become your inspiration

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

As someone told once, it´s is not more vacation we need – it is more vocation. Do you agree? Lately I received some questions on how to find vocation in life? Every day I see people that tell me, “you are so happy, if you found what you like and you do what you love”. From the other hand, I am surrounded by people who found their vocation and passion in life as well, they are the ones who inspire me to continue with all my projects that I have in my mind.

How do they know that they found their vocation? Last week one of my friend, successful blogger and marketing specialist said  – “I am on vacations now and my husband cannot believe how much time I spend in front of the screen, but for me it’s not a work, I really enjoy doing this, plus when I see that it makes sense to someone and changes their lives this inspires me even more!” These are the comments from my friends and public speaking club mates that makes me wonder how did they find their vocation? How did I find mines?

There is no unique answer here. Some of us  since the very childhood we knew what we want to do in life and we continue to pursue this during all our lives. However what about those who do not know this? I hear a lot – “Jelena, I don’t know what I love, I don’t know my vocation” or this “Thanks God it’s Friday”. Nooo! What about the rest of your days? Really? We live the entire week just to wait for Friday? Sounds very sad. And even more sad is when you constantly hear this.

In my personal experience I clearly remember, that once I started asking myself what I really like doing, what makes me feel complete and when I dedicated some time to answer these questions, when I started LISTENING to myself, is when I started with my blog, with my coach courses and public speaking experience.

And I know you will think that it’s easy to say, however its possible to find out!

I started to investigate whether we can have any magic exercise that would help us to answer this question, and I have found one for you!

Professor Ofer Zur from Zur Institute offers some guidelines on this. Following are three sections that will, hopefully, guide you in your search for your passion in life. Please make sure that you spend some time to think about this, to write it down if needed.

 

The below Exercise consists of asking yourself important questions that are divided into 3 sets.

• Set A: will help you explore the uniqueness of your gifts, skills or talents.

Level 1: Identify areas (skills/talents/gifts) at which you  are better than most people or are much above average.

Level 2: Identify areas in which you are average or below and many people are more talented or more effective than you.

Level 3: Identify areas in which you are pretty lousy and much below average.

• Set B: will take the quest for your calling to the next level by identifying what constitutes a vocation: gifts, joy, discipline, and needs.

Level 1: What kinds of tasks or activities give you joy, delight, or pleasure? What do you like to do a lot? It is related to the question of what you would do if you had all the money, time, health, and love you need.

Level 2: In which areas are you very disciplined? With what type of activities are you consistent and methodical and do not procrastinate or regularly avoid?

Level 3: What kinds of tasks or activities deplete or bore you? What do you hate to do?

Level 4: What activities do you regularly avoid, delay or procrastinate doing? In what areas are you not disciplined?

• Set C: will help you evaluate your current situation and brainstorm about what changes you can institute with relative ease in order to work in a more satisfying way.

Take some time to figure out how you can make changes so that you spend more time and energy at the higher levels (1 & 2) and as little as possible at the lower ones (3 & 4). While spending some time even at level #4 is inevitable in most situations, spending most of your life at level #4 can breed in one deep dissatisfaction, bitterness and a sense of a wasted life. The changes may take the form of transforming how you work or the way you spend your free time, or they may require you to reshuffle your priorities or allocate time differently for different aspects of your life.

 

As a famous writer of “Eat, Pray, Love”, Elizabeth Gilbert once said: “Look, I don’t know where you rightfully live, but I know that there’s something in this world that you love more than you love yourself. Something worthy. The only trick is that you’ve got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most, and then build your house right on top of it and don’t budge from it. And if you should someday, somehow get vaulted out of your home by either great failure or great success, then your job is to fight your way back to that home and performing with diligence and devotion and respect the task is that love is calling forth from you next. You just do that, and keep doing that again and again and again, and I can absolutely promise you, from long personal experience in every direction, I can assure you that it’s all going to be okay.”

Elizabeth’s Gilbert book was rejected during a long time, before it was published.

As always, let me know your thought and if you found useful the exercise?

With love,

Jelena