Kathy
Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of "Coping". And in today's episode, we continue our discussion of calling and specifically talking about work and the ways that we view it.
Kevin
Yeah, that's right. We all know work is a central part of our lives. We spend a lot of our days, a lot of our weeks and months working, working, working, but not everybody sees work the same way.
Some people view it just as a paycheck, you know, live in that survival job. Others see it as a career. They want to climb that career ladder. And for some it's more of a vocation or a calling.
Kathy
Yeah, that's right. And this is very important to figure out the way that you view your work in order to figure out where you actually want to go with your calling.
Kevin
Exactly. We get a lot of meaning fulfillment in what we do, so it's important that we clarify how do we view our work. Let's get started.
Kathy
So Professor Amy Rizinski has done a lot of research on this topic. She interviewed quite a few folks on this topic and she describes three primary ways in which people view work.
They either view work as a job, that is the paycheck, the money earning job, as a career, which is where you can climb up the ladder, advance. The third way of viewing work is a calling, which points more to meaningful work and fulfilling work.
Kevin
I really love this framework because it helps make a lot of sense out of what leads us to find work, to be able to live, but also why we stay in the jobs that we do. It's all about that mindset, how we view our job.
And for those that view a job as something you do for a paycheck, it's about making ends meet. And many of us have been in that situation, are in that situation now. There's many of us like that, right, Kathy?
Kathy
Yeah, exactly. There's nothing wrong with that. And as we look through the years as to how people viewed their work, for many years, it was just that. It was the nine to five, the steady flow of income, and you worked for one or two jobs your entire lifetime, and it was just a steady paycheck. And if you're still viewing work that way, that's absolutely fine.
I think what happens is, is that there is an issue when you are not viewing work that way, and you want it to be something else, but then you keep going back to this paycheck view of work, but you're actually longing for something else.
Kevin
It's almost like folks that are in a job that is a paycheck and they have a longing to do something more, they get stuck in that job because they need the money to survive
Kathy
Correct.
Kevin
To pay their rent to buy food, gas all of that --
Kevin
Right.
Kathy
And so what I hear you saying is that the mindset of I need this paycheck is what holds us back from doing something more.
Kathy
Correct. And I would say too, as I think about this and talk with people, I think our world has shifted and changed so much that there used to be other areas in our society and our everyday lives where we found meaning and purpose, whether that was through communities, through faith or doing service to others.
Our society has changed and it's become very more isolated. And as that's happened, people are actually looking for things that they do every single day, like they spend most of their time doing. I think that's probably, if I were to guess, driven up the desire for there to be more purpose and meaning in everything you do every single day.
Kevin
Yeah. Absolutely.
Kathy
So, have you ever experienced this paycheck mentality regarding your work?
Kevin
Uh, yes. Yeah, I think the time where this was the strongest for me was when I had just moved to Los Angeles to pursue my acting career and was recognizing that I couldn't live off of auditioning that wasn't paying any money and needed to figure out how to make ends meet. So I got a job at a pizza parlor in West Hollywood and worked there and, uh, recognized that that steady flow of income was really nice.
And I was able to afford rent and groceries, but then I was stuck just working and making money and then trying to figure out how I was going to balance that with trying to build more of an acting career. And it was just, um, like you said, a mindset of like, I need this and I have to keep doing this. And it becomes a priority that starts to interfere with the goals that I have in my life. But really what was the turning point for me was in conversation with you, uh, encouraging me to go back to school to get my degree. And what that did was helped me to move out of the paycheck being the thing that's going to help me to move forward and recognize that for me, education was that step up and was that pathway forward.
Kathy
I think what's most important with this conversation is to identify what your mindset is, if you are viewing your job as a paycheck type job, and that's what you want for your life. What I see, like I said, is the conflict between not wanting to have a survival mindset and a survival life, wanting a meaningful life, but continuing to settle for survival jobs.
And that's what we talk about in Bill Burnett's “Designing Your Life” book, is this conflict between work view and life view. So it's just really important to identify where you are and what you want.
Kevin
And you know, I think the other part of this to mention is that when your view of your work is your paycheck this the center of your focus is money and money can come and go it can increase it can decrease, but it's not really the thing that gives us a sense of meaning and purpose and identity. If anything and give us a false sense of identity false sense of security and that's really the trouble, right, is that when we have a paycheck coming in and that remains the center of our focus we are focusing on that not on the people the places, the projects that we care about and the gifts that we have
Kathy
And so that leads us to our second mindset, which is viewing our work in the world as a career, wanting to move up the ladder, to advance, to be constantly looking for the next vocational goal.
Kevin
Exactly. This one resonates with me a lot. A career is about that advancement, the success, making progress over time.
Those of us that fit into a category like this often set long term goals and work hard to move up in their field and try to get certification in that field, whatever it might be. I resonate with this because I always like having a goal. I always like striving for the next thing and to improve upon what I've already done and always to be having that forward motion. In what way does this resonate with you, Kathy? Do you find that career advancement is something that you've ever sought in your life?
Kathy
For me personally, I would say on the front end of my vocation and calling, it was important to set up my education. So I've advanced pretty far along in education with higher degrees. I have a master's in English education, and that was important for me to get early on before I actually started my career. And that was actually what jump-started my ability to get a career, because as the story goes I had a bachelor's degree just in English, and the principal at the school was going to hire me, said, "You need to go back and get education so that we could actually hire you in this teaching job." So that's how it all started for me.
