Service & Leadership

"Everyone has a specific place in life, ordained by God. A call is seen as a summoning from God to which we are all asked to obey; people are to respond responsibly in achieving a divine purpose. Gradually, a clearer call comes from the challenge of the work and the needs of those to be served. A divine call usually involves serving or benefiting others. One who would answer a call must first be open to listening with the ear of discernment, the well-known third ear. Then we will be more prepared for the possibilities of greater potential and sense of mission."

CAROLE RAYBURN / Vocation as Calling

"You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. When you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born. And in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life, and to love life through labor is to be intimate with life's inmost secret. Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."
KAHLIL GIBRAN / The Prophet / On Work

Personal Mission
By Stephen Covey

Goal setting is obviously a powerful process. It is based on the same principle of focus that allows us to concentrate rays of diffused sunlight into a force powerful enough to start a fire. It is the manifestation of creative imagination and independent will. It is the practicality of eating our elephants one bite at a time, of translating vision into achievable, actionable doing. It is a common denominator of successful individuals.

Despite their obvious value, our experience with and feelings about goals are mixed. Some of us can set heroic goals, exercise tremendous discipline, and pay the price for incredible achievement. Others can't keep a New Year's resolution to pass up dessert two days in a row. Some see goals as the primary factor shaping the destiny of individuals and nations. Others see them as superficial, pie-in-the-sky idealism that has no staying power in the real world. Some of us stick to a goal, no matter what. And some goals stick to us, no matter what. Some experts tell us that if we think positively, we can do anything; others tell us to stop beating ourselves up when we find out we can't.

Begin with the end in mind . . . Make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the criteria you have defined as supremely important, and that each day of your life contributes in a meaningful way to the vision you have of your life as a whole.

Your goals and objectives are guided by your personal mission. Your mission is the vision you have of your life, your statement of purpose that establishes your general direction in life. When planning your career and life goals, it may be necessary to consider the time frame within which the goal is likely to be accomplished. Consider the following terminology.

Goals that are connected to our inner life have the power of passion and principle. They are fueled by the fire within and based on principles that create quality-of-life results. One of the best ways to access this power is to ask three vital questions: What? Why? How?

What do I desire to accomplish? What is the contribution I want to make? What is the end I have in mind?

Why do I want to do it? Does my goal grow out of mission, needs, and principles? Does it empower me to contribute through my roles?

HOW? How am I going to do it? What are the key principles that will empower me to achieve my purpose? What strategies can I use to implement these principles?

One of the most powerful processes we've found to cultivate the passion of vision is creating and integrating an empowering personal mission statement. We're talking about accessing and creating an open connection with the deep energy that comes from a well-defined, thoroughly integrated sense of purpose and meaning in life. We're talking about creating a powerful vision based on principles that ensure its achievability. We're talking about a sense of excitement and adventure that grows out of connecting with your unique purpose and the profound satisfaction that comes in fulfilling it. The vital connection is made between the mission and the moments in life. The mission statement becomes the primary factor that influences every moment of choice. Creating and living an empowering mission statement has a significant impact on the way we spend our time. Vision is the fundamental force that drives everything else in our lives. It impassions us with a sense of the unique contribution that's ours to make.

From Stephen Covey / Seven Habits of Highly successful People / First Things First

Career Focus

"What the world needs is more people who know what they really want to do, and who do it at their place of work as their chosen work. The world needs more people who feel true enthusiasm for their work -- People who have taken the time to think out what they uniquely can do, and what they uniquely have to offer the world."

"Until you truly know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, what you want to do and why you want to do it, I promise you, you can't succeed in any but the most superficial sense of that word. You are your own raw material. When you know yourself, you are ready to invent yourself."

"Once you begin to identify what energizes you about life you can then begin to incorporate those insights into a career. Self-awareness is the first stage of the career planning process."

"Why can't a person do for a living what he would otherwise do for a summer vacation?"

"Do something you'd do for nothing. Do something you think will bring you satisfaction and the kind of pride in achievement that keeps you vitally absorbed in what you're doing. Do something that makes you glad to be alive. Do something you love to be doing. Do something you'd do for nothing and you will have found a gateway to real and lifelong happiness."

"Because your personality reflects your interests, you feel energetic and enthusiastic when doing your favorite activities. Success is unlikely unless you are using skills you naturally enjoy in a compatible working environment. Have you ever noticed how hard it is just to get out of bed in the morning when you have nothing interesting to look forward to? People who enjoy their work tend to be healthier, both physically and emotionally, than those who view work as a rat race."

"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living."

"Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart."

