Living A Summoned Life

There comes a time when the life that you’ve carefully planned and engineered  just isn’t enough. Instead of treading on all the carefully planned and planted stepping stones, you find yourself knee deep in a swamp of uncertainty, plagued by a feeling of stuckness. Even your best strategies seem  to fail at producing the anticipated results. Or sometimes you discover, as you grow and change, that what once fit like a shoe has begun to pinch.

This isn’t a sign that you’re a personal or professional failure. It’s just that life itself is summoning you to respond in new and uncharted ways. When this happens, the listening that is needed so that you can hear what life is telling you could test the patience of a bona fide saint.

While you’re listening, it’s good to know that the next step will indeed become clear…which is more likely if you watch and take a hint from the world around you.

If what is being summoned has to do with your livelihood, pay attention to your concrete situation. You are living in a context: in a specific place and time, facing certain concrete challenges and needs. Look at the specific options you have for a job, a move, training or education. Where do you see the possibility to make a difference or fill a need? To live a life that feels juicy?

Keep in mind that a calling isn’t just about doing–meaning work–but also to ways of being, A summoned life will include both. And that might take some research. So, unless you you’ve been lucky enough to land in the right place at the right time, you might need to keep your day job (or get one) as you follow the strand.   Living into a calling is  a long-term project.

Give yourself time to discover and live into your answers. Ask yourself,

How am I useful to others?

What have people always seemed to want from me?

As a child, what did I find natural and easy to do?

What do I do now that gives me energy? (Both within your job and elsewhere)

In the meantime, live your “calling” in whatever you do. Perhaps it’s being a mother, a friend, a connector in your community. Perhaps it’s volunteering time to do what you enjoy and then share that with others. As you follow your own summons your calling will emerge.

It’s your job to show up. To notice.

Question any uninvestigated thoughts that would diminish your natural enthusiasm as you move into the flow of your own best life.

A life of being AND doing.

Where have you felt a summons into a life that fits for you in your past? Where do you go to experience clarity? Is there a place that clears your mind so that you can see the way? A process? A person that supports this for you? Please share.