Let’s Talk: Your Career vs. Your Calling
Welcome back to another “Let’s Talk” post! If you’re new to this series, this is where I open a discussion on a topic I feel drawn to in present time. After coming across a YouTube video that I’ll share in a moment, I’ve really felt connected to the concept of a career vs. a calling and how the two can affect your daily happiness, drive and life fulfillment. Keep reading to learn my viewpoint and join the conversation on life’s purpose of finding “the calling.”
As I mentioned, here’s the video that brought me to this topic.
Has this video got you thinking? If so, it did for me too. Oprah (whom I’ll share my love letter for some other time 😉 ) shares that your “calling” is something you’d do without pay, is truly what you feel you’re called to do and what feels like a fulfilled purpose. It’s something that energizes you, gets your wheels turning, and an entire day spent doing it can feel like seconds. I’ve always thought referring to something as “your calling” was a dramatic way of referencing something you’re good at and/or love, but this video helped me to see it more realistically and how it can actually apply to my life.
Are you fueled by the energy of your work? Could you stay up all hours of the night working on something you’re passionate about? As stated in the video, you can determine what it is that you’re supposed to do by how it feels. It gets you excited and makes you talk a mile a minute. Your brain is thinking of it more often than not and there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing. It’s something you’re drawn to, regardless if you’re able to reason why.
With age comes a lot of decision making, including where to live, where to work and how to spend our time. We all go through phases of life wondering what it is we’re meant to do and how we can manage to find something that makes us jump out of bed in the morning — and needless to say, this involves a lot of trial and error in finding what makes us feel the most fulfilled. This can be proceeded by a series of jobs we don’t like, social activities that don’t bring us joy… you get the picture. If you’ve ever committed yourself to something (like a job) that you don’t like, you know how draining it can be, how lifeless it can make you feel and how desperately you can wish to find something better for yourself.
If something in your life doesn’t feel right, you’re right. It isn’t right and it’s not what you’re meant to do. If you feel like your heart is in another place, it is. Life is so incredibly short and not a moment of our time should be spent somewhere we have to convince yourself to just make it through every day. As touched on in this video, our lives can be so positively affected by making changes toward obtaining whatever it is that we’re most passionate about.
After reading through some of the comments on the video, one in particular stuck out to me: “Work a job, pursue your passion. Pursuit will eventually trump work.” There’s something so admirable about pursuing your passion, even if it never gives back to you financially, because it gives you your juice in so many other ways.
To wrap this up, what I took away from this is that if something your time is invested in is turning you into a person you don’t recognize and don’t like, leave it. We should chase whatever it feels like we’re called to do, even if we think our time and resources are limited. We should pursue our passions and fill our lives with it. We should work toward creating a life saturated with “our calling” and prioritize what fuels us. Finally, let’s revisit the question, what would you do without pay?
__________
What are your thoughts on the video clip and the subject of you career vs. your calling? Join the conversation by leaving a comment below. If you enjoyed this “Let’s Talk” post, read my previous ones here and let me know if you’d like videos incorporated like this in future posts within this series. This is my first time basing one off a video and I’d be happy to continue doing that if you’re interested. 🙂
