How I’ve Found My Calling (and You Can Too)
In just 3 steps
For many of us, the desire to fully live our purpose and create our life’s work is strong and stubborn. We don’t feel fully satisfied until we achieve it.
I believe the reason for this is well expressed in this quote from the book Creating Money, Attracting Abundance, channeled by Sanaya Roman:
You are a unique, special person, and you have a meaningful contribution to make to the world. The special contribution you came to make is your life’s work. When you’re doing that work, you’re following your higher path, and your life will be filled with increasing joy, abundance, and well-being… In doing your life’s work, you are accomplishing what you came to Earth to do.
Our life’s work is one of the most satisfying ways to express our purpose.
It isn’t necessarily a job, business, or side hustle, but rather a meaningful body of work that uses our natural talents and creates value in the world.
I’ve been a bit obsessed with ‘finding’ my purpose and calling since I was a child.
Even if a calling doesn’t have to be something we monetize — it can be a creative project or volunteering — for me, it’s always been crucial that what I do for a living is tied to my purpose.
I just can’t imagine spending half of my waking hours doing something I don’t really care about for the next thirty years while daydreaming about the weekend.
But figuring out what that purposeful work was has been a real struggle.
What I’ll share with you is a simple 3-step process that I wish I had known about earlier. If you, too, want to create your life’s work, this will likely save you a lot of time and frustration.
1. Know Your Gifts
When you know your gifts and are happy to share them, then that sense of purpose begins to feel satisfying. — Sonia Choquette, intuitive guide.
For a long time, until my early thirties, I thought I had no gifts, nothing special to offer or contribute. But, of course, everyone has them. Here’s how I began uncovering them and how you can too.
A valuable tool I recommend using is the free online VIA Character Strengths Survey. This assessment, created by psychologists, will provide you with a breakdown of your natural strengths. Your top six are called your signature strengths, and they are the ones that are most present within you.
For example, mine are:
- Love of learning
- Perspective
- Creativity
- Hope
- Curiosity
- Spirituality
These are some of the things I value most and that come naturally to me.
You, too, have character strengths that are strongly present within you and that come more naturally to you than to other people. When you use them, you feel at your best and can produce your best work.
Note that your combination of character strengths is quite unique; there are 600 sextillion possible combinations of the strengths, so it’s unlikely that you’ll meet someone with the exact same profile as yours.
There are other helpful personality assessments like The Dharma Archetype, The Enneagram, and 16Personalities.
What I like to do when I read my results is to highlight the keywords that resonate with me and leave out the rest. Some of those keywords are tied to personal values, personality traits, beliefs, core desires, and strengths.
Once you’ve identified some of your strengths, you may want to write them down in a notebook.
2. Enthusiasm and Aliveness
‘You will recognize when you are doing your life’s work by the feelings of vitality and aliveness it gives you.” Channeled by Sanaya Roman in Creating Money, Attracting Abundance.
Our life’s work is also something we enjoy doing, something that energizes us.
Here’s what you could do:
Once you’ve identified your gifts, think of how you enjoy using them.
For example, one of my top strengths, based on several assessments I’ve taken, is creativity. However, I’m not particularly interested in drawing, painting, or signing. What I do enjoy is making videos, writing, and creating products.
So, can you think of ways you enjoy using your gifts?
Also, consider the topics, activities, and environments you naturally feel drawn to.
For instance, I like making videos, but not about any topic. I’m mostly interested in positive psychology, spiritual wisdom, and lifestyle design. I wouldn’t make videos or write about technology or investing because I simply have zero interest in these topics.
You, too, have natural interests — things you are naturally attracted to, topics you love reading books about, and types of people you enjoy being around.
3. Meaningful Contribution
Your calling also makes a positive difference in the lives of other people, even if it’s a small difference.
Deepak Chopra wrote in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success:
When you combine your ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of the Law of Dharma.
Dharma means our most authentic life path and purpose.
How can you touch the lives of other people?
For example, if an artist paints in their basement and never shows their artwork to anyone, no one will benefit from it. But if they exhibit their art, share it on social media, or gift a piece to a friend, then they allow others to benefit from it.
What About Monetization?
Our life’s work is an ecosystem of different value-creation activities — some of which can be monetized, while others may not.
One way to determine which activities we could monetize is to observe what other people are already doing successfully. If other people have achieved success in a similar field, it’s a good indicator that we may also be able to do so.
Another way is to use ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas. Simply open ChatGPT and give it a prompt such as:
“My top strengths are [enter your strengths]; some of the ways I enjoy using my strengths are [list those here]; my top interests are [enter your interests]; some of my important personality traits are [enter some of your personality traits]. Based on this information, can you give me 50 recommendations for jobs (or profitable business ideas, depending on what you’re looking for) that would create value for other people.”
Once Chat GPT provides a list of ideas, you may need to refine the prompt and try again. For example, I added more details to the prompt such as:
- I’m not interested in creating software or freelancing.
- I want to be location-independent.
It’ll then generate other ideas, more aligned with what you truly want.
The Next Step
The next step is to start exploring. We need to try things to know if we truly enjoy them. So, once we’ve uncovered all these clues, we must explore, create things, and meet people.
What helped me in my journey was talking to people who were doing things I found interesting, all the while following my curiosity and trying to use my strengths in different ways to see what would stick.
Lastly, remember that your life’s work is a combination of different activities, and it’s not static; it will be evolving with you and take various forms.
I hope this was helpful.
Want to go deeper? Uncover the 5 ingredients of your unique purpose with The Life Purpose Formula (free guide).
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