In an era of collapse of major companies and economic institutions - not to mention the public trust - consulting a career guide may seem a little quaint. We are all in survival mode.

This career guide proposes a way forward that is different from most approaches. Rather than sharpening our quiver of arrows to compete with everyone around us, the premise here is that we must create a new playing field for collaborative journeying, aligning our working lives with the needs of our communities and the planet. The global economy and environment are both seriously compromised by the ethic of competitive individualism and the politics of polarization. We need a new American work ethic.

Making a Living While Making a Difference is based on sound psychological principles, and social principles too. It begins with the choice to expanded awareness and openness to the world around us. In the season of the Haitian earthquake and the BP oil spill, this is not an easy choice. But opening our minds and hearts to the world is the first step in finding work that is meaningful enough to be capitalized and worth doing. Tools of critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and personal growth are here for you to choose and use as needed to clarify your highest contribution and help you attach the best possible economic value to that contribution.

The field of career development is a hybrid that borrows from many disciplines and schools of thought. For some experts, it’s all about marketing - or personality matching - or performance coaching. The paradigm underlying this book is an integral approach that draws on the psychologies of peak performance, social movement participation, and creativity. The premise of Making a Living While Making a Difference is that we must live and work as citizens of a planet under stress, honing our strength by working to reverse the dangerous trends of climate change, pollution and ecological decline, and understanding how our choices connect with the web of life. All hands, views, and hearts are needed to build a clean energy economy, safe local food systems, water-conservation strategies, environmental restoration programs, a redesigned system for health care and wellness, and so much more. We are in this together, and if we take seriously our interconnection and interdependency, we can help each other to succeed.