"We were meant to work in ways that suit us, drawing on our natural talents and abilities as a way to express ourselves and contribute to others. This work is a key to our true happiness and self-expression."

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."

"Few people really know what they want in life because they have never really taken the time and effort to determine what matters in their lives. To determine what you want, you must first know what is important in your life... the values that give your life meaning and relevance."

"We cannot separate our philosophy of life from the practical choices we make about career."

"A crucial component to your personal joy is establishing well-defined life goals that reflect what is important to you."

"If you can bring your actions and life choices into harmony with your values, you will feel more in control of your life and more satisfied with the decisions you make."

"Everything has its own place and function. That applies to people... Although many don't seem to realize it, stuck as they are in the wrong job, the wrong marriage, or the wrong house. When you know and respect your own inner nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don't belong."

"Doing the work you love means living your philosophy. It means putting your values to work by determining to make what you do reflect who you really are."

"If there is such a thing as true happiness, it is in knowing you're in the right place."

"To live your life to its fullest, you must find a way to put your heart and soul into your work. Failing to find the work you love has costs, not only to your self-esteem, relationships, health, and creativity, but to your world. As a human community, we all lose when people's creative abilities do not find expression in constructive, purposeful action."

Is Your Job a Calling?

By Alan M. Webber
Interviewing Timothy Butler & James Waldroop

Two Harvard Business School psychologists offer advice on career choices that provide success and satisfaction.

As directors of MBA career development programs at the Harvard Business School, business psychologists Timothy Butler and James Waldroop offer advice each year to more than 1,600 of the world's most ambitious and accomplished businesspeople. As cofounders of Waldroop Butler Associates wba@world.std.com , they provide career counseling and executive coaching to leaders at such blue-chip companies as General Electric, Citibank, Gillette, Hewlett-Packard, Philip Morris, and McKinsey & Co. And as authors of Discovering Your Career in Business (Addison-Wesley, 1997), Butler and Waldroop draw on their combined 30 years of experience in researching the psychology of work-and offer advice on how to make career choices that will provide both success and satisfaction. Fast Company sat down with Butler and Waldroop in their office at the Harvard Business School to get advice on the options facing people in the new world of work.

Most people sense that choices in business today are different. When it comes to people and careers, what actually has changed?

James Waldroop: People in business simply have many more choices today than ever before. Just a decade ago, when you took a job, you more or less did what you were told. The old saying was that IBM stood for "I've Been Moved": The company dictated the moves you made. When it came to your career, you had one area that you specialized in. That was all you did, and you more or less did it for your whole work life.

If you're looking for a visual model for change in people's work lives, first think of a tree: Ten or twenty years ago, you'd join a company, put down roots, and stay put. Today the image of the tree has been replaced by a surfer on a surfboard: You're always moving. You can expect to fall into the water any number of times, and you have to get back up to catch that next wave.

But the biggest change is in who is responsible for your career. Ten or fifteen years ago, a social contract went along with a job. Companies accepted certain responsibilities for their people. Today that contract is completely different. You are responsible for creating your own career within an organization-and even more important, between organizations.

It's frequently said that careers are over. Instead, you should expect to hold a series of jobs and to participate in a succession of projects. How do you see the evolution of the career?

Timothy Butler: There are three words that tend to be used interchangeably-and shouldn't be. They are "vocation," "career," and "job." Vocation is the most profound of the three, and it has to do with your calling. It's what you're doing in life that makes a difference for you, that builds meaning for you, that you can look back on in your later years to see the impact you've made on the world. A calling is something you have to listen for. You don't hear it once and then immediately recognize it. You've got to attune yourself to the message.

Career is the term you hear most often today. A career is a line of work. You can say that your career is to be a lawyer or a securities analyst-but usually it's not the same as your calling. You can have different careers at different points in your life.

A job is the most specific and immediate of the three terms. It has to do with who's employing you at the moment and what your job description is for the next 6 months or so. These days, trying to describe what your job will be beyond 12 to 18 months from now is very dicey.

Waldroop: If you look at the derivations of the words "career" and "vocation," you immediately get a feel for the difference between them. Vocation comes from the Latin "vocare," which means "to call." It suggests that you are listening for something that calls out to you, something that comes to you and is particular to you. "Career" comes originally from the Latin word for cart and later from the Middle French word for race track. In other words, you go around and around really fast for a long time-but you never get anywhere.

You give advice on career decisions to students in their early twenties and executives in their late forties and fifties. Do these age groups face different kinds of choices?

