idea of fulfilling work—a job that reflects our passions, talents and values—is a modern invention. Open Dr. Johnson's celebrated Dictionary, published in 1755, and the word “fulfilment” doesn't even appear. But today our expectations are higher, which helps explain why job satisfaction has declined to a record low of 47 percent in the U.S., and is even lower in Europe. If you count yourself amongst those who are unhappy in their job, or at least have that occasional niggling feeling that your work and self are out of alignment, how are you supposed to go about finding a meaningful career? What does it take to overcome the fear of cha... posted on Aug 8 2013 (51,661 reads)

ago, you were talking about your grandfather and how important he was to you.   CS:  He was pretty impressive partly because he had no teeth left in his mouth, but he refused to wear his dentures. So everything was [mumbles]. He would even eat corn on the cob without teeth. RW:  Wow. CS:  And he would get so frustrated, if you didn’t understand him and he had to repeat himself. And he would even do funny things. He had one of those recliner Lazy Boy chairs. He worked at Sears Roebuck and he would come home after work and get in the chair and start watching something on TV. And immediately, he’d fall asleep. We would go to change the channel and he&rsq... posted on Dec 1 2013 (21,697 reads)

this. I know exactly what it is, but I can't describe it. I'm not even going to attempt to describe it. But it's there. And it's something for which you can't say, "Oh, well, it's sorta there, sorta not there." It's definitely there. You know when you've smelled the orange. A bunch of us run a non-profit, ServiceSpace, and we empower other non-profits with websites. It's fully volunteer run and we do everything for free, so there's a lot of work. Many times, I'll be working at 1:00 a.m. I'm doing work, and all of a sudden, OK, 1:00 a.m. I'm tired and I could really use some sleep. So I'm thinking, all right, I want to go ... posted on Mar 7 2014 (45,532 reads)

works in mysterious and often paradoxical ways. Creative thinking is a stable, defining characteristic in some personalities, but it may also change based on situation and context. Inspiration and ideas often arise seemingly out of nowhere and then fail to show up when we most need them, and creative thinking requires complex cognition yet is completely distinct from the thinking process. Neuroscience paints a complicated picture of creativity. As scientists now understand it, creativity is far more complex than the right-left brain distinction would have us think (the theory being that left brain = rational and analytical, right brain = creative and emotional). In fa... posted on Mar 24 2014 (178,757 reads)

But equally, whatever the world wants to happen for you will not happen either. And what happens is this meeting. And it’s in that meeting that you overhear yourself being surprised by your reality, by the larger context that you haven’t yet explored. So you’re trying to overhear your self whom you didn’t know you knew. And you’re trying to speak it out loud in the world so it can be known consciously. There should be a lovely sense of surprise when you’re working at that edge and a sense of being gifted. Often people will say, “Well I didn’t write that piece, it just wrote itself.” Or “I felt as though I was the recipient of som... posted on Jul 7 2014 (40,135 reads)

that soon creativity, passion and beauty showed up as central themes. Passion, Johnson argues, is the element that makes it possible for a real breakthrough in thought to take place. And beauty, he explained, goes a long way in establishing the bona fides of the results of scientific experiments. Upon his home, he sent me an example of one of his beautiful electron microscopy photographs. Richard Whittaker: Maybe you could describe briefly your position and a general description of the work you do. Ed Johnson: I am a molecular biologist and do experiments toward basic molecular understanding of cancer and AIDs. A lot of people don’t know that these two are related, but they... posted on May 26 2014 (10,870 reads)

saying, “If anybody’s interested, please call this number.” My phone was ringing off the hook for the next week. So we invited everyone over to my house. We had a party, and we literally started the organization two days later. What happened at the party was that everyone was enthusiastic and relieved, even, to have something to do. Because everyone feels awful—in the face of hunger, in the world, but especially in their own community. So this person had a friend who worked for that bakery, and that person had a friend who worked in a restaurant. So already, in the first week, we already had about six runs that we could make. I contacted one particular food kitche... posted on Oct 30 2014 (16,235 reads)

that way. To be a writer and to have that daily — have a ritual of writing. MS. OLIVER: Well, I don't — as I say I don't like buildings. MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. MS. OLIVER: So I was — the only record I broke and in school was truancy. I went to the woods a lot with books. MS. TIPPETT: Right. MS. OLIVER: Whitman in the knapsack. But I also liked motion. So I just began with these little notebooks and scribbled things as I — they came to me. And then worked them into poems later. And always I wanted the "I." Many of the poems are "I did this. I did this. I saw this." I wanted them — the "I" to be the possible re... posted on Mar 18 2015 (28,292 reads)

decades, we've been taught that economic growth and buying more stuff will make us happy—while trashing the planet. The good news is, there’s a better kind of happy: It starts with meaningful work, loving relationships, and a thriving natural world. Photo by Tom Wang / Shutterstock. In the last 100 years, we got very confused about happiness. This is no small thing. The way we define happiness drives what we do, what we’re willing to sacrifice, and how we spend our money and our time. This confusion didn’t just happen. Advertisers spend billions spreading the illusion that more stuff will bring us happiness. And policy wonks of all pol... posted on Mar 13 2015 (33,919 reads)

article originally appeared on The Body Is Not An Apology and is reprinted by permission. More of Cody Charles’ writing can be found here. This is a follow-up to my previous piece entitled Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Social Justice Educators. The latter was written for folks who consider equity work as their core life purpose. I wrote Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Well-Intentioned People for the folks who consider themselves good people invested in social justice and conversations around equity, but who may show up in the ally role most often. Well-intentioned people make mistakes, lots of them. Mistakes must be expected and being held accountable has to be expected... posted on Mar 18 2016 (39,533 reads)

