Q&A: How Do I Find My Calling in Life?

Dear Jennifer: I’m feeling very stuck and can’t find any joy in my life. Everything I am doing seems to have no purpose and I feel that I should be doing something else. How do I know what my calling is and what can I do to bring more joy into my life?

Jennifer’s Answer:  This is such a good question and one that arises when we are completing one aspect of our life and ready to start on another one. You feel stuck because what you have created holds no more energy for you, so it’s hard to get motivated to do anything because you do not get the same results in terms of how you feel about yourself and your life, with things that do not hold any energy for you.

There is much value in being stuck and unmotivated because it keeps you from constantly moving forward, trying new ways to be happy or feel like you are expressing your life purpose.  What we don’t realize is we always live our life purpose in each moment and your life purpose is changing (and that happens many times during our lifetime) so you need to align with a new purpose but more importantly, a new way of being. What you have done until now is not bringing you joy, so you are ready for something else. The key to finding this is not in doing more, but in being more and doing less.

While it feels like you should be doing something, even if you don’t feel like it, trying to take action in this situation only makes you feel worse. You force yourself to do something, you aren’t happy with the result, you feel more stuck and you try something else and the cycle continues. Take a breath and go within. Ask yourself what would make you happy, what do you want now, take stock of how far you have come, what you have done and be open to the expression of a new aspect of yourself. What do you now have the courage to consider as a possibility for your life that you didn’t have before? Is there a dream or vision for your life that you hold deep within your heart, that has called you from time to time but you have never had the courage to acknowledge it? Perhaps it is now time to allow it to emerge.

We think that the worst feeling is being stuck but it’s even worse to be unhappy, confused, to feel like we aren’t doing what we need to do or not using our gifts in the best way possible. Your ‘calling’ is what calls you, from your heart, to do in your life. Sometimes it is something that takes a great deal of courage to allow because it takes us way out of our comfort zone. So while you are ‘stuck’, get creative with your thoughts and start exploring some options. If you could do anything right now, what would it be? That’s your calling, it is what your heart and soul are asking you to do with your life and when you are ready to ask that question is when you are also ready to begin to explore that option. And when you do you will no longer feel stuck or confused, until the next time you have reached the end of that potential and it’s time to start something new again.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Jennifer Hoffman. All rights reserved.  You may quote, translate, reprint or refer to this message if you mention the author name and include a working link to http://enlighteninglife.com