Butler: You tend to make different decisions at different points in your life. In fact, you can almost chronicle the kind of choices you have to make by decade. For example, the decisions that you make in your twenties tend to be about creating opportunities. At that stage of life, the questions you ask are, "What can I choose to do that will make my world bigger?" and "What will give me more options?" In contrast, when you reach your thirties, the decisions are about establishing focus. That's when you first realize that you're not going to be able to do everything in your life-and that to do something well, you've got to narrow your interests. By your late twenties and early thirties, you're closing in on something. If you're doing things well, if you're becoming more deeply involved in your career, you're actually closing doors. That's a very hard task, and we see a lot of resistance to that shift.

As you move into your forties and fifties, the recognition of your own mortality becomes more and more a part of decision-making. You realize that you're not going to be around forever. Your choices become a lot more precious. The gap between your dreams and what you're actually doing narrows, and you start living your life more directly. What you're doing is who you are. And who you are becomes more important to you.

Waldroop: As you go from one decade to the next, the issue of loss comes up over and over. It tends to have a powerful effect on the way you make choices. It's a simple fact of life: Whenever you choose one path, you're not choosing another. You choose business, you're not choosing law. You choose law, you're not choosing business.

Some people really have a tough time coming to terms with "the road not taken." They have a sense of grief over choices not made. That's essentially what a midlife crisis is: You're eliminating alternatives-for good. You have to come to terms with the fact that a whole host of options have been permanently foreclosed for you.

Very close to the issue of grief are the internal tensions that are at work in career decisions. We all have pulls inside us that move us in different directions. These pulls can take different forms: The tension between self-interest and altruism, between taking risks and wanting security, between living for today and saving for tomorrow. Both sides are part of you, and whenever you make a decision that favors one over another, you experience a sense of loss.

We often see people responding to these real losses by trying not to make decisions. They try to avoid errors of commission and instead make errors of omission-because the decision not to make a decision is a decision.

What advice do you have for people facing a tough career choice, one that could permanently change the direction of their work life?

Butler: Everyone tries to do something that seems like the wise thing to do-but that you shouldn't do: compromise. You've got two competing needs or desires-say, independence and security-and you try to find the position that's halfway between them. Typically that doesn't work.

An equally bad approach is to jump radically from one pole to the other, to pretend that you can forget entirely about one need and recognize only the other. When you do that, the genuine need you're trying to deny simply goes underground and becomes stronger.

Waldroop: We have exercises where we ask people to choose among 13 different business reward values. An obvious one is financial gain. How important is it to you to make a lot of money? Another one is lifestyle. How important is it to you to work in a way where you're networking all the time? A third is power and influence. How important is it to you to be a player ?

It's not uncommon for an individual to have a high score on financial gain, a high score on lifestyle, and a high score on power and influence. You can try to jump from one to the other to the other, but when you choose one, the other two don't go away.

So what's the answer? To be aware of and live with this tension. It's a dynamic part of your personality. And if you try to come up with an easy solution, you're only going to get into trouble. At different times in your life, you're going to shift more toward one pull than toward the others. But the tension is never going to go away. You can't balance them out, you can't take an average of them, you can't somehow live in the middle. Ultimately what's required is to live with the tension-and to know that you have to live with it.

As hard as that is to accept, we tend to make it even harder: In this culture, most people harbor the illusion that you can be happy all the time-that in fact, you should even expect it. People spend vast amounts of energy trying to make these tensions go away, and that is utterly fruitless. It's like trying to get rid of gravity-it's not going to happen.

Butler: Another element is what kind of personal resources you bring to bear on these tough decisions. A lot of very bright businesspeople try to solve these decisions in their heads. They want to do the math, come up with the bottom-line solution, the right MBA answer, the decision that's going to solve the problem once and for all. What's it going to be? Am I going to spend a lot of time with my kids? Or am I going to start up this company and commit the 90 hours per week that it will require? It's one or the other. What's the answer?

But there's a better way: Take the decision out of the abstract and the absolute, and instead deal with the immediate and the real. Look at the next two months or four months. What's on the agenda? If you have to be on the road, can your family take the hit for the next few months? And then, in the months after that, can your family get more of your attention?

The more you can bring your decisions into the immediate and take them out of the abstract, the more you're going to be able to stay on top of these dynamic tensions-and even be energized by them.

Even good decisions don't always work out the way we plan. What advice do you give people to help them feel like they've made a good choice, no matter how their decision plays out?

Waldroop: Three things go into making good decisions-decisions that you feel you can stand behind, no matter how things ultimately turn out. First, you have to give a decision the time it requires. You can't push it, hoping to make it happen faster or just to get it over with.

