How To Find Your Calling Very Easily Indeed

The only thing we have in this life is time and how we spend it.

Spend it intentionally and “well”, and you’ll have a good life. Spend it unwisely and you are more likely to experience regret as life progresses. I personally believe that it is never too late to make positive change, the growth mindset sees each seemingly “negative” experience as a springboard to learn from this for a better future.

So what is a calling and why bother?

The word calling can have many meanings, and sometimes people my be put off by the even spiritual connotations. I see it as the feeling and knowledge that you are doing something that you are uniquely positioned to do, and impacting the world in a way that you find meaningful. There are a bunch of definitions, but to me it is synonymous with “living my best life”.

So where do I begin?

I love big questions, especially those that you can’t answer standing on one leg. Here are a few of my favourite prompts that are sure to evoke some honest self-reflection:

1. If all of humanity could see you, what would they want you to do?

This question is from Daniel Priestley in a podcast with Ali Abdaal, and I think it’s fantastic. Imagine you are on a broadway stage and the whole world is your crowd watching your every move until this day. Creepiness aside, try and put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what their general consensus would be about how you should live your life. I find this question is great for removing you from your normal first-person perspective, and inject some of that collective intelligence.

2. "Write down your own obituary, and then figure out how to live up to it.. it’s not that complicated" - Warren Buffet

This needs no explanation. This powerful quote from one of the world’s most successful investors can trigger a paradigm shift in any thinking human. Do you imagine yourself on your deathbed saying to your loved ones that you wished you had worked more overtime? Do you imagine that the words “Watched all 8 seasons of Game of Thrones 4 times” on your gravestone? Put your mind forward to the end of your life and live the life that you want to be remembered for.

3. The “Why” ladder

Now that you have identified some of the main areas in your life worth investing in, there is one more thought-experiment that could help you refine your motivations. In "Think Like A Monk", Jay Shetty talk about the “Why Ladder” as a way to figure out exactly what lies behind your biggest desires, with the hope that the more you know what your reasoning is, the less likely you will waste time working towards a “false target”. I’ll explain.

Let's say you decide you really want to be a paediatrician. The idea of treating sick children really appeals to you, and you start the long and arduous journey of applying to medicine, studying thousands of hours, years of residency, fellowship, and many sleepless stressful nights along the way. Congratulations! 15 years later, thousands of dollars in debt, you are now a fully qualified consultant pediatrician.

But what if all those years ago you would have taken a moment to as yourself why you want to be a paediatrician? And then look at your answer and asked yourself why you wanted that? And then followed this train of thought to it's conclusion? you might have learned that what you really wanted was a job that will give you respect along with the opportunity to reduce suffering in children at at time of great stress. After reflection, you may have realised that your flare for creativity and engineering could have achieved these goals in a very different way that may have allowed much more leverage. Perhaps you create a startup whereby you provide an augmented reality experience for inpatient children going to the surgical theatre. This would give you both the respect you desire, and help many more children than you would have as a doctor. This is just a thought experiment, but by asking yourself why over and over, you may discover things about your deepest desires that dramatically change the way you make your decisions.

Two easy ways to check you are on the right track

I like mental models. Anything that reduces my cognitive burden is more than welcome. There are 2 tests you can perform on your current life to will help you determine if what you’re doing is worthwhile.

The first is the fast-forward test (or the skip test). Also taken from Ali Abdaal, When deciding if something you are doing in life is worthwhile (job, hobby, course etc), ask yourself that if you had a button that could fast-forward to the end of it, would you do it? If much of what you do leads to a positive answer to this question, then you’re not on the right track. This is a litmus test to tell if you are living the life you love.

The second idea is the hedgehog concept. I found this is Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” referencing great companies, but originally it is derived from an essay by Isaiah Berlin “The hedgehog and the fox”. The fox would come up with many different plans to attack the fox, but the hedgehog would know just one thing and do it very well - curling up into a spiky ball in defense.

So how do you find your hedgehog?

Take a good look at the path you’ve chosen in life and ask yourself 3 questions:

1. Are you passionate about this?

2. Can you be the best at it?

3. Is it financially feasible (even if not immediately)?
   

If the answer to all 3 questions is yes, this is a good sign that you’re on the right track to find your calling.

That’s all well and good, I hear you say, but I’ve already invested so much time to get to where I am…

It’s easy to realise that change is needed, but far more difficult to implement it. One of the major elements holding you back could be the awareness of the effort it took to get to where you are today, these are called sunk costs.

Psychologically, we don’t want to “waste” our past efforts. In “The psychology of money”, Morgan Housel puts forward that “Sunk costs - anchoring decisions to past efforts that can't be refunded - are a devil in a world where people change over time. They make our future selves prisoners to our past, different, selves. It's the equivalent of a stranger making major life decisions for you.” Being aware of the “Sunk cost fallacy” can give you the courage to write off your previous efforts as a the price paid to get you where you are today. Make peace with the person you are today, and let go.

One last word

Only you know when you are moving in the the right direction. Only you can tell when your days are filled with meaning and you are not just enduring the grind to get to the weekend. Taking the time to occasionally ask yourself difficult questions and write down the answers can help you reveal important facts about yourself, and can be your guiding light in the quest to find your calling.

Let me know if you found your calling or if you're still searching int he comments below.