With each passing day of 2009, I become more acutely aware that while many people are mired in debates about socialism, their self-imposed deep debt, and the fact that their party lost a national election, lots of others are feeling inspired and emboldened like never before.

Day after day I meet them. I coach them. I write about them. I read about them. I see them in action. I marvel. And I find it is awfully nice to live an existence where one chooses to surround oneself with this brand of person. Imagine what it’s like to let oneself be buoyed by an abundance of purposeful energy.

“Many people are starting to realize that they work a lot and that working on stuff they believe in (and making things happen) is much more satisfying than just getting a paycheck and waiting to get fired [or die],” Seth Godin wrote in his book Tribes.

That’s part of it, knowing what we are working on is meaningful. It engages us like nothing else can. But for many there is something else to it, a feeling of momentum.

“There’s something afoot in the world,” stylist Stacy London said in our interview last week. “It is about reassessment.”

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Take, for instance, a Web site called The Empty Cube, which was created by a man named Bradley Freedman. If you visit the site -- a free online community for the unemployed to advise and support one another -- you will see forums, resources and events, but what you won’t see is an advertisement or any sign of branding for recruiting firm Deepdive Talent Solutions, even though it owns and administers it.

“It was a pro bono effort,” said Freedman, CEO of Deepdive. “I created the logo on my own time. I tried a few online do-it-yourself sites. I wanted it to not look like it was done in a garage. Actually, it was done in my kitchen at night.”

Its genesis was a light bulb moment Freedman had on a trip to the Newseum. He saw a bunch of newspapers from around the world blaring bleak unemployment headlines and got to thinking about what lies beyond the statistics -- people going through financial, emotional, and physical turmoil.

“I was used to working 80- to 100-hour weeks in my former life,” Freedman said, referring to his days as a Wharton-educated stock analyst in New York and Boston. “Maybe that’s part of it. I’m not as busy as I was a year or two ago. Maybe this is one of those stop-and-smell-the-flower moments.”

And maybe that is contagious. It’s not like people all over the world weren’t already engaged in meaningful work – be it for pay or on a volunteer basis – but there is something like a global deep breath happening.

Tracey Serebin, a family dynamics and communication specialist whose company is called A Child’s Voice, has been working for the good of children and families since the early 1990s. Yet now she is on the brink of taking her company to a much more ambitious place that is mindful of issues around infertility, new parenting, pregnant teens and coaching for children. Her national mission: To create tools and resources for children, teens and parents to empower themselves and their relationships, and through shared purpose, to find new strength, support and well being individually and as a family.

There are so many in this enthused category who have entered my orbit, my little corner of the world, just in the last month or so. Up-and-coming singer Alex Young, whose cause is conflict-free diamonds. Home designer Stephen Saint-Onge, who has gone out of his way to make his family-friendly style accessible to consumers all over the financial spectrum. Skadaddle Media, a marketing and advertising agency, whose mission includes the word “transparency” and whose latest get is a global campaign to raise awareness and provide eco-sanitation and clean water to developing countries worldwide for clients Wherever The Need and Global Water Trust.

Certainly with the election of Barack Obama, there is more talk of thinking globally, about finding our place in the world, and going outside of ourselves to extend a hand.

“I have never had more of that inclination in my life,” said Stacy London, co-host of TLC’s What Not To Wear. “I’ve never been an acutely political person, more middle of the road. I have never been affected by a political campaign the way I was by Obama’s.”

London is jazzed about volunteer work she’s been doing with the American Cancer Society, giving makeovers to women with double mastectomies and helping to create a guidebook for future seminars. But for London, there is also meaning in how she makes a living on a daily basis.

 “Obama’s message is very much parallel with the message of What Not To Wear,” London said. “If every person is the best version of themselves, it will be a better world.”

The inspired and the emboldened are among us. In some cases, they are us.

The choice is ours.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.