Michael Jackson has a great song "Man in the Mirror" that talks of starting to change the world by changing the man in the mirror. This is a great message and leads to the question of "How do I change the man in the mirror?" You change the person in the mirror by finding your Calling in life and spending the rest of your life living and growing in that Calling. When you start to live your Calling, you not only change yourself, but also change everything around you. The lines between work and pleasure blur so that you are never completely sure if you are working or enjoying life. People gravitate to you and want to learn about what you are doing and how you came to do it. You become a source people seek out.
How do you find your Calling? Where do you start, with the man in the mirror? Looking in the mirror may be the first time you ask the question, but your reflection is not where the answer lies. You find the answer when you stop looking in mirror, step beyond your four walls to see how you connect to the world around you. More specifically, when you connect to another person and something that is "just part of you" enriches their life to the point they react on a deeper level. It is touches them, helps them frame an idea, or gives clarity to the next step. This type of connection is a Calling Connection. The interface was natural to you, valuable to them, and you would love to do this for a living. Calling is about enriching others with something of such value that they will pay you to provide it and you have the passion and proficiency to provide it. A true Calling is when all three elements blend so there is not separation. When you live your life in such away that you are never sure if you are working or just enjoying what you are doing, you are living in your Calling.
This is confirmed when this interaction challenges you to expand this part of your life, find more opportunities to share, and most importantly people on the receiving end want more. They come looking to you for answers or expertise in this area. The most important moment in this discovery is not when you are told, "you should be doing this for a living", but when you are asked, "how much would you charge me to . . ." and you can't believe someone would pay you to do what you love. This is the moment the three pillars of passion, proficiency, and profitability come together to create a vision of a fulfilled life. When you have a passion for the work, the proficiency and talent to do the work, plus profitability to others and yourself, it equals your Calling. All three must be present to be a true Calling. Once they are, then you begin to work with the three pillars to build a successful and fulfilling life that will constantly grow as your capacity to share your energy increases.
Passion + Proficiency + Profitability = Calling
The difficult part of finding the Calling Connection is getting the direction of the energy right. The direction of flow is from you to others. Many times, we are too egocentric to understand this important aspect, but it is this very aspect that causes us to find fulfillment and the capacity for growth. When we enrich someone else the energy that is returned fulfills us. It also increases the capacity for energy, passion and growth. Consider this: when you work your muscles or practice a skill you continue to improve because you are building a foundation that allows you to reach the next level. When you work in your Calling, your ability to do more increases and your focus is sharpened. You have a clearer understanding of what brings fulfillment and what you need to work on to increase your proficiency. Plus, you have the desire to do the work to get better and have a clearer understanding of what you do best. These areas of your best are where you need to focus your energy.
As you continue to grow, you find areas that need to be pruned away either through delegation or simply letting go. This is often hard to do because we have done it so long or it was something we once loved. Now it serves as something that is taking time and energy away from areas of growth potential which strengthen your Calling.
You can compare it to the favorite toy you had before you were in preschool that now is a treasured memory on a shelf, or in a box, or simply gone. For a season, this toy was something you could not live without and needed to grow. Now it is a cherished memory. If you spend as much time playing with it now it would be something that simply takes up your time and is unfulfilling instead of adding to who you are becoming. Letting go was the only way you could move to expand your horizons. Once gone, you freed resources to build the next stage of your life from which to see even wider horizons.
These things also become markers of your progress and guideposts to help others understand the Calling of their lives. They are not to be forgotten, but need to be shared. They are powerful touchstones to remind you of how you got to where you are, but not something you need now. You also use these markers to enrich other lives, the lives of those wanting to learn from the path you are blazing. Just as a major league baseball player will teach the fundamentals using T-ball stands and light-weight bats to a young person, you use these markers to help others understand where they are in their growth and the skills they will need to develop as they move forward. These teaching interactions are Calling Connections.
Where to Start
Finding the Calling Connections is the most important step to living your Calling. So how do you identify a Calling Connection? What are the questions you need to ask and what are the clues you have found a Calling Connection? The very first question to ask is what are the interactions you have to other people that stand out in your mind? What are the times when you shared something you loved and both of you came away feeling energized? There was personal fulfillment for both of you.
Start with interactions you have with people beyond customers, co-workers, or family. The connections with these will confirm Calling Connections once you see the pattern, but the best place to look is beyond these. You are looking for the connections that enrich another life and fulfill you. This will be easier to see when the added layer of familiarity is not present. It will also be a repeated connection in theme and subject. These are moments of interaction where you walk away with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. You may not be able to explain these feelings, but you know they are there.
What it is not
Let's look at some life examples that help identify Calling Connections. You have a passion for stamp collecting. You love spending time developing this passion but if it does not connect to the others in a way that enriches their lives, then it is just a hobby. There is nothing wrong with hobbies. They are good avenues for release and relaxation. Hobbies lack one of the parts of the equation. Hobbies lack profitability. Most of the time they are to opposite of profitability. You could spend a great deal of money on them.
