18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An essential, inspiring career guide in the Great Transitions of this Era, March 28, 2008
This review is from: Making a Living While Making a Difference: Conscious Careers in an Era of Interdependance, Revised Edition (Paperback)
Melissa Everett's Making a Living while Making a Difference is as if Paul Hawkins met Majora Carter and Joanna Macy in Career 202 and a hands-getting-dirty, how-to book came out of their conversation. In a book market shouting increasing warnings of the twin crises of environmental catastrophies and increasing human and economic struggle, this remarkable book gently yet firmly acknowledges the challenges, molds them together, grounds them in spirituality and then sets forth on a 10-step journey of discerning what is, finding, creating, and sustaining Right Livelihood.
This book remarkably re-constructs the way we understand our work in the world; from what it is - to how we find it - to what we do once we are doing it. The array of options and questions that any job-seeker who wants to make a difference face are enormous, and there are any number of constructive or debilitating processes for forging a path for oneself.
Too frequently, career-guides are not very good at balancing the enormity of the work to be done and an indivdiual's great passions with the realities of job-hunting, filling out applications, and receiving rejections from seemingly 'perfect' positions. Everett pratically includes exercises worksheets to help one successfully navigate changing and unpredictable currents.
She not only describes the twisting pathways that form most people's lives and livelihoods but she demonstrates through continual examples the interconnectedness and interdependence of our world today - and what it means to make a living in that world.
It is here, perhaps, that her contribution to the current discourse is the greatest - for she shows how the ideas, philosophies, beliefs and values motivating people around the world are combining and criss-cutting one another in exciting, innovative ways that are building the bridge into a sustainable, live-able world for all. Given the precariousness inherent in our current situation, this is not only positive, it is necessary for our survival.
I strongly recommend this book not only to other job-seekers like myself, but to all of those who are researching, engaged with and curious about the 'green shoots' that are arising to re-construct a world entering what she aptly describes as 'an Era of Interdependence.'
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
lighten up and go for it, June 15, 2008
This review is from: Making a Living While Making a Difference: Conscious Careers in an Era of Interdependance, Revised Edition (Paperback)
This book makes conscious career choice a matter of not just how to think about your earnings options, but also a means of seeing the kinds of difference you personally can make. Whether you are a young person stepping into the world of work or a semi retiree seeking new ways to contribute you will find doors in your mind opening to real opportunities.
It begins with awareness - of the abundance of choices, of your own wants, of what you can do now and of what you can learn to do. It is an enabling book and guilt free book that can give the reader a sense of adventure and happiness in the process of finding a better role even as you get better at it. As the author notes:
"Creating the working life you love, is work in itself. But it doesn't have to be a grim assault on a mountain peak - and in fact it works better if it is approached much more lightly."
David J. Dell, Ph.D.
CEO
The Sustainable Profitability Group
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
even if you knew how you wanted to `change' the world . . ., June 27, 2008
This review is from: Making a Living While Making a Difference: Conscious Careers in an Era of Interdependance, Revised Edition (Paperback)
even if you knew how you wanted to `change' the world . . .
and so had become an architect, doctor, musician, zoologist or anything in-between, Melissa Everett's Making a Living While Making a Difference will bring fresh perspective on why and how to be more aware of our interdependence; and to be more responsive to the increasing social and economic struggle of making a living in our environmentally fragile world. Whether we re-structure our chosen paths, explore emerging trails or choose to create new tracks, the book outlines what needs to be asked, of ourselves and those around us, to better integrate how we work with how we live, in evolving and maintaining a sustainable, nurturing world for us all. Whether considering a career change or continuing what you do with renown passion and focus, there is something of value here.
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