When your calling comes calling

At some point, while you’re living and working, seeking and feeling, making, giving and being the fabulous Everyday Creative you were born to be, something might happen.

An unexpected impulse to create something else. A subtle yet pervasive desire to shift your focus onto something big. Something that feels foreign yet familiar. Abstract but alluring.

This is when your calling comes calling.

It might come as a whisper or a bang. It might be cryptic or crystal clear. It might arrive as a startling new insight or re-emerge as a long-forgotten memory. Either way, it’s often hard to explain but difficult to ignore.

Perhaps it’s writing a book or starting a new business. It might be changing careers or changing countries. It could be hosting a week-long event, building an underground movement or standing up and taking bold action on something you believe in.

But it’s as scary as it is seductive. As inspiring as it is inconvenient. As compelling as it is way outside your comfort zone.

What is a calling?

A calling differs from the day-to-day responsibilities of your job. It’s not defined by the demands of your boss, or your family, or your clients. And it’s not something you can achieve in an afternoon or a few weeks.

Your calling is a major project, career or lifestyle change that is personally meaningful to you and requires sustained effort to complete.

A calling insists that you alter the way you live, and restructure the way you work in order to give yourself over to it.

It might be something you have no prior experience with and no previous desire for. It might require you to start from scratch or learn a bunch of stuff before you can even begin.

Whatever it is, when it comes (and it always comes) you will be asked — will you follow me?

At that point you have two options …

(Get a pen and circle the one you choose.)

No

Yes

What happens if you say no?

A lot of folks will tell you that when your calling comes calling, you must drop everything immediately. You’ve got to grab it with both hands and follow it with reckless abandon.

Some will say the opposite: that a professional is someone who shows up every day, whether they feel inspired or not. They grind out their creative work or career no matter what.

Contrary to popular advice, I’m here to tell you that if you don’t follow your calling, it’s not the end of the world. The sky won’t fall. You won’t lose all your hair. In fact, nothing much will change at all.

You can keep doing what you’ve been doing, keep living how you’ve been living. Which, of course, means you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.

And maybe that’s enough for you. At least for now.

Our lives are full of duties, commitments and relationships. It’s not always the right time to follow a calling and sometimes the sacrifice or the fallout is too great to make.

However, no matter how noble or legitimate your reasons might be, there are always implications to your refusal.

A calling is a deep universal impulse that burns to be fulfilled. It is impatient in nature and it won’t wait for you. It only cares about manifesting itself in the world in some way. So if you’re not the one who says yes when it calls, it will find someone else.

This is what happens when a few months or years go by and you meet or hear about someone who is doing that very thing that came to you in a dream. Someone else who heeded the call that once came to you.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens? It drives me nuts. I get all jealous, angry and bitter. I look for the ways that they’re failing. Tell myself I could’ve and would’ve done it better. Avoiding at all cost the undisputed truth: that I didn’t.

If, however, you did decide to heed the call. If, despite your reservations, you couldn’t find a good enough reason to say no … things get a whole lot more interesting.

So what happens if you say yes?

When your calling comes calling and you follow it fully, you set in motion a series of events you cannot imagine.

Coincidences and serendipities. Mystic symbols and cryptic signs. Everything you see and everyone you meet will feel as though they’re part of an unfurling story. That they’re all pushing you toward this quest, this moment, this choice.¹

It’s inevitable that your calling will distract you from your daily work. It’ll wake you up in the middle of the night. It’ll cause you to question the very foundation of what you thought your life was for.

And sure, this can be unsettling. But it’s equally thrilling. And with every step you take toward the fulfilment of your big thing, the world takes a hundred toward you.

How to keep saying yes

In the beginning, when you follow your calling, you might feel a little clumsy or way out of your depth. But this is perfectly natural. To start with you might even be too shy to tell anyone about it, fearful that they’ll laugh or warn you of the dangers of such a decision.

• ‘Write a book?’ they’ll say, ‘But you don’t even have a blog!’
• ‘Start your own business?’ they’ll say, ‘And where will you get the money for that?’
• ‘Move to the country?’ they’ll say, ‘And throw away your career? But you worked so hard to get where you are. Are you sure that’s what you want?’

Most of the time they’re just trying to help. Some of the time they’re just projecting their own fears and regrets.

And let’s be honest, we can sound a little crazy when, entirely out of the blue, we start speaking about a vision, a dream or a calling. Something wild and adventurous that is creative or unconventional. Something that requires us to give up, let go of or set fire to what we’ve already built.

