In his new book, The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work, international and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Jon Gordon tells the story of Josh, a guy who, like so many of us, has lost his passion at work. When Josh’s boss challenges the young worker to take two weeks off to assess his attitude and intentions, Josh heads to the country. There, a farmer hands him a seed and tells him that when he discovers the right place to plant the seed his purpose will be revealed to him.

This tale takes readers on a quest to explore their own passion, purpose, and happiness in life and work. The themes presented are most appropriate for graduates just embarking on their path.

Here, then, are nine such lessons presented in the story, in the words of Gordon:

There will be no rapture on Saturday, May 21st.

And I can’t wait to see how Harold Camping reacts on Sunday when he’s still alive, on …

Former nightclub owner Nicholas Kardaras died ten years ago. That’s right. For a few minutes his pulse was flat. Then he “pulled a Lazarus” as he describes it. He was revived and clung to life for a bit with the help of a respirator. When he finally emerged from his coma, he was a changed man.

Plato, Pythagoras, and the other ancient Greeks saved him. That’s what he says in his new book, How Plato and Pythagoras Can Save Your Life. A drug addict living the glamorous life, rubbing elbows with the likes of John F. Kennedy, Jr., Tom Cruise, and Brooke Shields, he decided to turn all of his time and energy toward ancient Greek philosophy?

Why?

Writing a Commencement speech is like writing your eulogy: You have to nail down in 10 minutes or less a succinct message that represents your entire life. It’s best to capture all the sweat and tears, the laughter and sorrow, life’s drama in a few tight, coherent paragraphs.

Having been asked to give one in May to my alma mater, Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, I have been studying Commencement addresses of the pros: J.K. Rowling, Anna Quindlen, Oprah Winfrey, and Steve Jobs. And here’s what all of them had in common: suffering.

Yep. The primary theme in each of these essays is that suffering is the rubble on which success is built. I’m sure that you can bypass suffering altogether, but then you’d have a rather boring Commencement speech. I’ve read some of those too.

It’s the First Noble Truth of Buddhism: “Life is suffering.”

“I play the harmonica.  The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast and stick it out the window.”
~Stephen Wright

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you were to live forever.”
~Mahatma Gandhi

David Harp is the Rosetta Stone of the harmonica.  He has taught over a million people how to play, and holds the world’s record for teaching the most people to play at one time (2,569).  How does he do it?

Mindfulness.  Because that’s what he’s really interested in…

If you’re like me you probably have at least one, if not two cheap harmonicas lying in the bottom of your closet or in the back of a drawer someplace.  When you see them you take them out of the box, lick your lips, wail unskillfully until you’re out of breath, tuck it back in the box, and then forget about it for another four years.

I’ve licked my lips long enough.  Wailed unskillfully long enough. It was time to do something about it.

As a member of NAMI FaithNet, which “supports faith communities in mental illness outreach, education, and advocacy,” I receive their newsletters. A recent issue featured an interview by Gale Bataille and Bill Berkowitz with Jay Mahler, activist and founder of a grassroots movement which became The California Mental Health and Spirituality Initiative, and Rev. Laura Mancuso, Director of the initiative on the relationship between spirituality and mental health, religion and psychology.

Below are some excerpts.

Abraham Lincoln is a powerful mental health hero for me. Whenever I doubt that I can do anything meaningful in this life with a defective brain (and entire nervous system, actually, as well as the hormonal one), I simply pull out Joshua Wolf Shenk’s classic, “Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness.” Or I read the CliffsNotes version: the poignant essay, “Lincoln’s Great Depression” that appeared in The Atlantic in October of 2005.

Every time I pick up pages from either the article or the book, I come away with new insights. This time I was intrigued by Lincoln’s faith — and how he read the Book of Job when he needed redirection.

I’ve excerpted the paragraphs below from the article on Lincoln’s faith, and how he used it to manage his melancholy.