(I had to jump on the bandwagon and write one of these “20/20 vision” posts; I hope you will forgive me.)
I once had 20/20 vision in both eyes; a degenerative disorder in my right eye quickly reduced my vision to around 20/80. With glasses, I am able to see at approximately 20/40.
Speaking metaphorically, my 20/40 vision will probably serve me better than 20/20 ever would. Here’s why:
I could make all sorts of plans for 2020, and if I achieved them, you might consider me quite successful. But how would we truly know?
If I only look to the end of 2020, all that I accomplish this year might take me in the wrong direction. Only by looking further out, to 2040 and beyond, can I truly know if what I accomplish this year will matter long-term.
I have to determine what I want said about me on my 50th birthday, not my 30th. What will be important to me in 20 years? What are my principles and values I wish to live by? What is my mission? What achievements and contributions do I wish to have and make? If I die at 50, what do I want said about me at my funeral?
Having that 2020 vision is great; we should all strive to accomplish extraordinary things this year. Just make sure that you look out far enough, so that what you accomplish this year has meaning in 2040 and beyond.
Happy New Year, all.
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This may sound like I’m trying to get you to go crush it at the gym, but I am not.
Whatever you feel called to do, however you feel called to do it, it will not happen unless you show up and do the work.
That may mean writing blog posts every single day whether or not the muse speaks to you. It may mean coaching an employee even if it isn’t a requirement of your job. It might mean practicing your instrument or drawing a quick sketch, even if you don’t feel inspired or if you’ve drawn something like it ten times before.
Showing up, getting your idea out into the world, helping just one other person simply by being there…it isn’t just good for you – it’s the right thing to do.
You never know when your work will get noticed; you just have to keep producing.
I had a conversation yesterday with my cousin, Erin, in which we discussed curiosity and the peculiar inclinations each one of us possesses.
I believe Robert Greene needs to be quoted at length here:
“[We each have] a deep and powerful inclination toward a particular subject.
This inclination is a reflection of a person’s uniqueness…it is a scientific fact that genetically, every one of us is unique; our exact genetic makeup has never happened before and will never be repeated. This uniqueness is revealed to us through the preferences we innately feel for particular activities or subjects of study. Such inclinations can be toward music or mathematics, certain sports or games, solving puzzle-like problems, tinkering and building, or playing with words.”
I vividly remember discovering my own inclination: I was 9 years old, in the library of my elementary school, looking for a book to read. I picked up The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins by Walter Dean Myers and was hooked. I am not exaggerating when I say that that one (seemingly) random book changed the course of my life. I became a voracious reader, taking a deep dive down the rabbit hole of World War II history, attempting to put my hands on any and every book I could on the subject.
By the age of 10, I was reading college-level historical monographs, encouraged by both my parents and my teachers. This interest gradually spread out until I was gorging myself on stories of American history, colonial times, European battlefields, and ancient civilizations.
Why?
Why is it that reading one book propelled me into so an extensive study of a particular field? Why am I so drawn to this subject, and yet I care nothing for sciences (unless I’m looking at them from a historical perspective) or cooking or any other number of subjects? Why am I drawn to history when another person is delighted by math or chemistry? And yet another person is drawn to space, theology; to beauty and hair care; or to art and photography.
I don’t have a true answer to the question. It is simply amusing to me. We can be so alike, and yet each of us seems to have a curiosity, sometimes more than one, which separates us from every other human being that is or ever has been.
All I can think is that we have been uniquely created by God, the universe, the Higher Self, or whichever spiritual ideal in which you believe. We have each been created with a unique curiosity that, if satisfied, if given the opportunity to develop enough, will help us fulfill our purpose on Earth and make it a better place for those curious beings that come after us.
I hope that you will follow your own curiosity, wherever it leads. It is quite possibly the most necessary thing you can do with your life.
How many of us have told someone that she should choose a real major, one that is applicable in today’s job market, rather than pursue something creative like art, music, or literature?
(RAISES HAND)
Why do we do this? It is well-meaning enough, I suppose: we don’t want them to struggle financially, we don’t want them to fail, we don’t want them to get hurt because it is so hard to live as an artist…
Let’s just stop, shall we?
What if the person to whom you gave this advice is actually quite talented as a writer? What if she has spent so much of her free time drawing, painting, and sculpting that she has become a fantastic artist? Do you really feel comfortable telling her that she should go get her MBA, work in middle management, collect her benefits, get the 401(k) match, and just worry about “all that artsy stuff” in her off hours, because she can’t make real money in the arts? Why is that good advice (especially when that last claim is bogus)?
Handle Money. Fail often.
Why don’t we teach her instead? Let’s make sure that we are teaching our children how to handle their finances, how to live on a budget, spend less than they make, save money, make money, and how to avoid debt at all cost (this is the real reason so many of us starve these days). We should most definitely teach her not to go $100,000 in student loan debt for her MFA in painting, but that does not mean we should tell her not to pursue her passion – those are not the same thing.
At the same time, we should also be teaching her to fail and fail often. Have her start trying to sell her art online. That doesn’t work? Should we tell her that she should quit and go get a real job? No! You don’t tell a child to stop trying to ride a bike because she fell off and scraped her knee; you tell her to get up and encourage her to try again.
Do the same thing with your creative child or friend. Encourage her start teaching other people what it is that she knows. She can make online videos of her work so that others can see it and her ideas will spread. Find whatever avenue works for her.
