What's Your Calling?

One of my lifelong interests has been the relationship between work and a vocation, or a calling. The idea of a calling has traditionally been understood in purely religious terms, as in somebody being called to serve a higher power or a higher purpose.

But we are all called to do something in our lives. To the extent that we are spiritual beings, we are called to accomplish something that goes beyond the needs and requirements of our ego and personality. And in that sense, while the way in which we express our calling does not at all have to be religious, there is no denying that following one's calling is part and parcel of our spiritual evolution.

Carolyn Myss, the well-known energy intuitive, mystic, and a leading contemporary thinker on spirituality, says in her Advanced Energy Anatomy that when we find ourselves searching persistently for that job that we were “meant to do,” we are not actually searching for a job or a career. We are, rather, searching for a vocation - a way to express our spirit through our work. She says:

“You begin by the need to work, then you develop a thirst for a career, then you develop a need for a vocation. You want a career because it pays more than work (work at the base level). You want a vocation because it's fulfilling.

...You develop a thirst for a career and a passion for a vocation. And it will happen to everybody.”

The trick here - and it's something that all life purpose/vocation “gurus” tend to agree on - is that we are not called to do a particular job. We have to look at the idea of a calling or a vocation in much broader terms.

A job may or may not enable us to fulfill our calling, but that particular job is only incidental to our pursuit of a deeper understanding of what it is that we were meant to do with our lives. If we were to leave that job - or if that job disappeared, was outsourced, or we were simply laid off - does that mean the end of our calling? Of course not. A calling or a vocation is something that is part of who we are no matter where we find ourselves, and it can be expressed in many different ways and many different settings.

Myss's assertion that this evolution from a job to a career to a vocation happens to everybody is extremely intriguing to me. It very much rings true. And judging from the number of posts on Monster's Career Changers' boards on the subject of wanting - indeed, thirsting for a career that feels more meaningful and authentic, she's on to something. (A recent thread titled "Seeking new life path" attracted 6660 viewings in about ten days - by far the largest number among the hundreds of other threads on the boards and second only to the one titled "Job-hunting while still employed.")

If Myss’s view that the evolution from a job to a career to a vocation is part of the natural progression for all of us as human beings, I would imagine that the soul-searching many of us begin to undergo from around our late thirties onward is part of that process. Perhaps what we are looking for is, indeed, more than a job but, rather, a way to express our true selves through our work. In that case, a whole new set of criteria and signposts would need to be applied to make that search successful.

Adapted from a recent post on www.projectcreativevision.com

Izabella Tabarovsky is a career exploration and transition coach working with mid-career professional women seeking to redesign their career paths to engage in work that is authentic, meaningful, and congruent with the rest of their lives. She can be reached at Izabella (at) projectcreativevision (dot) com.