As I dive ever deeper into the rabbit hole of what I call Positive Professional Development, I keep thinking about how to harness what's positive in our lives, rather than spending so much time with the negative. How do you increase the awesome? 

Today I was reading this blog post on hopeful trends for 2012 and it got me thinking about how to build a career on hopeful trends--what would it look like if we did that? 

A few ideas that came to mind. . . 

• Start (or Join) a Worker Co-Op--Worker co-ops are companies owned by their employees and we're seeing a rise in their numbers.  According to this article, "some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.”

• Engage in Social Enterprise--"A social enterprise is an organization or venture that achieves its primary social or environmental mission using business methods. The social needs addressed by social enterprises and the business models they use are as diverse as human ingenuity. Social enterprises build a more just, sustainable world by applying market-based strategies to today's social problems."

• Think Local/Sustainable--This PBS documentary popped up in my Netflix recommendations the other night and it's a fantastic description of the kind of economy we could be building that focuses on creating vibrant local/sustainable communities. It transforms your sense of what's possible and how work coud fit into that. (As a side note, it also has great info on time-banking, which is a way for us to share our talents in a sort of barter arrangement. I love time-banking values, too. )

I know there must be more, but these are the three that come to mind for me.  

What other hopeful trends can we look to for building our careers?