Hello, welcome to my website, I'm delighted you have visited. Thank you!
I'm Tony Wilkinson, the author of the book whose cover you can see at the side. I was born and raised in the North of England, studied sciences and philosophy at Cambridge University, spent a few years working for the UK government and then pursued a twenty year career in finance in the City of London, becoming director of a major investment management company. In the last forty years I’ve also studied meditation, psychology, religions and aikido, all of which influence the book.
BUY the book from Findhorn Press , Amazon (UK) or Amazon (US)
Hello, welcome to my website, I'm delighted you have visited. Thank you!
I'm Tony Wilkinson, the author of the book whose cover you can see at the side. I was born and raised in the North of England, studied sciences and philosophy at Cambridge University, spent a few years working for the UK government and then pursued a twenty year career in finance in the City of London, becoming director of a major investment management company. In the last forty years I’ve also studied meditation, psychology, religions and aikido, all of which influence the book.
BUY the book from Findhorn Press , Amazon (UK) or Amazon (US)
Lost Art of Being Happy
Everyone is interested in being happy, in fact it's probably one of the few ambitions which is universal to our species. But although you are constantly encouraged to believe that you have to achieve, acquire or consume to be happy that is so far from being the full story it isn't even the major part of it. Living happily depends mainly on your inner life, the conscious world of your thoughts, emotions, beliefs desires etc. But your inner life in turn is largely based on patterns or habits, the ways you react to what goes on around you, and so your happiness depends on these habits. You certainly can't always control what happens in the world around you and you can't always control how you react inwardly to what happens. But you are not powerless. If you learn to pay attention to your inner life you can shape the way your inner habits change over time. By training and changing these habits, which, to cut a long story short, is the same thing as acquiring inner skills, you can live with more serenity and peace of mind. This is the crucial idea of the book, that happiness depends on inner skills which can be strengthened by practice. It is an ancient idea, but somehow it repeatedly gets lost. The book shows how this idea is relevant, indeed vital, for our lives today.
The idea that happiness is about the inner life is most familiar from religious thought but it is true regardless of what you believe about the supernatural. The process of training the inner life indeed amounts to a form of spiritual practice - the practice of inner skills. Just as religious spirituality has always been about training and shaping the inner life for religious purposes, this spirituality is the same but with a more down to earth motivation, happiness. This is a spirituality sceptics (or skeptics, if you are in the USA) can be comfortable with because it doesn’t require faith. In that sense the book is a plea for, and an articulation of, a secular spirituality. It shows how we can add something essential to our lives which materialism misses out but which is not dependent on beliefs in spirits or the supernatural. If you have such beliefs that's fine too, of course, but you still need to train your inner life.
BUY the book from Findhorn Press , Amazon (UK) or Amazon (US)
Values and integrity
Focusing on the inner life and the inner skills developed by practice also offers a way to found personal values on a base which is rational, not supernatural and not dependent on passing whims or desires. The skills we discuss are essential to living with peace of mind and thus their development is a rational choice which can underlie everyday life choices. But further, we can recognise three levels at which these principles can be applied, the inner, the interpersonal and the collective, broadly corresponding to spiritual, moral and political. Inner skills thus become a source of values and to adopt them at the centre of your life leads not only to happiness but a life of integrity. This theme has extraordinarily wide implications which are being more fully developed in a forthcoming book.
Comments on the book
- Professor Lord Layard FBA (Director, Well Being Programme, LSE) said: “This is a wonderfully wise book on how we can train our minds to be happy. It's beautifully written."
- Dr. Anthony Seldon (Master of Wellington College and pioneer of teaching happiness skills in schools) said: “I cannot think of a single human being who would not benefit from reading this highly intelligent, sympathetic book. Most of us are unhappy to some degree or other. Follow the way of life that this book recommends and happiness will be yours.”
- Malcolm Stern (psychotherapist, author, Channel 4 presenter and co-founder of “Alternatives”) said: "This is an important and original book. Tony Wilkinson brings a wealth of experience, a keen intelligence and an enquiring mind to the thorny and complex issue of contemporary spirituality. It is a must read for anyone interested in self-knowledge."
Press comments
- Helen Brown in "The Sunday Times": "surprisingly persuasive"
- Oliver Burkeman in "The Guardian": "..a convincing case that spiritual wisdom is easily detachable from myth and mysticism, not to mention organised religion. But nor [does it] fall for the trap of making wisdom purely instrumental - a tool for achieving achieving the perfect relationship or career. I hope it's the start of a trend: popular books about the inner life...that don't require religious belief or an obsession with self improvement."
Your comments
If you have any comments I would be really pleased to hear from you at the address at the foot of the page. To prevent spam it's not a link and you can't click on it, you have to copy or type the address into your emailer - sorry, but please don't let it put you off!
In other bad news, it seems that for technical reasons I can no longer post to the blog pages. This will be fixed but it awaits a much larger overhaul of the site. For the time being I will continue to post (when I have anything to say!) on a separate Blogger site where you can also leave comments. I'm particularly hoping you will do that because the posts generally arise from interaction between news items and the themes I'm wrestling with for the next book, so any comments will help me make the new book better. Just follow THIS LINK .
