A Quick Tip for Finding Your Calling

Do you want to maximize your personal effectiveness? If you do, you need to find your calling. You need to find something that resonates with your heart. Why? Because doing something you believe in will boost your effectiveness.

How do you know that you have found your calling? There is a good answer in How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban:

It’s really easy to know if you are in the right job. If it matters how much you get paid, you are not in a job you really love.

If you love what you do so much that you are willing to continue to live like a student in order to be able to stay in the job, you have found your calling.

I completely agree. A good example is John Carmack (the creator of many PC games). In Masters of Doom, the author wrote this about Carmack:

He was doing what he had always wanted to do: code games… If he could be here working on games with enough money for food and shelter, that was good enough for him.

It sounds just like what Cuban wrote above, doesn’t it? John Carmack is a person who had found his calling.

How do you find your calling?

The short answer is this: experiment. Try new things. Expose yourself to new experiences. Do side projects. The fact is, you might not realize that you love something until you try it.

When you find your calling, you will know it. As Steve Jobs once said:

You’ve got to find what you love… 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.

9 Comments

  1. The world revolves around money, so considering pay into the equation does NOT necessarily equate to being at the wrong job. Your advice can make people slack at their jobs, and miss out on the rewards of the passion that is created when doing a job well. Getting good in a field sometimes has to happen FIRST, and then the passion will follow. Whether you are rich or poor, it’s good to have money.

  2. Thanks for this insightful post. I am confident that finally I have found my calling. It took me some time and lots of money and it was a long journey but finally I am home. thanks for the confirmation.

  3. Thanks for sharing your wisdom, Donald!

    It took me some time to realize that you can only find your calling by experimenting. Just searching for it alone doesn’t work. Which is, unfortunately, what many people do.

    Like you said in your article, when you find it, everything else will not matter anymore. How much you get paid included. I’ve just left my position as VP of growth in a Startup to follow my calling, and I am now so happy that I had the courage to do that.

    By the way, I think that the idea of experimenting shouldn’t stop there. There’s so much you can learn about yourself and improve your life if you acquire this kind of mindset.

    Thanks again for this great post!
    Gianni

    • Congratulations for taking the step, Gianni! I know that’s not easy to do, but you did it.

      I agree with you about experimenting. You can use it to improve your life in many different ways.

  4. Wow, this is a greate article, at almost 30 , i seriously have to find what am really good at.

  5. Finding your purpose is so powerful. What people need to understand is that it comes at different times in their lives. Purpose is found when everything in your life makes sense.

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