I went back and got that degree to be able to secure that first stable job that I had for myself. After about 15 years in the education field, I was feeling like there was something more that I had actually climbed the top of where I wanted to be in terms of education as a teacher, had a lot of success, had been in three different schools, had even taught on the college level. I had basically felt like I had maxed out and maximized that, but I felt like there was something missing, something that could be greater for the work that I was called to do in the world. And that's what led me to figure out the next steps toward more of my calling. And I would say that I was called to be a teacher. It just, again, like I said, it began to evolve into something that was a greater fit for my gifts. And also to see the results being a lot more fruitful, making more of a difference and more of an impact is what I desired at the end of my time in the classroom.
Kevin
What you're describing is exactly what a calling is and what this view of work and how this view of work is set apart from the other two views of work.
And that's calling; that when work feels deeply meaningful and fulfilling in our lives, that we have such a purpose and a connection to the work that we're doing, that it becomes part of our identity, how we see ourselves and the using of our natural gifts in the world.
Kathy
Yes, exactly. When we go back to the origins of the word vocation, it comes from the Latin vocatio, which means a call, or a summons, or an invitation. It's related to words like voice and invoke.
Kevin
That's fascinating. I actually did not know that.
And I guess so. That means that like historically people that associated a calling to their work, it was in sort of like a religious nature because of that idea of a voice or being called to do something like an external voice or a drawing you to something. And it could be somewhat of a religious experience to have a sense of what your calling is and to have that voice speak whether inside of you or outside of you can be very life-changing, wouldn't you say?
Kathy
Yeah, absolutely. And it was always just often for people in the clergy that had a calling. It's only I would say in the last maybe 25 years that we have come to understand that if it comes from the word voice, then aren't we all trying to find our voice through our work? Isn't that what we're trying to do is figure out how our identity is tied to the things that we do every day and how we serve the world?
And so I know that's easier said than done. Many people struggle to find their calling even if they long for it. And they struggle basically to find their voice is how I would rephrase that.
Kevin
That's so true. I love that distinction. I love the connection between hearing a voice, calling us, and in that process, finding our own voice. That's really good.
But I wonder, as a life coach, how can someone begin to discover their vocation and to find their voice to know what their calling is? How do you help people discover that?
Kathy
I would say the first thing that I often suggest to people who are looking for their calling is to push the pause button on their life in some fashion. You have to be willing to get off that hamster wheel of the grind, the nine to five, the survival, to pause to have a conversation, to get a coach, to have reflection. You have to be willing to just stop what you're actually doing, to listen. I know in our last podcast on calling, we used Parker Palmer, and what he says, remember, is that you have to listen to what your life is telling you. So the only way we can do that is if we have some space, some margin, some breathing room. That would be the first thing I would say.
If you're willing to push the pause button to stop, to listen to yourself, and to look at the clues of your life, then you might be ready to search for your calling.
Kevin
I love your advice about slowing down, taking time to pause. I guess my biggest advice is what I hear on both ends of the extreme. On one extreme, I hear people say, "I'm not happy with my life. I'm not living out my calling. I need to quit everything I'm doing and go do something entirely different." I don't know if that's always true.
I think when it comes to calling, it's more of a journey and a path, and it happens one yes at a time. And so if you just take one step from where your current situation is rather than abandoning everything that you're currently doing, you'll find yourself heading in the right direction. And then on the other end of the extreme, somebody's saying, "I can't change anything. I'm stuck because I can't afford to go live my dreams. I have these responsibilities. I am not able to do the things I want to do because I'm stuck doing these things and I can't stop doing those things." And so my encouragement for those that are stuck and feeling like they can't make any changes, take up some hobbies of the things that you really love and start dabbling in that and then see what comes of that. Start doing the things that you enjoy doing. Not only is that a good self-care practice, but it may evolve into a type of ministry or a type of caring for other people that is an offshoot of caring for yourself.
Kathy
Yeah, that's great. I think having the trying mindset is very beneficial because I like this quote from Mel Robbins that she says, "being stuck is actually just a signal. It's a signal that we're not growing."
Kevin
Mmm.
Kathy
So we have a negative mindset about being stuck, but to get unstuck, you just have to try something else. Think about all the inventors and people who do prototypes for things, like they hit the wall, they just wake up the next morning and say, "oh, I need to try something else." So to have that designer mindset of just keep trying is a way that you can push forward and move forward through that feeling that you're not growing and that you're stuck.
Kevin
Such good wisdom there. And you and I both can attest to the fact that the road to finding your calling and answering that call is a long one and it can be a difficult one.
And so to end our episode today, we'll close with some wisdom from Kate Bowler. This is "A Blessing for When the Road is Long". So whatever you may be coping with, this blessing is for you.
Kathy
"Blessing for When the Road is Long", by Kate Bowler.
Kathy
Oh God, I could not have imagined that this road could be so long and so hard. Yet here I am, worn out, body and soul. Oh God, I don't know what to do.
Help me. The Lord says, "Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths, which is the good way, and walk in it." Jeremiah 6:16. Blessed are we, the weak who must set aside what we are carrying and begin to feel only the weight of our own being. It is enough for now.
Oh God, blessed are we who cannot go on, but stand and look and ask, which is the good way to walk in. Blessed are we who listen for the voice that is both thunder and softest rain that warms and quickens. Blessed are we at the point of utter stillness that becomes an empty space for that voice to echo and build and resound until it becomes a place to rest and receive and to be made whole. And how blessed we are who are astonished to find that God's strength begins at the very point when ours stops.
"Fear not, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you." Isaiah 41:10.
