How To Discover Your True Calling
Once you reach maturity and independence, it’s up to you to define your “calling” in life. A true calling is an inner drive to express yourself in a very specific way. It’s your passion. It’s discovered through awareness of your own unique set of values with which you have come to naturally identify yourself. You’ll find that when you identify your calling, you’ll also notice you have certain natural talents that support the expression of this calling. When you do in fact incorporate it into your life, you’ll also discover that expressing your calling brings you great joy. You will know when you have found your calling when you lose all track of time while doing it, when you are really good at it, and when you would do it whether or not you got paid.
Your calling may or may not be your career. If it is, great! You get to do what you love to do every day and make money doing it. We must not assume, however, that our calling will always be expressed through our job or career. For example, your passion may be to work with the rehabilitation of rescue animals. So you may choose to get a job or develop a career that earns you enough to meet your lifestyle expectations but also allows you ample time to express your calling.
Your other purpose is to perform your true calling, your special vocation,
It may which may or not also be your career, as part of your daily life. When you do that, you set energy in motion that brings more opportunities to grow within that vocation, continually creating higher levels of contribution to society and your own life. When we recognize our calling, it clarifies our purpose to express it in the world,, and it feels so natural, so good, that we become empowered to be who we were meant to be. So expressing our talents in service to the world is our life mission. Another way to describe mission is the “how-to method” to realize our vision.
In my book, True Family Wealth-Love, Money and an Inspired Life, I have designed a simple exercise that helps clarify your values, discover your potentials and sculpt a life mission. Values are words that express your deep sense of what is important in your life. They are more than a moral code; they are ingrained in you as qualities of expression that are so important to you that you feel physically unsettled if you don’t live true to those qualities. They aren’t “things” like family, nature, etc. and note that I didn’t include money, love, or freedom because those are the results of the application of core values but not core values themselves. The exercise asks you to dig deep and determine those values you hold most dear today. Some others you may like to have, and perhaps you will have some day, but just identify those that are true for you now.
Once you are clear on your values, the exercise will point you to your potentials for what you are truly meant to express in the world. And surprise, you may discover that your true potentials may not align with what was or is expected of you. Follow the path that inspires you and fills you with joy, not the path shaped for you by others. Dare to be different. The world needs some of that!