Bloch and Richmond (1998) developed seven connectors between spirituality and work, each one designed to keep the focus on connection from different aspects of career development. The seven connectors are as follows:
- Change: Being open to change in yourself and the world around you
- Balance: Achieving balance among the activities of your life such as work, leisure, learning, and family relationships; being able to leave behind that which is no longer useful and to retain core values and useful skills.
- Energy: Feeling that you always have enough energy to do what you want to do
- Community: Working as a member of a team or community of workers and understanding you are part of communities of companionship; communities of culture; and the cosmic community
- Calling: Believing that you are called to the work you do by your particular mix of talents, interests, and values
- Harmony: Working in a setting that harmonizes with your talents, interests, and values; working in a setting that permits the experience of flow, a “state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 6)
- Unity: Believing that the work you do has a purpose beyond earning money and in some way serves others.
Seeing work as an expression of one’s spirituality enables each person to consider his or her contribution to the world and to the ongoing creation of the universe. This view gives value to each career and may save one from self-centeredness. Finally, seeing one’s career as spiritual avoids the moral dilemma of separating life from work. It adds both an ethical dimension and a dimension of love to the offering of service or to the production of some object.