekly lessons is a respectful, shoulder-to-shoulder connection made by Duffala and Viljoen to the reader—to me and you personally. They speak to us, without question, as centers of awakened intelligence to move from powerless victimhood, to seeing the shared common humanity and bridge-building opportunities available to us as metaphysical practioners at seeing good in the “thick of it.” Each week illuminates a fresh aspect of me and you in the workplace (as easily the home place, group place, or one-and-one place): a luminary’s potent quote preceeds the one-page chat that seeds your awareness for the week; Application Exercise deftly captures our attention to the theme; and completed by a Remind Yourself, such as, “When I am willing to really listen, I open myself to a new world of understanding.” I’ve given this book to four young people so far, and they were grateful as I am.