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We're a husband and wife team, Pat and John Sullivan, who dream of a world filled with ethical, sustainable businesses and nonprofit organizations. We dream that every worker enjoys purposeful work and brings home plenty of energy and time for a rich life.
We bring to this vision our experience, our connections, our passion, and what we've learned from facing our own work challenges.
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When we married in 1983, neither of us had found our callings. John, a former priest in the Discalced Carmelite religious order, then worked for the U.S. government. Pat was a free-lance writer who sought ways to connect insights from transpersonal psychology, ecumenical spirituality and creativity with everyday life.
During a graduate program under Matthew Fox in 1988, Pat developed her thesis on how people block or recognize and shape visions for life and work. This was the basis of her work to help others clarify and build their work-life visions. Because she was then absolutely untrained in business skills, she had to rely on free-lance legal work for income. This work, especially when Pat and John went through the illnesses and deaths of 3 close relatives across the country, was very challenging. To stay efficient and avoid being caught in another downsizing, Pat had to draw on every spiritual practice she had ever learned. As she did so, she discovered the central thesis for her all her work:
Meaningful, satisfying work depends not on job description but on the willingness to bring compassion, purpose and other spiritual gifts to work.
When you bring spirit to work, stress melts; burnout is no longer an issue. Instead, you create "worklife excellence," so a rich life sets the stage for effective and satisfying work, and you can leave work with more energy at the end of the day than you had at the beginning!
John's work in 1995 as research director of Spirit of Health's Spirit and Work Resource Guide connected us to the rapidly expanding field of spirit and work and to its leaders. That led to Pat's "Workplace Altars Project" for the Bay Area Organizational Development Network, filled with photos and stories of how lawyers, HMO staff and others keep spirit alive at work. Next came Pat's 26 "Vision and Values" columns on spirit at work for the San Francisco Chronicle's career section, which led to her writing the book Work with Meaning, Work with Joy: Bringing Your Spirit to Any Job and the forthcoming book, Spiritual, Bankable Business Planning. With these and many other publications came more opportunities to speak, consult with individuals and groups, and conduct workshops on meaningful, ethical satisfying work.
John may prefer the background to the spotlight, but his presence is in all our work. In addition to serving as editor, nudge and sometimes co-author or co-presenter, he maintains his own business, John Sullivan at Your Service, providing personal services for busy people. In all his work, he is a gentle soul, filled with quiet humor, a passion for the spirit of Louis Armstrong and a love of translating English into and out of Latin.
Our latest joint venture is the creation of the Spirit and Work Resource Center at Unity of Berkeley, CA. We host monthly spirit and work events and teach occasional business skills classes for entrepreneurs with strong values and vision. Our class, "Make Me an Instrument of Peace at Work," is based on the popular prayer attributed to St. Francis.
We welcome your own dreams, ideas and stories.
Very best wishes, Pat and John Sullivan
Work with Meaning and Joy is a service of Visionary Resources
Practical tools for seeing and achieving what matters
Pat McHenry Sullivan
Pat@WorkWithMeaningandJoy.com
(510) 530-0284
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