Encourage
There has never been a better time to be an artist than today – the market is wide open, the possibilities are limitless. You can be an artist in anything at which you are talented; it does not have to be a traditional “art”. Let’s focus on teaching our family and friends the right skills they need to survive and thrive – let’s teach creativity, leadership, personal finance, marketing and storytelling. Then let’s send them forth to pursue that which they most truly enjoy.
If we can teach them to handle money well, and to learn and grow from failure, they will all be fine.
What calls you? What pull do you feel in the pit of your stomach when you think about it? What is that something that fires you up, fills you with passion, excites you at the thought of contributing?
Vocation, career, and job are three different things, and vocation is the one on which you must focus first. Your vocation, your calling – that is what will leave its impact on the world.
I have been gifted with an insatiable curiosity all my life which has made me the consummate student, and the best teachers are always lifelong students. My calling, the pull I feel in my stomach, is to leave the world a better, more informed, more educated, and more beautiful place because of the knowledge and wisdom I hope to impart to others. Whenever someone talks about educational reform, or better ways of learning and teaching, or how to truly prepare others for the real world outside of an outdated, industrialized classroom, I feel called to contribute.
You see now that this calling can cover a variety of different careers: teacher, coach, politician, entrepreneur, musician, artist, writer. So many different titles could fulfill this calling as long as I use that career to leave the legacy for which I am striving.
So today, sit for a few minutes and listen to what your life has to say to you and about you. Recognize those moments when you feel truly inspired and truly tuned in to something going on around you or something to which you are listening. Ask yourself what you want to be remembered for when you are gone from the world.
Our choices seem unlimited, the resources at our disposal infinite (at least compared to other countries), and our interests are wide and varied. It’s no wonder so many of us still don’t know what we want to do when we grow up. We have too many choices, too many roads we could take.
I’m slowly coming to the realization that I cannot do it all. The many passions I have, the countless skills I want to learn, the dozens of projects I want to start and complete…there isn’t enough time in the day. My choices are either pick something, or a few things, or stop working and do a dozen things. Even then, I still wouldn’t have time to do everything (and unless one of them made money, I’d have a whole mess of problems to deal with).
At some point we have to start focusing on something. It might be the wrong choice – but you won’t know until you try. It’s that fear, the fear of making the wrong choice, that keeps us paralyzed; it keeps us from making any significant progress. We are so caught up in the future, that if we take this one path, we might fail. We might not enjoy it. Or worse…
We might get so far along the path and succeed that all the other things fall by the wayside. All those other things you wanted to do don’t happen. How horrible!
If you had all the money in the world, or if money was not an issue, what would do all day?
Cats on stacks on stacks!
In the search for a meaningful career, most everyone has been asked the question, “What would you do if money was not a factor in your decision?” I have been wrestling with that question ever since I had to declare a major in college.
For the past year, I have been struggling not to define a career, but to understand my vocation, my calling in life. This question was one I asked of myself over and over again, with rather disappointing results. The answers are always the same: read books, learn new skills such as jiu-jitsu or computer programming, study history, play music, increase my education, spend time exercising…countless other hobbies and passions could be added to this list, so I will not bore you with them. The problem I have with that question is that money is a factor in this sort of decision, so I have never really been able to take money out of the equation.
This idea took on new life for me when somebody added a twist to the question. A friend of mine named Lindsey Strahan, who is a fantastic artist and up-and-coming graphic designer, had this same discussion with me. However, she added something to the question: if money was not an issue, what would you do all day long to help other people? The moment that she asked the question a switch flipped in my brain.
Serving other people is what a person does with his or her calling; we cannot work or exist in a vacuum without others. We live in an interdependent world, to take a word from Dr. Stephen R. Covey and his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Therefore, our callings, and by extension our careers and jobs, must serve other people in some way. I am not saying that we must all be involved in customer service, but to be viable in the market, our ideas and passions must help another person.
With that in mind, I started brainstorming about what I would do all day. I realized that while on the surface all of the ideas I listed above seemed unrelated, they had a common thread weaving through them: I would spend all day learning and researching new things, new ideas, and new passions. My DISC personality profile, my StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment, and every other aptitude or personality test I had ever taken all become much clearer. I already knew my strengths, and I have always known my passions, and so I had a clearer answer than I had ever had before: I am called to be a fountain of knowledge for other people.
This simple statement could be satisfied by so many different careers – I could be a teacher, a professor, a researcher, a librarian, an information broker, a consultant for people who need to learn how to combine this skill with that area…the possibilities are seemingly endless. There is no need to be tied down by a specific job title or role. I now know “who I want to be” instead of “what I want to be,” an idea presented to me in Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work You Love. Now I can make decisions on how I will make money based on my newly refined idea of my own vocation.
I hope that my struggle to answer this seemingly easy question will help others to find their vocation. So I will pose the same question to you, the reader: if money were not an issue, what would you spend your time doing to help other people? Think on that, write it down, and please feel free to let me know. I would love to hear what you’re called to do in this world.
Until next time, keep digging!
P.S. If you would like more help finding your calling, I highly recommend Dan Miller’s book 48 Days to the Work You Love as further reading. One of my college professors referred it to me, and it has radically changed my life! It’s one of the best things I have ever purchased. Also, I really encourage all of you to follow Lindsey Strahan on Instagram @very.lindsey. She is a great artist and a wonderful friend. You will love her work!
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