How to Boldly Find Your Place in The World When You Don’t Know How
Demystifying the process of discovering your personal calling in life
I wonder if every day that’s been passing by, you’ve been feeling like you’re drifting.
Drifting further and further away from where you wanted to be in your life.
You know that there’s something bigger out there for you, but it’s been so hard for you to place your finger on what that is. And it’s scary to step into the unknown in order to try and figure it out.
But what if there was a way to get crystal clear on what you were meant to do with your life?
What if there was a way to truly connect with your unique calling?
I believe that every individual has amazing passions and talents residing inside of them.
And for many, these passions and talents are just waiting to be unleashed.
Unfortunately, life can be tough and to living such a life in real life is so much easier said than done. You get stuck as you try to balance all the responsibilities that come with daily adult life.
Maybe you are one of the people who’s disengaged at your job, anxious about your future and losing hope of ever living the life you’ve ever dreamed of.
If this is you, then you’re probably living a life someone else wanted you to live.
It’s not surprising that one of the top five regrets people expressed on their deathbed was
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
Whether it’s our parents placing a certain path for us, the American Dream that provides the formula for “success” or the culture that pressures us to be a certain way, we face every day with opinions on how we should live our lives.
When we start living a life doing the things we were specially meant to do, things slowly start to fall into place.
But here’s the important part.
There is no Step-by-Step Formula to Living out your True Calling in Life.
And this is why when people try discover their calling, they end up giving up because they’re looking for the wrong things to begin with.
People want a failproof plan with all the answers all laid out for them, but your calling doesn’t work like that.
This is why it’s much easier to follow formulas like the American Dream to get good grades, get into a good school and get a good job.
There’s a sense of comfort in having your life planned out for you, but you’re in for a rude awakening when you finally get that job and realize you don’t want to do this for the rest of your life.
And here’s the harsh truth.
You probably haven’t done much as you should in taking action to live out your true calling because it’s much easier to live a life someone else wants you to.
The biggest paradigm shift for me was yes, while I was following someone else’s instructions on how to live my life, the real reason I never discovered my calling and lived it out was that I was too afraid to do so.
It’s easier to dream of a great life rather than do the hard work it takes to achieve it.
And the scariest part is once you take ownership of the one life you have, you have no one to blame if things go wrong. At least following someone else’s instructions gives you the right to blame them.
So to help you find your unique place in the world, here are three important things to keep in mind about what your calling truly is and isn’t.
1. Your Calling is Not a Formula
In a world where how-to tutorials and get rich quick scheme flood our social media feeds, we want to be able to figure out instantly how to succeed in our lives. This is why most people still feel stuck no matter how many things they’ve tried.
It won’t be until you realize who you truly are and what matters to you that you will begin to feel a sense of what you are called to do with your life. And your calling is not a step-by-step formula. It’s more of a compass.
Your calling is more of an absolute direction that you should steer your life towards.
It involves courageously stepping into the unknown and believing that life is so much greater than just yourself.
And once you realize this fact, you will be heading in the right direction that brings your life a deep sense of meaning, which is what we all want at the end of the day.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor Frankl
2) Your Calling Isn’t Meant to Give You a Sense of Safety and Security
You’ve probably felt this at some point in your life.
Something beckoning you towards a different life, and a part of you knows that your best life is on the other side, but your fears are holding you back.
Living out your calling requires the audacity to step into the unknown to discover what you are capable of. I think Franklin D. Roosevelt was spot on when he said:
“Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
Your calling never asks you to settle, but instead asks you to keep moving forward.
When living out your calling becomes more important to you than the fears that hold you back, that’s when you will find the courage to take the bold actions necessary.
3. Your Calling Isn’t Always About What You Are Doing, But it Has Everything to do With Who You Are Becoming.
The reality is that life is hard and some of us spend most of our lives in survival mode just to pay the bills and put food on the table, but the best way to live the one life you have is to utilize the passion and talents that you possess.
If we bury our dreams because we’re too busy for them, we will never become who we were meant to become.
All individuals have a burning desire within themselves and a unique set of skills that can help create a meaningful impact on the world, but until we take the time to intimately connect with and cultivate them, we will never find our true calling.
How to Live Out Your Unique Calling
Now is a time more than ever where your skills, talents, and potential are desperately needed.
If you’ve been becoming more aware that you’ve been feeling stuck, then you might be wondering how you can begin to tap into the part of yourself that’s extraordinary.
The part of you that you know deep down can make a great impact on the world.
If that’s you, then learn how neuroscience can significantly improve your decision making, critical thinking, and creative skills in my free in-depth training, How to Activate Your Brain’s Superpowers: A science-backed approach to discover your passions, find your purpose and transform your life
Cheers to keeping life beautiful.
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