5 Signs you’ve found “your calling”
The concept of “the calling” (not a mere “job” or “vocation”) has been widely used to describe our personal purpose in life. Our calling is the reason why we were born and the legacy we will leave to the world.
As an entrepreneur, I think it is highly important to align our entrepreneurial pursuit with our calling. At the end of the day, it is the only thing we can transfer to everyone around us: employees, users, family, investors.
Nevertheless, when I’m talking with fellow entrepreneurs, they always seem so passionate about what they’re doing, they love to talk about it. And yet, when you see what they actually do on a daily basis, it seems there is a big contradiction…
This might be caused by a simple reason, they have not found their calling… yet!
As Steve Jobs said in his now famous speech to Stanford graduates in 2005:
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
~Steve Jobs
And the question remains…
How to know if you’ve found it?
Below are 5 signs, on what I believe to be good indications, that you’re on the right path to finding your calling.
1. You’re eager to learn everything about it.
Nowadays, most of us stumble upon a high quantity of articles, blog posts, news… a huge quantity of information that could be very helpful.
To overcome this information overload, we automatically create filters to assimilate all this information.
Look closely at the topic that somehow always seems at the top of your reading list. Is it something your gut is often telling you need to master? If the answer if yes, without a shadow of a doubt, you have most definitely found your calling.
2. You’re unable to stay away and “disconnect”.
No matter what you do in a daily basis, there will be always something in the back of your head. Something that is guiding you on “the path that is meant to be.”
You can call it guts, conscience, inner self… it is the small voice in the back of your head constantly giving you ideas, challenging you to improve, to get better.
If those ideas, those projects, those challenges are always related to the same thing, it is highly probable that it is your calling.
3. You’re miserable when you’re not producing.
Because you are learning all the time, you can never stop thinking about it, the natural thing to do, is to create something with that information.
All your ideas, the articles you read, the strategies, everything is calling you to get to action. Thus, you can’t stop producing.
4. You’re not quitting, even under extreme adversity.
When you find your calling, there will be always something bigger, something that you want to leave as a legacy for the world, your family, your partners.
That something bigger is always helping you to get through adversity, because you can actually see the other side. You can see what the results are going to be. Your calling creates in you a big quantity of faith, faith in yourself, faith in what you’re doing and what the outcome is going to be.
5. You’re unbalanced all the time.
According to thermodynamics, in order to have some kind of movement, you need to have a disequilibrium. It could be a difference in height (like waterfalls), it could be a difference in temperature (like the Sun and your skin at the beach)…
Your calling puts you in a state of disequilibrium. You are digesting new information everyday, planning, working, producing and never getting bored.
Following your calling will make it difficult to live a balanced life. Work-Social life are not different, because what you do, is your life.
Ask yourself, what is the information you like to enjoy? What do you love to read about all the time, relentlessly? Is there something you never procrastinate over because it is too important for you?
Just go out there, and let your curiosity guide you, somehow, your heart already knows what you want, you just have to listen.