Project in San Francisco, and he’s an assistant clinical professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco. A self-described “suburban boy,” he moved all over the U.S. growing up with his family until he attended Princeton. And there, the accident that nearly killed him set him on a path to medicine, but first to studying art. MS. TIPPETT: Design is such an important word for you and such an important notion that I feel runs through all your life and your work, and, to me, there is a spiritual aspect of that, expansively defined. And I’m just curious about where you trace the origins of that. Would you say that you always had a “design sens... posted on Apr 4 2016 (25,642 reads)

minute I learned how to read, it was as though I’d been given this huge treasure. Every book was a box I suddenly knew how to open, and in it, I could meet people, go to other worlds, go deep in all kinds of ways. And I spent my childhood in the hills and in the books. And those — so that was not maybe what people think of conventionally as spirituality, but that was my company, my encouragement, my teaching, my community. MS. TIPPETT: That’s lovely. The sweep of your work is wonderful and it’s daunting as an interviewer, but I actually thought I would start with — I’d just love to have a conversation with you about this piece that was in Harper&r... posted on Jun 25 2016 (10,619 reads)

the scattered members come together. In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world. II The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less. A creature is not a creator, and cannot be. There is only one Creation, and we are its members. To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one’s part in it anew. The most creative works are all strategies of this health. Works of pride, by self-called creators, with their premium on originality, reduce the Creation to novelty, the faint surprises of minds incapable of wonder. ... posted on Jul 18 2016 (33,362 reads)

year, about fifteen of us had a breakout call with some visionaries of World in Conversation and Laddership Circles, around working with volunteers.  Below is a glimpse of the Q&A that emerged, on the call and afterwards.] Our efforts attracts many volunteers, but we don't use them effectively. What do you suggest? The most fundamental design principle is our mindset. Typically, volunteers are used as a means to an end -- this is our mission, we need this stuff done to achieve our mission, and you can help us do these chores. ServiceSpace doesn't work that way. For us, volunteer experience is an end in itself. We believe that if a volunteer ha... posted on Jan 12 2017 (18,987 reads)

don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.” “If we design workplaces that permit people to find meaning in their work, we will be designing a human nature that values work,” psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote in his inquiry into what motivates us to work. But human nature itself is a moody beast. “Given the smallest excuse, one will not work at all,” John Steinbeck lamented in his diary of the creative process as he labored over the novel that would soon earn him the Pulitzer Prize and become the cornerstone for his Nobel Prize two decades later. Work, of course, h... posted on Jan 15 2017 (17,133 reads)

at one-time was the CEO of Accuray, a company that went public in 2007 with a valuation of $1.3B. Amazingly, having lost essentially every penny he had in the dot com bust, he gave all the stock he had in Accuray away to live up to charitable commitments. He ultimately gave over $30M to charity when he was effectively bankrupt. He remains on the advisory board or the board of directors of a number of non-profits and until recently was the chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation. Dr. Doty’s work has been highlighted in newspapers and magazine throughout the world. -- Immanuel Joseph The Interview  IJ. I wanted to start with something that is on top of everyone's mind here ... posted on Feb 1 2017 (11,887 reads)

for thirty years. She is the co-founder and research director at the international TerraMar Research and Learning Institute, a nonprofit cetacean research institute located in Santa Barbara, California. Dr. Frohoff is also co-founder of Wild-Wisdom, a new nonprofit that not only provides educational and experiential opportunities for connecting with what is wild and wise within and around us, but also contributes to the lives of the wild animals from whom we learn. Dr. Frohoff’s work for government and non-profit agencies has contributed to the revision and implementation of management and legislation protecting marine mammals in captivity and in the wild in almost a dozen co... posted on Jun 30 2017 (13,043 reads)

offer children of Tibet. He said to her, "You must go into Tibet and help rural people. When you are on the path of service, all doors will open to you." That meeting deeply impacted the trajectory of Arlene's life of service. In 2004, she left behind her clinical practice to dedicate her life to serving pregnant women living in the most vulnerable conditions in the most remote places of the world. By 2009, she started One Heart World-Wide, which spread its life saving "network of safety" model to 60,000 women in remote villages in Nepal, the Copper Canyon in Mexico, and deep into the Amazon jungle in Ecuador where few dared to go. What follows is an edited transcr... posted on Jul 11 2017 (7,344 reads)

entrepreneur, meditator, and activist for the common good. He is also the founder of "ReLoveUtion" -- a renaissance of compassionate societies. What follows is an edited transcript of an Awakin Call interview with Joserra, moderated by Rina Patel. You can read the full transcript or listen to the audio here. Rina Patel: I want to jump right into things and ask you what a Re-Love-ution is? Joserra Gonzalez: I had an experience in India, two years of volunteer work, and I was touched by many of the things I could see there. I can say I have never received so much love. It really touched me deeply how people treated me, how everyone gave me everything withou... posted on Jul 21 2017 (8,362 reads)

and saddening. The failure of those students in every aspect of their lives sickened the heart. And along came a new principal, a principal who—it’s relevant to note—came from the Philippines, a culture which has an inherent respect for things spiritual in a way American culture does not. And he brought the teachers together and said to them, in substance, as his very first proclamation as principal, that: We have to start to understand that the young people we are working with have nothing of external substance or support. They have dangerous neighborhoods. They have poor places to live. They have little food to eat. They have parents who are on the ropes and b... posted on Aug 25 2017 (15,287 reads)