So how do you reassure the people around you that you’re not having a mid-life crisis? How do you find a level of confidence when you have no level of competence? How do you keep going when you have no real idea of where you’re even heading?

A calling will re-create you

What we misunderstand about a calling and about building big things is that before you begin you aren’t ready, you’re not equipped and you never will be. At least not if you keep standing there.

The only way you’ll develop the skills necessary to build that big thing is by building that big thing. The only way you become the kind of person who follows that creative calling is by following that creative calling.

You become who you need to become on the journey. Not before and not after. The quest, the outcome and you are all inextricably linked.

And this is the biggest gift of all. You are rebuilt in the process of building your big thing. You are remade in the process of remaking your life. You are reformed in the process of forming the realisation of your dreams.

It’s the making that makes you.

So if you’ve heard the call, found the courage to follow it and you know that you’ll never be prepared but that’s the point ... what next? What else might help you when you’re walking on your way?

I think it’s helpful to remember that a calling is three things:

1. seasonal
2. personal
3. universal.

#1: A calling is seasonal

As you’re building your big thing, you’re going to have wild moments of magic. Bursts of astonishing inspiration. Fits of furious passion and electrifying excitement. Especially in the beginning. But you’ll also have moments of doubt, long plateaus and a lack of drive. There will be roadblocks and setbacks. U-turns and detours. Three steps forward and two steps back.

You might even have to put your big thing on hold. For a few days, a few months or even a few years. Unforeseen circumstances or unavoidable emergencies may require your attention for longer than you’d like.

That’s all part of the process. There is value in putting down the paintbrush, taking an extended break and filling your days with different ways, or different people, or different places.

When you eventually return you’ll have a new perspective on things. New ideas to throw into the mix, new approaches or skills or connections you can use to continue and possibly finish your project.

It’s also worth noting that what you end up with — the finished product of your process — might not look or feel anything like what you originally intended. And that’s also part of the game. I like to think the vision we were given was just the spark we needed to start the fire. But the fire itself changes shape many times over. Every log we place on it adds to the colour, configuration and heat. Even conditions outside our control, like the wind or rain, can influence the size and shape of the fire.

Again, it’s all part of the process.

And, like the seasons we live in, they keep on moving, from one to the next. The bitter cold, the searing heat, the blooming flowers or falling leaves — all temporary, all linked, all beautiful in their own way.

#2: A calling is personal

Another defining characteristic of your calling is that it’s yours. Perhaps the essence of the idea could be adopted by anyone, but the way that you embrace it, the way that you build and become it, is unequivocally yours.

Which reiterates the core theme of this book: that your creative process is itself creative and subjective. That the way you build your big thing will be different from how I would build my big thing.

This is your calling. Everyone’s will look different. Everyone’s will feel different.

Think of your calling like leaving home for the first time. It’s moving to the city and getting your first apartment. It’s wearing what you want to wear and eating what you want to eat.

It’s liberating and terrifying all at once. You can finally do what you want to do, but now you’re entirely responsible for yourself. There’s no-one else to cook you meals, or pick up your stuff, or take you to your uncle’s place for tea.

You have to find your own way there. You have to find your own way everywhere.

It’s the final step in fully realising your creative self.

#3: A calling is universal

Finally, every calling is always one small (or large) part of a bigger story: a shared story that involves every one of us. Every species, landscape, ancestor and soon-to-be-soul that is involved in this marvellous thing we call life.

At the core of every calling is an intention to lift, connect and delight the human spirit. To incite more beauty, meaning, mystery and awe; to invoke more reverence for and connection to the divine.

A calling is almost always about love.

About building something that has a positive impact on the planet.

That’s not to say everything you create has to be about rainbows and lollipops. Or that the projects you design have to be about saving children or planting trees.

But in essence, it’s about being a meaningful contribution to the world. About being a life-affirming force in your family or with your friends. A beacon of hope in your neighbourhood or your workplace. It’s about doing magnificent things.

Perhaps your calling asks you to draw cartoons about the unintended impact of divorce. Or highlight the injustices of the political elite. Perhaps your calling asks you to build safer workplaces for women by hosting vulnerability retreats for men. Or maybe your calling asks you to bridge the racial divide in your neighbourhood by building a community garden in your front yard.²

All of these things are real life examples of Everyday Creatives who felt compelled to do something else, even if they didn’t know how to do it, didn’t know what it would take, didn’t know where to start.

But they did start and the world is better off because of it.

If you’re lucky to ever come face to face with your calling, I hope you take it. For all our sakes. Sure, it won’t be easy, it probably won’t make sense, but the best things never do.