Blog

When Your Calling Finds You, Remember to Say Yes

Yes to CallingThere was a time when I longed to find my calling. I felt like I was missing a part of myself that I’d never touched, felt, or seen, but it was something so important that I couldn’t stop looking for it. And, I looked everywhere: in the words of self-help gurus, in the lines of poems, in astrology and tarot card readings, in personality tests, and in talks with my closest friends.

It turns out I was so busy scouting around for my calling that it couldn’t find me. When I slowed down a bit and sat with what was happening in and around me, there it was.

A former colleague of mine had gone on to study life coaching and was in the process of getting certified. She needed to have a few pro bono clients to complete her program and wanted to know if I would let her coach me.

I had no idea what I was in for. The goals I initially wanted to work on became unimportant. Life coaching was calling to me. I had a thousand reasons to say no to it, but the one resounding, inexplicable “yes” spoke the loudest.

In 2002 I signed up for a certification course, moved from my one bedroom apartment into a two bedroom so I’d have room for an office, and left my full time social work job at the end of March, 2003.

The calling was powerful and it fueled me through some pretty scary times. I kept saying yes to it even when I didn’t know how.

The Feeling of Wanting Something

 
People started coming to me to find their callings, and I obliged them, guiding them on a journey inward. Oftentimes we had to start with the basics of desire. I’d ask, “How do you know when you want something?” Many would say that they knew what they didn’t want (and how that felt), but weren’t sure at all about their desires.

I invited them to pay attention to anything and everything they were drawn to during the course of a day, to pause at the dozens of small choice points where they said “yes” to one thing and “no” to another: picking out their clothes in the morning, choosing which routes to take on their commute, deciding what to eat for lunch, which friend to call, what movie to see, etc.

In this way, I reintroduced them to their most basic yearnings and preferences, and most importantly, I helped them connect with the feeling of saying yes to those choices.

To want something, to say “yes, please,” and then to have it … what could be more satisfying?

This. Just Because.

 
From there, we would surface bigger, deeper desires. Sometimes the wanting would be squashed by feelings of unworthiness. “Who am I to … ?” Or, “I can’t possibly have this. It’s too much.” I encouraged them to stay in the place of wanting first. No “yes, but,” just “yes.”

It’s not easy. Tears flow because it’s a sacred thing to hold your desires cupped in your hands, breathing them in and placing them gently over your heart and onto your belly.

We are unaccustomed to this form of self-love.

A calling isn’t something you quest after and pine for. It’s a turning toward the self in the most loving of actions, saying yes to a preference or a yearning just because.

Big and small, callings motion to us all the time, speaking our truth. “This,” they say. “This is what you want. This feels like home. This makes you feel alive. This reminds you of who you are and why you are here. This. Just because.”

………………………………………………………….

DEBBIE LACY is the author and creator of Ready, Set, Manifest!™, a paradigm and set of skills that helps people get from where they are to where they want to be. Debbie’s private Facebook group is a place where people can get tools and support for the “in-between” times in life.