Second, a good decision involves clarity. By that I mean knowing who you are and how you picture yourself in the future. You need to develop a very clear picture in your mind of how you want and expect to work and live. Does it involve lots of travel? Are you after glitz and glamour? Do you see yourself with a family? Be as specific as you can: How many people in the family? The more clarity you bring to the decision, the better the decision will be.

Several years ago, I worked with a man who came to a very clear picture of what he wanted in his life: He wanted to own a sports team. Once that became clear, he worked out, step by step, what it would take to reach that goal: "To own a sports team, I have to amass great wealth. To do that, I have to be an entrepreneur. To do that, I have to learn about running a business-and it needs to be in an industry where there's a great deal of upside potential." As he worked out the logic, it not only made a lot of sense, it also helped guide his decisions.

Third, good decisions involve courage. The enemy of a good decision is fear-fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of making a mistake. A few years back, I worked with a woman who had earned an MBA from a top school and had always done the kind of work that typically goes with having an MBA. But she was never quite satisfied. One day, she came to see me and said, "I finally decided that just because I spent $100,000 on a hammer, I don't have to spend the rest of my life driving nails." She blew out of her job. She even left that whole world of work. She completely changed directions. That takes courage.

The biggest decision that people face in the world of work is which career to choose. What advice do you have for people who aren't sure what their career-or their vocation-should be?

Waldroop: Good career decisions have to be based not just on your aptitudes, but also on your "deep" interests. The most common mistake that people make in their career decisions is to do something because they're "good at it." It's a story I hear all the time. Someone will say to me, "I'm an engineer, but I don't like it." Why did you become an engineer? "I was good at science and math, so people told me I should be an engineer." Did you ever like engineering? "No, but it was easy."

The real question is, Where are your deep interests? Think of your interests as a deep geothermal pool. Once you tap your interests, you can be express them in any number of ways. You may have a particular aptitude-science and math, for instance-but without a deep interest in expressing that aptitude, you'll fail.

Butler: Identifying those deep interests has been the focus of our research for the past 10 years. Once you recognize that those deep interests are the best predictor of job satisfaction, the next step is to get in touch with your interest patterns and connect them with the activities that go on in business. Human interests are quite difficult to measure until we reach our early twenties. At that point, they gel-we can measure and describe them. We each develop a unique signature of life interests. And that signature remains virtually constant over time. The pattern won't change.

Our research tries to tap into this deep structure of interests and translate them into the kinds of work that go on in business. There are eight core business functions-not functions like marketing, sales, and finance, but basic activities such as quantitative analysis, theory development, perceptual thinking, managing people, enterprise control, and creative production. If you look at your deep interests and think about how your interests can be expressed in specific business behaviors, then you'll have the elements of a good career decision.

There's one thing that everyone should do in the course of making a career decision: some reflection. You're going to need some systematic way of thinking through what you know about yourself, thinking through those times in your life when you were deeply excited about what you were doing and deeply engaged in doing it. And then you need to identify the themes that were present during those times.

You may come up with a list of times in your life when you were doing apparently different things-but at each of those times, you were deeply engaged. When you analyze those times, you'll find themes that connect them. Those are your core interests. Thinking about them in a systematic way gives you the information you need to make a good decision.

How much of our career path is destiny and how much is free will? In my opinion, it is 50/50. We are given a life map at the beginning of our lives, and there are things we are meant to learn, people we are meant to meet, work we are meant to perform. But many of us are not tuned into ourselves and the signs that are presented to us. We often miss important information, and miss out on those lessons, people, and jobs.

The use of free will comes about when we are presented with options. Choices are really curves in our path. We can choose to take the long route, or the quicker, easier route. No path is better, it just impacts how quickly we move along our route, but remember: when climbing the mountain of self discovery, taking the long, hard, scenic route can be a rather enjoyable, enlightening experience.

Confucius once said, “Choose a career you love and you will never work another day in your life.” If you think about this, what a different experience we could have in our work lives. If we actually loved the work we were doing, it wouldn’t seem so much like our traditional concept of work (drudgery/pain). Think about it! How many jobs have you had that you dreaded going to? What are some of the differences between a job, a career, and your life’s work? Let’s define it.

A job is something you get paid to do (money is the primary motivation). It is easy to perform because there is not much challenge, and you will eventually find other work to do.

A career is something you get paid to do that is viewed as a profession (status or identity is the motivation). It may provide more challenge, but after a while, you may get burned out, and choose to stop doing it.

Your life’s work is something you do whether you get paid for it or not (your soul’s need for expression is the motivation). There is plenty of challenge and personal meaning. You will always want to do it.

Remember that a job can get you started toward your life’s work. In fact, jobs provide the very important element of exposure to different kinds of industries. Take for example, a woman who started out working in a department store as a clerk, who moved into a management position, and finally created her life’s work as an independent contractor who trains others in customer service skills.

