Listening to your "calling"

I believe that each person — if they listen quietly and carefully — knows the challenge that is next for them. 

I refer to these challenges as “callings” — because they feel like something that calls to us. Something that nags at us, begging to be dealt with. 

The word “calling” may sound a bit abstract, but callings don’t necessarily mean a quest to find the fairy elves’ secret orb. Quite the opposite: 

• Sometimes we are called to find clarity. To get clear about the next step in our career, or about what to do in a relationship.
  
  

• Sometimes we are called to build a skill. We need to be better at talking to our partner when we’re stressed without getting angry. Or showing up authentically with our friends. Or managing our team. Or working efficiently.
  
  

• Sometimes a calling is an action we need to take. We’ve been putting off a move, a career change, a break-up, or finally writing that screenplay for too long.
  
  

• And sometimes — most maddeningly— a calling is just a sense that something is “off.” We can describe the symptoms — we’re feeling a little dull, a little uninspired, a little sad — but we don’t know the cause or the solution. And yet, there is a challenge there for us all the same: to understand the problem more intimately, and, later, to take action to resolve it.
  

…

It’s easy to ignore a calling — we can do it for decades. Ignoring has its advantages, of course; callings tend to take time and energy. 

But a calling usually doesn’t go away. It returns when we are quiet and undisturbed. Sometimes it gets louder. Sometimes our life becomes dysfunctional because we’ve been ignoring the calling too long.

It is only by responding to that quiet knowing — of doing what is ours to do — that we can ever hope to experience a bodily sense of rightness. A deep sense that we are on the right path for us.

Which, ultimately, is what I think we all yearn for most.

…

I was so disconnected from my own callings for so long, and my life has been profoundly transformed by listening to them. I’m committed to helping others do the same. I know it sounds a little cheesy, but it’s true: one of my callings in life is to help others become aware of — and answer — their own. 

I currently have openings for two new clients (one spot was just taken!). If you’d like to work with me, learn more + reach out here.

As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.

Katie

---

Sign up for my newsletter to get helpful + encouraging essays like this every Sunday morning. It’s free!

How to get better at knowing what you want for yourself

As a life coach, people come to me with all kinds of difficulties.

My job as a coach isn’t to tell them what to do. Instead, I help them reconnect with their own truth, so they can figure out their own next steps — now and in the future.

A very common tool that I use for that process is emptiness.

I know, I know, “emptiness” doesn’t sound sexy or exciting. But I promise it's crucial to helping yourself out of just about any personal difficulty you find yourself in.

I recorded a video for you – check it out below.

After you watch the video, promise me you’ll take even 60 seconds to do the practice I suggest. Pretty please? I know it’ll help.

As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.

Katie