Compassionate Careers

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Change Begins With a Spark

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.—Buddha

We’ve totally screwed up Charles Darwin’s primary thesis. You’ve all heard it: survival of the fittest. Unfortunately, what we’ve latched on to is this idea that you’ll either succeed or be slammed to the curb, and that competition will lead us to the top. But what Darwin was really getting at is that our well-being depends on our ability to cooperate. In his famous work, The Descent of Man, Darwin theorized that human goodness is a hardwired survival tactic. He found that cultures in which people take care of each other are most likely to succeed. Acts of compassion are not merely nice additions to the periphery of business ...