If everyone in the world could create their life’s work (and they can!)—if everyone could find what they were meant to do in life, how much happier and fulfilled we all would be!

Today, it's the optics of our work lives that seem to be what counts. You know, how our career looks and what can be seen in a glance. Don't pause. Don't explore or dig too deep because you might distort the look, the optics. We sure don't want to create any discomfort, and above all not feel or look out of control! At times, we can feel like our life and career are a movie, one that just keeps rolling along. Yet we are aware of an underlying yearning for a sense of meaning and purpose, of a deep desire to make a difference and leave a legacy. And we wonder if this is just too trite for words! But we have ideas and we try different things, attempting to make an impact. We become frustrated because we don't feel in control, and we get very anxious because our optics aren't as good as we'd like. We may lack our accustomed and expected energy and focus in the whole area of our work. We question if we're nuts, as may others around us.

If there is any validity to this picture, what does it say about that uncomfortable word, spirituality? And how might - or might not -- spirituality impact our world of work, and especially our career path? Curiously, we have a greater comfort level when spirituality is spoken of in relation to our health, our family and even our communities. But spirituality and work? We shift uncomfortably in our desk chairs.

What is spirituality? For many, it is the essence of being human. It is a loving, personal relationship with the Divine (however one imagines and experiences that to be) that gives people the potential to live authentically and with integrity, based in faith, hope, compassion and wisdom. Spirituality brings the possibility to have a sense of purpose, of meaning, and of the transcendent in daily life. It is the spark, the Spirit in faith journeys. It is a lived experience, the sustaining force that supports the often hard work of acting according to what we believe. It is practical, about what one does and doesn't say, what one does and doesn't do. It cannot be equated with organized religion because spirituality transcends faith communities and traditions while also being inherent in them.

Spirituality can be sustained by and integrated with such things as our spiritual practices (e.g. personal meditation and prayer, participating in communal worship, being in touch with nature, journaling, creating art), our ethical choices, our beliefs, our connection with religious traditions and communities, our reading and our conversations. Spirituality-at-work includes many different aspects of work such as vocational discernment, work-related relationships, creation of a healthy work environment, community-building, decision making that accommodates social and environmental justice issues, self-care to prevent burnout, the challenge of ethical dilemmas, and the search for meaning and purpose in one's work.

In his groundbreaking book The Reinvention of Work (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994, p.1), Matthew Fox writes: Good living and good working go together. Life and livelihood ought not to be separated but to flow from the same source, which is Spirit, for both life and livelihood are about Spirit. Spirit means life, and both life and livelihood are about living in depth, living with meaning, purpose, joy, and a sense of contributing to the greater community. A spirituality of work is about bringing life and livelihood back together again. And Spirit with them.

Fox claims that work accomplishes what it signifies when a person works at the deep heart level, integrating the often perceived divisions between life and livelihood, personal and work values, and human work with the work of the universe. He suggests that society needs to reinvent the dualistic vision of human work that is the dying paradigm of the industrial age, the secularization of work based on industrialization, urbanization, technology, capitalism, etc. Fox proposes a new spirituality of work, with human work serving as "part of the ongoing work of the universe and all the species in it", workers making "a commitment to the inner work that we need so desperately", and an exploration happening of how this inner work can feed the outer work (Reinvention, pp. 297, 298).

If we slow down the movie and focus on clearing some of the blur that obscures the connection between our inner and our outer selves, we may uncover our calling. This is not a new concept -- in spiritual traditions throughout the ages, people experience themselves as "called." Responding to some interior urging and vision, people have been inspired to follow new paths or adopt new modalities within already more permanent or chosen paths. They persevere on the path through many barriers and potholes. They are said to have a sense of mission or call. All of us are called, in different ways and at different times. As human beings, simply because we are human, we are called: · Into existence and to be part of the human family; · To cooperate with each other in respecting the gifts of creation; · To be part of a certain time in history, of a certain gender, of a certain family along with all the implied limitations; · To be true to ourselves while, at the same time, loyal to the ambiguous traditions of life and development of human knowledge; · To accept as limited and tentative what others have passed on as truth; · To encourage each other respectfully and to help liberate each other to express one's better self and to fulfill one's own personal call; · To serve the human family in ways unique to one's own gifts, talents and circumstances. It's the calling that is the essence of work, career, job. The calling anchors our work life. It validates career direction and provides the clarity and confidence that a chosen career path is right for me because it is expressing my best self and is fulfilling my personal call. Sometimes our calling is connected with a major change, sometimes with a simple shift in perspective brought about by a new insight. Are you selling houses, or are you helping people find homes?

