So What Now: Responding to Our Calling

For where the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway

Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in the darkness.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I meant to write this post this past weekend. But your head (ok, maybe it's just my head) is in an entirely different place after a corporate event.

And then I came to my senses when I read Jory's piece on discounting our innate skills where she also asks, So what now?

My friend, the coach, had told me that during our first session, I'd mentioned the same word over and over--one I don't remember saying at all--storyteller.

"Write that word down," she said. "It will provide you with direction."

When we got off the phone that day I felt inspired. I mulled the word over and liked it. Then I felt a pang of fear--storytelling isn't that marketable. Sure it helped you once you had a career; once you "made it" everyone wanted to hear your stories whether they were good or not, but it was hardly something you saw very often on Craigslist: "Wanted: Compelling Storyteller." - Jory Des Jardins

I believe it's a natural tendency to believe what comes naturally to us is a simple skill that everyone else possesses in droves too. The less we struggled to acquire said skill the more we assume it's so ubiquitous that it's not marketable (a.k.a. nice hobby). The less we struggled to acquire said skill the more we assume it's as ubiquitous as air, for instance. And was it me that actually said (thankfully not aloud at BBS) "the Blogosphere isn’t Rocket Science." In Adrian Trenholm's post "Are Bloggers Really Selling Bottles of Air?" he points to a Johnnie Moore post in April:

I know a lot of bloggers are in what may be a self-imposed poverty trap. They think because this stuff is easy (for them) they shouldn’t charge much for their advice - and nor should anyone else. I wouldn’t agree. The point is blogging is potentially hugely valuable to corporates and if they’re willing to pay someone to make it easy for them, then good luck to whoever is smart enough to get the gig. I hope sometimes it will be me. - Johnnie Moore

(Guilty as charged, Johnnie.) For Jory, the calling is 'storyteller'. Back in 2002, talking to my personal coach, my calling as 'bridge-builder' emerged. "But everyone has capacity to see multiple perspectives," I protested. So I ask you, what is under your nose? What are you taking for granted? (Extra: For some inexplicable reason, I get a trackback today on an old post and note another bridge-builder in the midst.)

There are so many ways to evade our calling it's not funny. Yet we're like iron filings to a magnet. We can't resist...forever.

After that, I realized that there is a universe of ways to be a bridge-builder, though. Or a storyteller. It's absolutely crucial to ground us; but that's not enough to run with.

So now what?

In The Diamond Cutter (I love this book), Michael Roach recounts his weekly practice of getting out of the rut of a fire-fighting corporate mind-set: "Tsam in Tibetan means "border" or "dividing line" and the word is used to describe the art of getting away from your work every once in a while - going off somewhere else and, in a sense, drawing a circle around yourself where you can sit quietly and think for a bit."

Besides his inspirational course-correcting Weekly Circle on Wednesdays, Roach talks about a yearly retreat or "another kind of Circle that was really one of my greatest secret weapons throughout my entire career as a vice president at Andin. There is no more powerful way to penetrate deeply into the future of your business career, no more powerful way to make the major leaps in your business..."

Roach got away somewhere quiet - a cabin in the forest or the shore at off-season - for two weeks a year. He calls it his Forest Circle.  I call it my Dwelve incubation period a.k.a. an 'advance' (advance as it's not about retreating, it's about moving forward). The Dwelve is remarkably similar but shorter, more concentrated.

I did a Dwelve this past April. And still that's not even enough.

Later, after you go back to the express train of your home and work life, some of the life and business decisions you made in the Circle will seem unrealistic, even naive. Don't believe it. This is how the vision born of silence looks to a mind that has gone back to the noise. The whole point of the Forest Circle is to return ready to create a new world, and new worlds are not built without a little risk and courage. - Geshe Michael Roach, The Diamond Cutter

Wow, those words pierce. That explains why I postpone executing ideas from this April.

So what now? I let the magnet works it's magic. I do exactly what I planned to do in April.

Bonus: Maslow talks about responding to one's vocation, or to a calling. He interviewed tons of self-actualized individuals, and he says:

I hesitate to call this simply purposefulness" because that may imply that it happens only out of will, purpose, decision, or calculation [or brute force!], and doesn't give enough weight to the subjective feeling of being swept along, of willing and eager surrender, or yielding to fate and happily embracing it at the same time. Ideally, one also discovers one's fate; it is not only made or constructed or decided upon. It is recognized as if one had been unwittingly waiting for it. Perhaps the better phrase would be "Spinozistic" or "Taoistic" choice or decision or purpose - or even will.

The best way to communicate these feelings to someone who doesn't intuitively, directly understand them is to use as a model "falling in love." This is clearly different from doing one's duty, or doing what is sensible or logical. And clearly also "will," if mentioned at all, is used in a very special sense. And when two people love each other fully, then each one knows what it feels like to be magnet and what it feels like to be iron filings, and what it feels like to be both simultaneously. - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow

Credits: Flickr photo by drift-words

Comments

[nellie lide]

As always - your words help. We're all searching - and you give me hope. Thanks. Nellie

[Elisa Camahort]

This reminds me of part of our conversation last month in the car...my theory that bloggers are like actors and make such a stink about loving what they do that they de-value it...when really it's about strategy, communications, customer care and so much more, depending on the blog. And that has real value in real markets.