7 Signs you’re right on track
Number 5 might surprise you! (jk, jk, I’ve always just wanted to mock that asinine clickbait trope). If you’re pursuing new dreams, these signposts might encourage you to keep going!
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If you’re someone who resonates with the experience of ‘having a calling’, I’m leading a workshop online on October 11. It’s free. Get the details and register here.
How you experience your calling, or even identify if you have one, might be different from how I experience mine.
Is it something innate and unchanging, to be sought out, found and realized?
Does it evolve with the seasons of life? Iterating like chapters of a book, each building on the last, hindsight revealing the obvious threads of meaning woven through?
Is it a tap on the shoulder, a revelation, something choosing you? Maybe a push, a pull, an uprising?
Does it come from a force or intelligence wider or greater, a fierce stirring of the heart? Or an accidental and meaningless unfolding?
For me, it comes up behind and through me like a wave.
There’s little choice or deliberation. It’s at once a powerful force and a sense of calm clarity. It might be a breath of a calling, a creative seizure, here and gone before the moon completes her monthly dance.
But usually, the wave catches for several years. I’m old enough now to know the pattern, how to surf it, what to trust. I catch what knocks me off and how to navigate the murky waters of being lost to shadow priorities.
People I’ve worked with have described their experiences with different metaphors.
A hunt for a sacred jewel, Indiana Jones style. Seeking and wrestling through a jungle of obstacles to finally find their thing, which sparkles with sacred relief.
Playing Tetris, trying to flip and fit the pieces of passion, meaning and contribution, hopefully, prayerfully make a living at. Strategizing how to make the vision work within the constraints of the cruel capitalist system.
Leaps from synchronicity to synchronicity, listening, surrendering, paying no mind to form or outcome, unconcerned with definition, letting the mystery lead, the art of their life make itself.
Some people believe a calling is a great purpose bestowed by god. I don’t. I don’t have a problem with that belief, I simply don’t know what I “believe” when it comes to calling. To me, calling isn’t something I believe in, it’s something I experience and attempt to give language to.
It’s something I know through impulse and enactment.
And if we experience a call, a pull, a dream or inclination, a tug that just won’t leave us alone. And if we feel compelled to follow that call, to meet what’s being asked or revealed, to surf the wave that’s come up behind us, there are several signs that you might be right on track.
Often the painful ones throw people for a loop and fill them with doubt, but after decades of working with hundreds of people through these dances, I promise you, they’re good news. Let’s see if any of this resonates with you and I’d love to hear more about your experience in the comments if you’re willing to share.
You feel like you’re dying and being born simultaneously.
The status quo is sucking you dry. The things you’ve built, been or loved lack juice or have stopped working. The parts of yourself that felt so solid and true are giving way and it’s a disorienting identity death. At the same time, the new you, new vision, new possibilities are fresh as baby’s breath, a delectable becoming. The dying might feel too slow or just on time while the becoming is wobbly, and too fragile to trust.
If you ignore or abandon “the call”, the rest of life gets harder.
What you’re called or pulled to pursue, when you fail to prioritize it, other areas of your life feel harder, like a grind or even intolerable. You say you’re not superstitious but you also wonder if there’s an effing curse. These other parts of life might seduce you into believing that now’s not the time to heed the call, that these things need priority and resolution first. And yet, when you turn your attention back to the call, the grip of these urgencies loosen, if only a little.
Imposter syndrome bats you around.
Who are you to, who are you to? This may be the cost of entry to the new dream. You’re stepping into new identities. Before they become embodied, they feel like too big shoes you can’t yet walk in, never mind sashay down the street. Imposter syndrome is not an indicator that you’re inadequate or should stop, it’s a signpost that you’re stretching in important ways, it’s a compass for what to deepen, grow and expand into.
You receive reflections of encouragement and nudges to keep going.
This might be overt and direct encouragement from those around you. It might be more abstract, stories coming into your field that resonate with what you’re up to, openings and possibilities that ease the doubt and fear. Sometimes they’re so quiet, you need to listen in earnest and trust the nudge that you’re onto something. Whenever possible, fan these flames. Consume any crumbs of encouragement as fertilizer for the dream.
You feel slighted, hurt, ignored or discouraged by some people around you.
Moving through portals or undergoing up-levels, however you want to call your rise to meet the call, there will be people who can’t or won’t see that for you. People who are scared or more comfortable with the previous version of you. This is not a sign it’s the wrong path. The trick is discerning what is valuable, constructive feedback to help guide your course and what may be other people’s discomfort, projections, envy or fear.
You feel alive and energized by what’s happening.
There’s an unexpected sense of joy or flow of energy that was blocked or stuck previously. It might be creative flow states you enter, work getting done with unprecedented ease. Or opportunities coming seemingly out of nowhere. People rallying, magnetized and excited about what’s happening, offering to help, opening doors, making introductions. The more energy you pour into these places, people or opportunities, the more comes back to you.
There are parts you just can’t make work within the current model or system.
This might be at a close in, like your family system, your current job or business model. It may be the wider system, like how the heck can you get paid for your art or activate the kind of movement you know is needed to enact the cultural change you envision. You can’t see a way through that’s safe or known. You’re bumping up against the risk of it, facing the things you might have to give up, sacrifice or lose if you leap.
Anyone who tells you that sacrifice or risk isn’t an inevitable part of this is selling you something that probably won’t work. There’s a reason many people don’t have the courage to follow their calling. They’re risky, scary and may not come together the way we hope. Callings are annoying like that, the outcomes or success we long for is never guaranteed, especially within capitalism where the expectation is that everything is commodified and monetized.
Perhaps that’s why the status quo gets so painful, our evolutionary impulse cannot stand the risk of rotting into oblivion, it needs something to make the risks worth it. In my experience, it’s the aliveness that comes from taking a leap of faith and going for the thing that’s the ultimate reward. Not the outcomes, not the accolades, not the success but the sheer aliveness of acting with courage and taking a chance on what stirs deep within.
PS - Do you have a Vision or Calling that won’t leave you alone? I’m running a free ‘Meet Your Calling’ workshop on Friday, October 11th at 9am PST/12pm EST. Register here and come play!