Best Practice Exchange: Career vs. Calling: A Rocky Road for Some

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Spirituality, Your Job and the Recession

My wife Kyle is an entrepreneur at heart. She is currently hard at work getting her new start-up web site off the ground. It is a web site for people interested in Metaphysics and New Age spirituality. It is called My World Spirit.

It features a number of different sections including an on-line magazine, a large directory of New Age service providers, and a marketplace for New Age stuff.

I am helping out from the social networking and buiding community end in two ways: operating a Ning based social networking forum under My World Spirit, a group for New Age business providers on LinkedIn who might want to network, and also by helping slowly work her way onto

twitter. (@MyWorldSpirit)

I sent her this article from CNN the other day and she reprinted in her magazine. It is a good read.

It is also relevant to a lot of people right now.

This article is reprinted from CNN.com, where it was published March 16, 2009. It is not our policy to reprint work by others verbatim, but this was exceptional.

Editor's note: Peter Bregman is chief executive of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of "Point B: A Short Guide to Leading a Big Change". He writes a weekly column, How We Work, for HarvardBusiness.org.

A friend of mine, a senior leader in a pharmaceutical company, spends all her spare time doing yoga, taking classes in comparative religions, reading about spirituality, speaking with others about their beliefs. Just talking about it energizes her.

Which is not how she feels about her day job.

"Why don't you leave your job and do something with this full time?" I asked her.

"I've thought about it. But I could never make the kind of money I make now."

She might be right. But the question isn't whether she could make as much money. Even if she stays in her job she's unlikely to do that in this economy.

The question is far broader and more interesting. What would her life look like -- in every dimension she values -- if she decided to pursue her passion full time?

She needs to consider the contribution she'd make. The relationships she'd foster. The fun she'd have. The feelings she'd carry with her throughout the day. Her engagement in her work. In short, what her life would mean.

Visit My World Spirit