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Earlier I wrote about the importance of finding your calling, and pointed you to some ways of finding your calling through introspection. I also said I’d write about an alternative way to find your calling without introspection. Here it is.

There’s lots of advice out there saying to “do what you love,” or “follow your heart,” or “do what you’re meant for.” The idea is that by paying close attention to who you are, you’ll be able to figure out what place your unique gifts have in the universe. And there’s certainly some truth to that. It’s essential to spend lots of time thinking about what you’re supposed to do to be fulfilled. The decision usually isn’t as easy as just picking from society’s menu of recommended career choices. If it were, then why do so many people hate their jobs?

Henry Ford once said, “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what it is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.” Notice that he said “secret,” not “easy color-by-numbers blueprint.” Your destiny is often far from obvious! And sometimes by being too close to the problem and too entrenched in routine, we can miss things that others might see.

Yes, sometimes others know things about us that we don’t know about ourselves. Or maybe we’ve just forgotten things we used to know because we’ve gotten used to wearing a different mask. Our success is ultimately judged by others anyway, in that you can’t make a living from something unless people find enough value in your work to pay for it.

For these reasons, it makes a lot of sense to pay close attention to what other people tell you you’re good at. Not necessarily what they tell you when you ask them, because they’ll probably just make up some vague or generic answer on the spot to get you to go away. But you should pay close attention to what they tell you on their own, without being prompted.

Let’s look at an example. I was led to creating this personal development blog in large part because of three things that other people voluntarily told me I was good at: writing, creativity, and honesty.

Writing. A few years ago, my mom ran into my high school journalism teacher at the doctor’s office. They didn’t know each other, but my teacher figured it out when they called my mom’s name. It was about ten years after I had graduated, and my teacher had no idea what I was up to. She said “Just tell me that Hunter’s writing!” When my mom said I was a software developer, my teacher let out a disappointed “Oh.” That should have told me something, but unfortunately I didn’t listen right away because I was too focused on doing what paid the bills. It took me a while before I got into writing, but I got there.

Creativity. I was actually told that I was creative by a personality test more so than by any actual person, but it still counts. I once took a test (I think it was called the OAD Survey) that measures how your personality matches up with the ideal personality for your job (sounds useful, doesn’t it?). The most obvious discrepancy for me was in the area of creativity. I got a 10, and my job was ideally suited for a 2. No wonder I couldn’t stand it! Now I can use creativity both in finding solutions to tough problems, and in writing about them.

Honesty. Lots of people have commented on how honest I am, but I still don’t fully understand this. Is being honest actually uncommon? I thought most people were honest, but I guess they must not be, or people wouldn’t bother telling me that I am. Personal development is definitely a field where honesty will differentiate you. Obviously, there are lots of people out there hyping up scams or overpriced programs, books, CDs, etc. that purport to make you millions overnight, easily accomplish any goal, etc. Even a lot of the legitimate stuff is hard to recognize because it’s drowned in hype. I have some things to sell here, but even when I do have a vested interest in something, I think you’ll find me refreshingly transparent.

It’s always good to get second opinions. I’ve had people tell me I was a bad writer, that I had no imagination, and that I was lying through my teeth. So who did I decide to believe? I just went with the people who seemed credible and caring instead of the people who were making ignorant snap judgments.

I didn’t immediately connect these three qualities to blogging, but I might have done so a lot sooner had I consciously thought about it. And at this point I can’t say for sure whether my blog will become successful or lead to anything, but I found that it was immediately a lot of fun, and I know it’s something I have to do.

Don’t feel that you have to do all the work in finding your calling. Other people will do a lot to point you in the right direction, if you just listen.

In the movie “Rocky,” there’s a scene where Rocky confronts Mickey to ask why he’s always been so disappointed in him over the years. Rocky says:

“You know, I’ve been comin’ here for six years, and for six years you’ve been stickin’ it to me. I wanna know how come.”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“Yeah, I wanna know how come.”

“You wanna know?”

“I WANNA KNOW HOW!”

“OK, I’m gonna tell ya. ‘Cause you had the talent to become a good fighter. And instead of that, you became a leg breaker for some cheap, second-rate loan shark!

“It’s a livin’.”

“It’s a WASTE of life!”

This is nothing new, just a typical case of not following one’s calling. Most people are in this situation, either because they never found their calling in the first place, or they lost their way at some point. But nothing is more important than knowing for sure what you’re supposed to do with your life. If you get this one thing right, then almost everything else naturally falls into place.

When you spend the bulk of your time doing the wrong thing, you find life to be very hard because you’re living someone else’s life instead of your own. Because you don’t really want to do the things you do, you find it hard to get motivated, or even just to get up in the morning. Everything you manage to get done takes a lot of effort for mediocre results. You’re always sick, tired, and afraid that your situation could become even worse. You resent having to do what you do, and that makes you miserable even when you’re not working.