In today's fast-forward environment we may miss the call because we do not pause to listen. Even voice mail doesn't always capture the call and we spend an inordinate and mis-directed amount of time waiting for the call. The call is inside each of us and may have been made many years before but our fast-forward life brings lots of static so we don't hear the message, or tragically the call gets disconnected. We pay a high price for losing ourselves in a swirl of a demanding life.

In his wonderful book entitled PEBBLES AND PEARLS, author Jon Kabat-Zinn draws on a yoga tradition, describing the world as a spinning grindstone. We are either chewed up by it, or we can position ourselves to be honed like a blade.

As each day goes by, we are very much influenced by the world around us - circumstances, people, our own self in various roles and capacities; in many ways we lead a life of other people's expectations. Over time we probably don't give sufficient thought to what that means, or what's happening to us. What we don't see are the pieces of ourselves that are buried and left behind as our strengths and talents are pushed to the back of our minds. In the extreme, we begin to morph ourselves and our identity into something we are not (one writer claims we are merely impersonating ourselves). When we lose the interior music expressing what makes us truly who we are, the disharmony manifests itself in stress, anxieties, tattered relationships and a dysfunctional life.

If you don't have a focus or a goal for your own life, you'll be living by someone else's schedule. The less we are aware of ourselves - who we are and what we need - the more predisposed we are to allowing other persons or circumstances to determine what we're all about. It's referred to as "barnacle building." Over the years, we cover ourselves with multi-layers of barnacles. As barnacles begin to cover and weigh down a ship's hull, the vessel becomes less efficient, burns more energy and has less control over its direction. What started life as a sleek, fast and exciting ship, ends up as a tried, burdened barge, limping from port to port.

We have all experienced a time or times in our career and in life when we feel a certain funk. Life overall lacks joy, fun, enthusiasm and most important, direction. We live a life of drag: we drag ourselves into work with the purpose of making enough money to pay the mortgage, get a bigger house, acquire as much financial security as possible and most importantly, build and maintain a prestigious career, which can all become a drag on the lives we are called to lead. That funk just doesn't go away and the dragging continues. What is happening? We have not connected with our deeper purpose, our "why" (calling!) for working, for career development and for job fulfillment and most important of all the failure to uncover the yearning to create our own meaning to ensure our place in the world.

Writer poet, David Whyte, in his book CROSSING THE UNKNOWN SEA. WORK AS A PILGRIMAGE OF IDENTITY, uses the metaphor of a boat on the open sea. We are the captain our life and work. When we are off-course or stuck in gloom and low spirits we must remind ourselves we are captain of the boat and take action to get back on course. Dial up the voice mail and see if there is a calling waiting!

If life feels shallow and lacking in a deeper purpose, finding the calling can point us to the person we really are. Being unsure of ourselves is mostly caused by being unsure of our values. Do I truly know what my values are? Can I cite experiences in my life where my values have played out? It is difficult to place ourselves in the right environments, or to change the environments in which we find ourselves, without a clear understanding of why we choose some conditions over others. In our breakneck world, with its growing uncertainties, staying the course means having a solid grounding in our core values.

Values are the mental standards we carry around in our heads; they assist us in making choices we believe are right for us in our everyday living. Values are guiding principles, which give meaning to our lives. They cause us to investigate why certain things and activities are important to us. To value something is to assign a worth to it. Our values generate motivation, interest, desire and attitude. Values determine the person we've become…and the person we want to be. What's my calling? Look in on and listen to the deeper message pointing out your work and life direction. The calling is grounded in the values.

Author Tom Brown Jr. noted, "People who stay on the same paths in life will eventually wear themselves into ruts…a complacency to life born of false security, comfort and monotony of that path. Soon the ruts become so deep that we can no longer see over the sides. They see neither danger nor beauty; only the path before them; nor do they abandon that path so often travelled for fear of losing their security and entering the land of the unknown." The deep, inner self is the apex of our reality. The difficulty for most people lies in setting aside the "outside" self that is culturally conditioned with belief and behaviour values acquired and imposed over the years, in order to find our inner self, free of all these restrictions.

Peter Urs Bender, in his book, GUTFEELING, noted what T.S. Eliot called "the still point of the turning world." It meant that when you are properly grounded or "centered" in yourself, you are the point around which the world turns. The real universe starts from within. Recall that author Jon Kabot-Zinn described the world as a spinning grindstone. We are either chewed by it, or we can position ourselves to be honed like a blade.