Hobbies are good but not your Calling
Let's start with a hobby. You have a passion for antique widgets. You have a collection of them. You can spend hours talking about them, showing them, and finding them. You may go to conventions and large shows where the finest antique widgets are displayed with experts giving talks about the rarest of the collection. You may be seen as pseudo expert which would be a level of proficiency. You make new friends with the same interest during these events. These connections will not be Calling Connections. These connections lack the component of profitability. In the interaction there is no lasting impact on either of you that improves or enriches either life in the exchanged. Neither life is provided with a resource, tool, raw material, or challenge that provides growth in the total life, so no Calling Connection happens around the primary event. A Calling Connection can happen, but the love of antique widgets is not the theme of the connection. The shared love only provided the space for a possible connection to happen.
Living in Danger
This next example looks at a life where the connection does enrich the person's life. Tere is great proficiency, and it is very profitable, but passion is missing. I have a dear friend, which at the time of this writing, has a brilliant highly technical career in the view of co-workers and most of his family. He has been sought after by one firm after another and moved up the career ladder due to his abilities. His family and co-workers talk about how gifted and talented he is in this field. He can literally move to very top of this industry. The problem is simple; this industry and career path is not his Calling because there is no passion for the work. The connections are not Calling Connections because he does not find fulfillment in them. As he says, "I am climbing a corporate ladder that is leaning on the wrong wall. I have no doubt that the pressure and frustration he is currently experiencing will eventually lead to an early death. Not living his Calling will shorten his life. To find his Calling, he will have to look beyond just the business interactions to find the Calling Connections at work.
My friend is living in the most dangerous place having only proficiency and profitability in the equation. He is living in a space where he could easily settle because of the economic comfort and praise he receives from his employer, family, and co-workers. Leaving the safety of a financially sound and apparently successful career will be hard. Like most of us he is told to be practical and that living in his passion is neither possible nor profitable. Anyone that will tell you this is not interested in you finding your Calling in order have the greatest life possible. It is a message he heard early in his life. "You need to find something you do well and then do it until you can retire" was the message clearly delivered by his parents. "You don't have to love the work; you just need to be good enough to make a living" was all that was important. "Once you retire you can chase your passion" was the promise of following this advice. The problem is most don't live long after retirement to find fulfillment. Those that do have long lives after retirement are the ones that have changed the way they live to live their Calling. It often becomes a second more profitable career.
The greater problem for my friend is he no longer knows or remembers what his passion is. He bought into the lie of practical living so deeply that he now struggles to be truly excited about anything. This is the true horror of a life without passion, living a life without real joy. A life without passion is empty, colorless, and dark. It is not lived, it is endured.
The Connection is the Key
As a positive example, I met a young man this week, at the time of this writing, who discovered changing his vantage point and connections will help you find your Calling. He is the first in the family to move on to higher education. He started college focused on something he liked. Once he was taking some classes in this track, he found it was not quite right. He lacked passion for it. So, he had the courage to take a risk and try something different. The result was clear in his eyes when he talked about finding something he loved in this new area.
His one concern was the financial side of school and the time it would take for him to begin earning money in this new field because he wanted advanced degrees. I was able to point him to some resources that would allow him to build an income now, begin working in this area, and free his time to study more so he could reach his goal. I know he has a fulfilling life ahead of him.
How did I happen to meet this young man? He was the waiter at a restaurant out of town? It was a Calling Connection because the interaction enriched his life by helping him see different possibilities for his future, and it enriched mine because I was able to live my Calling of helping others find theirs. This is the fun part of living your Calling; you get to live it all the time. Though I did not have any financial reward now, this encounter confirms my decision to take my life in a new direction.
This young man's life will not be the one he saw before him upon entering college. Because he had the courage to change his vantage point he was able to see his life's Calling. Because of a Calling Connection, he found there were ways to do what he has a passion for while developing greater proficiency and be profitable now. He chose to move. Others are forced to move, but moving beyond your four walls and away from the mirror is always required to find your Calling, and the Calling Connections that will guide you. Calling is never found in your content zone. It is found at the edges of life where the connection to another life is made.
The Questions
To understand if you are engaged in a Calling Connection you need to ask some questions. These questions will help you distinguish between a Calling Connection and a conversation. They will help you see if a connection that touched both of you in a lasting way took place. The answers will help you see if making a life around this connection could become profitable. These are the questions you need to stop and ask as soon as you realize the exchange has taken place. They are quite simple questions, but the epiphany caused by the answers will be life changing if you have the courage to act.
- Is the focus on me or someone else? (Correct Answer is Someone Else)
- Does this enrich the life of the other person? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- Do you find fulfillment in the exchange? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- Does doing this create a desire to learn more about it and become better at it? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- Are there people making money doing something like this? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- Are people already coming to you as resource in this area now? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- When someone mentions this as a career, do you get a little excited? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- Is it a little hard to believe you can make money doing it because it feels too good to do it? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- Is there a "WOW" effect from the other person? (Correct Answer is Yes)
- The big one: Can I see myself doing this for the rest of my life? (Correct Answer is Yes)
The Final Answer Is Just the Beginning
Answering these in the affirmative means you are looking at your Calling. You have a Passion for the work, the Proficiency to do the work well, and it is Profitable because there is value to others, you have found your Calling. All three support pillars to a fulfilled life are present.
This leads to the last question. Do you have the courage to live your Calling? Answering yes to this last question sets you on a path to view a horizon you never knew existed. It is the horizon of where life is so good you are never sure if you are working or just enjoying life, and the where possibilities are limited only by the choices you make. Living your Calling is living hard wired to who you really are.