On the other hand, if you follow your calling, your life is wonderful. Getting things done is effortless because you have boundless enthusiasm and incredible talent for what you do. You have no problem getting down to work because there’s nothing you’d rather be doing. You don’t have to choose between doing what you love and making money because the world places great value on what you do. The immense joy you receive from your work spills over into other areas of your life, and onto other people. Everyone wonders what you’re on, and how they can get it.

If finding your calling is so important, then why does hardly anyone do it?

Many people think that their calling is dictated by their major. You picked the major that was best suited for your abilities, and now you’ve invested a lot of time and money in studying that field, so you have to stick with it, right?

Um, no. There are certainly some elements of your major that fit you well, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get the obvious job that corresponds to your major. It’s not realistic to expect to decide on your calling before you graduate anyway. You might choose to put a creative twist on the common path in your field, or maybe even do something completely different. What you learned in school may or may not be directly helpful to you, but that’s not really why you went to school anyway. I’m sure Bill Gates doesn’t regret changing his mind about becoming a lawyer, and some things he learned in school no doubt helped him with Microsoft.

Some commonly given advice is “do what you love,” but that’s awfully naive. You can’t just pick something you love and assume that it will become a viable career. I don’t think there’s much market demand for people who just want to smoke pot and play Nintendo in their parent’s basement. Nor would that ultimately result in a fulfilling life, even if it seems appealing as a teenager. This is pretty obvious, which may be the reason people largely ignore this advice.

Many people fear change. You’ve gotten good at what you do, and if you switch to something else, then you’ll have to take a step backwards. Well, maybe. But continuing to take steps forward won’t help you if you’re walking off the end of a plank. If you know you’re heading in the wrong direction, it’s best to correct course now so you can move full speed ahead to where you want to go, instead of drifting heedlessly towards an iceberg. Even if you pick the path that’s right for you at the time, the world is going to change, and that will present new challenges and opportunities that make you want to change things. (Case in point, my school didn’t offer a blogging major.)

To get started on finding your calling, you’ll want to do a little introspection. Here are three resources to help you look inside yourself and figure out what you’re supposed to do with your life:

• What Color Is Your Parachute? 2008: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. There’s a reason this is the #1 best-selling career book of all time. But don’t just read it; do the exercises too.
• Steve Pavlina’s “The Meaning of Life: Discover Your Purpose.” Your life purpose (who to be) is much broader than your calling (what to do), but this is still related, and definitely useful.
• Brian Kim’s “How to Find What You Love to Do.” Step by step advice on how to find what you love to do. Pay attention when he says to write it down!

Next time, I’ll write about an alternative way to find your calling that does not involve introspection.

The “before” George McFly, Back To The Future (1985)

(Update 11/22/2009: Today I changed my tagline from “Stop sucking and live a life of abundance” to “Personal development for polymaths.” The lesson in this post still applies though.)

The tagline of this website is “Stop sucking and live a life of abundance.” To start this whole thing off, we have to clarify what these terms mean.

“Sucking” refers to any major discrepancy between the life you have and the life you want. The criteria for making this determination are entirely up to you. Don’t let anyone else tell you that your life is good enough when you think it’s not, or tell you that you should change if you really like things the way they are.

If you’re a single parent making minimum wage at a job you hate, but you have a newborn baby that’s your whole world, and you’re so happy because nothing else matters to you, then you don’t suck—you have the life you want. On the other hand, if you’re making $250,000 a year as a corporate executive, but your job has you so stressed that you’re just miserable, then you do suck—you don’t have the life you want.

You can see that sucking is not an objective condition, but it’s relative to your own perception. It’s not a judgment bestowed by someone else, and it’s not even related to what anyone else thinks. Sucking means that as of right now, your life hasn’t turned out the way you wanted it to. It means something is bothering you, eating away at you, and you can’t just let it go and pretend everything is fine.

If you look around, it’s not hard to see that sucking is a major problem. Symptoms can include being too poor, too lazy, too stressed, too tired, too fat, too undervalued, too uninspired…anything, really. What matters is that it’s something that you really want to change. If you want to “stop sucking,” that means you’ve decided that there is a problem, and you want to fix it.

The “after” George McFly, Back To The Future (1985)

The other part of the tagline is “live a life of abundance.” This shows what we’re working towards. We don’t need to accept scarcity, thinking that the world’s resources are too limited for us to have what we want. We can work towards a life of abundance: abundance of time, money, health, happiness, excitement, self-respect, sense of purpose, etc.

For the most part, we just stumble into the life that we get. We go to school, get a job, and do what we think we’re supposed to do. Then one day we decide that we’re not happy with our life. Maybe we don’t want to struggle to pay the bills, or we don’t want to be stressed all the time, or we don’t want to devote our lives to working for someone else. We might decide that it’s time for a change, but it’s hard to know what to do.

The fact is, we live in a world where it’s really easy to be average, but really hard to be above average. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s not achievable or worthwhile. Nothing is more important than having the life you want. Nothing! Always remember that you don’t have to blindly accept the default life you’ve stumbled into. We have the power to change, but we need to decide what we want and consciously pursue it. Only then can we stop sucking and live a life of abundance.