Our pre-conceived belief system can be a formidable wall we have to surmount in order for a personal initiative or change to occur. We are continually rattled by 'mental rumors' and 'conscientious objectors' that whisper, "You can't expand beyond your safe boundaries of existing knowledge and skill." Sometimes we are so addicted to the old rules and ways that they obstruct our perceptions of our potential and ability to initiate change. We are bombarded with internal and external messages that tell us we'll fail for sure, so our first reactions are usually to ignore or deny change. This replays the old fears and insecurities, causing a mental melting away of our self-confidence. The resulting mental stress makes us vulnerable. Following your calling takes courage. It puts you at risk. It's the fear of failure that makes you less than you deserve to be. Remember baseball idol Casey Stengel's offhanded remark: "You know they said it couldn't be done, but sometimes it doesn't always work out that way."

How do you know when you're hearing a genuine calling and when some kind of self-delusion is at play? I (Sherry) have been living this question personally for more than five years - transitions aren't necessarly quick in mid-life! In 1998, I chaired a grassroots Spirituality in the Workplace conference in Toronto that I had envisioned the previous year. From it, the formation of the Centre for Spirituality at Work evolved organically and a second conference was held a year after the first.

I was aware of a very powerful inner sense that I was being "called" away from my corporate management career. At the time of the first conference, my work group in the head office of Canada's largest bank was disbanded, and through a strange set of circumstances, I found myself with my office, computer, phone, paycheque, and no responsibilities of any consequence - a very risky situation for a business employee. I had been adept during my career at finding good jobs, but this time my sense was very powerful that I was not to be looking for a job. This was very scary - I was a single mother with a mortgage and two daughters to educate. My constant prayer was for clarity. Only three things were clear to me: I did not want to go back to school for any reason, I did not want to be self-employed, and I did not want to work from home. A voice in my head kept saying "keep walking". An image stayed with me of myself as a little girl, toddling with my arms upstretched and my hands held by two wise and compassionate elders, Dick Cappon and my spiritual director, Sister Mary McDevitt. The optics were getting bad and I was feeling very shaky.

The bank asked me to recommend what they should be doing about spirituality in the workplace, since there was so much media noise about me and the first conference. I brought together a group of people from different departments, and the day before we were to make our recommendations, which would include a job for me leading the initiative, a major merger the bank was planning with another bank was cancelled. While our proposal was well received, now the timing was wrong because it was clear that many jobs would disappear and therefore employee cynicism would likely greet introduction of our proposal.

A month later, I received a 90-day letter of notice and was encouraged to try to find another position within the bank. That afternoon, I unexpectedly met a former Roman Catholic priest who was an experienced career counselor - I interpreted this as a sign that God was with me, guiding me to a new place. A few days later, I unexpectedly came across my original employment offer - my termination day would be nine years to the exact day following my employment date. Nine years is an aboriginal cycle of completion. When I inquired if the choice of date was deliberate, not only was I told that it was not, there was embarrassment and the termination date was extended an extra week because choosing that date was considered bad human resources practice. I interpreted this as a sign that perhaps my time with this employer was completed.

In my morning prayer, I was reading the gospel of Luke. I read about Jesus preaching to the synagogue congregation in his home town of Nazareth, how first they listened to him but then took him to the cliff and were going to throw him off. However, he walked through the crowd and took his message to other villages. The next morning, I was about to start reading the next verses and a clear voice in my head said "Reread". This surprised me, and I reread the verses. The next morning, I was about to start reading the next verses and again a clear voice in my head said "Reread". I was very surprised, and again reread the verses. On the third day, the same routine. But this time I got it. My employer had been receptive to my spirituality at work passion and words, but then took me to the metaphorical cliff with a 90 day letter of notice. And I could choose to walk safely away and take my message to other places. This suggested to me that perhaps I not just wait out the ninety days, but should be making a concrete choice. But still I had no ideas or clarity about what to do. I only knew the three things I did not want to do.

I inquired what my package would be if I chose to leave. Thirteen months pay. During the previous year I had become intrigued by the Jesuits, knew they had a college at the University of Toronto, and I phoned and made an appointment. I still do not really understand what led me to do this. I spent an hour there, and at the end of my visit, was overcome by such an overpowering sense of Divine presence that I couldn't move or speak for several minutes. I knew in my whole being that I was to enter the masters program in ministry and spirituality, a far cry from my earlier graduate work in business!

And I am Anglican, not Roman Catholic. Then my wrestling with God began. The program would cost $9000 in fees - it was bad enough to go off income for a return to school, which I'd publicly stated that I didn't want to do. It was quite another thing to pay out that much money. The next morning, I inquired if an outplacement benefit would be part of my package if I chose to leave and if so, if it could be directed to tuition. The answer was yes, and in my case, it would be $9000. I was overwhelmed.

That afternoon, I was leaving for a silent retreat weekend, immediately followed at the same Jesuit retreat house by a 5-day communal discernment program. I had booked these programs separately months earlier. I emerged from the retreat knowing that my deepest desire was to do the best I could to discern the will of God in my life and to be obedient to it. This meant that if I understood the answer to my long time prayer for clarity to be going to school, so be it. But I wasn't ready to accept that yet. I knew I would be very stressed having no monthly income for so long. One of my key leaders for the Centre for Spirituality at Work also attended the communal discernment program - he said that it was time the Centre started paying me a monthly honorarium. I still wasn't ready to give up the fight. I knew I would be very anxious about unexpected major expenses, such as the two $750 estimates I had received for a new head gasket needed for my car before I had left Toronto for the retreat centre. But the idea came to me that I should check with the Jesuits' mechanic - the estimate was $125.

I said yes to the call. My prayer for clarity was clearly answered, but only for one step - going back to school while being self-employed and working from home. I have been in school now for more than five years with two to three ahead of me as I am studying for my doctorate in applied theology at the University of Toronto. So much for the three-pronged clarity that came from self six years ago! I've had little income, but somehow I get through financially. I have changed my perspective on money from being about income tied to work to being about my family's basic needs being met while I work according to discernment of how I am called.

The call is less flashy now than I needed to get me started on this journey. I've told you about what I call my "neon signs" - now they are more subtle, but I still sense I am being guided, called, and am very intentional about listening. While my direction has remained clear, goals no longer play a part in my path. I continue to listen to wise and compassionate elders, to follow daily spiritual practices, to be strengthened by both a personal and a communal spirituality, grounded in a worshipping faith tradition and in daily experience of nature. I could die tomorrow feeling that up to today, I have lived life as best I can according to what I am here for, to my purpose in this life, responding to God's call within me and for the world.

True achievers augment and authenticate themselves by knowing and living their calling. We would all love to do what we do best and find our joy in doing it. Life is a continual process of improvement, reflection and refinement: a grindstone to either grind or hone us. It allows us to reinvent ourselves and adjust attitudes, values and beliefs we deem critical to our success. It's not what and where we are now, but who we can become in being all we can be. Triumphant moments stand out as peaks on our journey's lifeline.

Dreams come from the heart. Our spirit represents the divine energy in all of us. As we grow up, society begins to form our thoughts and push us in directions that distance us from the passion of our spirit. Triumphs of the spirit are pursed by an inner drive that moves ahead without considering the fact that we may lack the skills, talent or education to even attempt them. The expertise is found in the doing. Our skills and talents are honed in the process. Triumphs are the success of the spirit. They have great power to change belief systems and highlight the vital potential within each of us.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada, had a lifelong passion for canoeing in the wilderness. He stated in his memoirs: "I think a lot of people want to go back to basics sometimes to find their bearings. For me a good way is to get back to nature by canoe. Canoeing forces you to make a distinction between your needs and your wants. You deal with who you are and what you're doing. Then let nature fill in the void. You discover a sort of simplifying of your values, a distinction between values artificially created and those that are necessary for your spiritual and human development."

In planning what's best for you, you have to go back to basics. Make the effort to eliminate the clutter and noise from your life and get close to your thoughts and feelings about what's important to you. Inner feelings let you connect deeply with yourself. They are your drivers - if you don't feel, you don't know who or what you are.

In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams, in his role as Mr. Keating, a teacher at a private school, told his class of young men: They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Carpe. Hear it? Carpe. Carpe Diem. Seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

You only have so much time allotted to you in life. Don't waste it. Make the best of it. Carpe diem. Seize the day! Better yet, seize the calling!

Bender, P.U. (2002). Gutfeeling - Instinct and spirituality @ work. Toronto: The Achievement Group.

Bloch, D.P., & Richmond, L.J., eds. (1997). Connections between spirit and work in career development: New approaches and practical perspectives. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black.

Block, D.P., & Richmond, L.J. (1998). Soul work: Finding the work you love, loving the work you have. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black.

Bridges, W. (1991). Managing transitions: Making the most of change. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Cappon, D. & Christensen, J.R. (2003). Six Legs Jazz Club: A journey to uncovering your best life. Carp, ON, Canada: Creative Bound International.

Noer, D.W. (1993). Healing the wounds: Overcoming the trauma of layoffs and revitalizing downsized organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Palmer, P.J. (2000). Let your life speak: Listening for the voice of vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Pirsig, R.M. (1984). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance: An inquiry into values. New York: William Morrow.