Simple Money: A No-Nonsense Guide to Personal Finance - Tim Maurer (2016)

Part I. PLANNING FOR LIFE

Chapter 4. CALLING: Finding Life-Giving Work

WHY do I need to read this chapter?

“I was made to do this.” The moment when you see your innate gifts align with your passion for something—anything—it can send chills down your spine. Whether it’s on the baseball field, in the classroom, at a drafting table, in the kitchen, behind the wheel, at a computer, in front of a crowd, or in the boardroom, the thrill is undeniable. Most people get glimpses of these moments, but for too many of us, it’s merely a fleeting glance.

We need not rely on happenstance to enjoy these moments. Indeed, life can and should be lived in pursuit of them. There is, however, a method to this pursuit.

You’ve wrestled with Enough and examined your financial tendencies in chapter 1. You’ve explored your values and stated your priorities in chapter 2. You’ve created a framework for establishing goals in chapter 3. The synthesis of these three achievements—infused with the revelation that comes from benchmark life experiences—leads us to our calling. It may not necessarily be found in our work, but calling and career are an excellent marriage that often leads to personal fulfillment and financial prosperity.

Finding Your Calling

What is it that drives a person, even if it happens to be in pursuit of a goal with little probability of coming to fruition? For my brother, Jon, a musician, it’s an easy decision. It’s almost as if he doesn’t have a choice. For him, music isn’t just a job. It’s part of who he is. It’s a vocation—his calling. To anyone who sees him perform, this becomes obvious.

Like many artists, he never tires of the work. This is the foremost sign that you are living out your calling. My brother labors, often to the point of physical exhaustion. But his effort itself is rewarding and life-giving. Whether he’s pounding out a new song in his basement, playing at a bar until 2:00 a.m., or performing for thousands under the spotlight, the labor is its own reward.

Artists notoriously struggle to make ends meet financially, but few of them question their calling. That type of clarity is more of a challenge for the rest of us, whether our collar is white or blue. For most, punching the time clock or donning a lab coat may pay the bills, but it doesn’t look or feel like this elusive concept of calling.

In his book The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, Os Guinness, the great-great-great-grandson of legendary brewer Arthur Guinness, says our calling “is ‘the ultimate why’ for living, the highest source of purpose in human existence.”1

As much as I enjoy Guinness’s poetic description (and a pint of his forefathers’ handiwork), I fear that its somewhat grandiose implications may intimidate the skeptics and doubters among us. So let’s discern your calling through another simple set of steps.

What It Is

An activity, role, or pursuit might be your calling if the following are true:

1. You can say without hesitation, “I love doing this.”

2. You’re good at it.

3. It’s life-giving—the activity generally doesn’t tire you spiritually.

4. The activity is consistent with your values.

5. Your goals are complementary to your calling.

6. You’ve received recognition from multiple sources that this is “your thing.”

7. It benefits others.

These first three points generally work together. When you love doing something, you’re likely to do it as often as possible, allowing proficiency to become a natural by-product. When you love something and, in addition, you’re good at it, the activity is also often life-giving. You labor but do not grow weary. You’re in “the zone.”

When you’re good at doing something that is life-giving to you, the chances are favorable that the practice is born of your values and complementary to your life goals, but it’s a great cross-check to gauge consistency at this stage of the process.

It can be difficult to objectively recognize our greatest talents because many of us, depending on our personalities or life experiences, magnify or discount our inherent strengths. It can be helpful in determining our calling, therefore, when others recognize it for us. “Wow! You’re really a natural at [insert activity].” And just to ensure the compliment is more than an attempt by someone to motivate us into an action that will benefit them, it’s best to have multiple qualified sources corroborate their opinion. Listen to unsolicited commendations from people who don’t have a stake in your chosen path.

Finally, while most of the discernment process involves self-analysis, the very nature of a calling is that it’s used for the benefit of others. We are called to something and for someone (or many).

What It’s Not

Another great way to determine your calling is by acknowledging what it is not. A mentor of mine once admonished me for pursuing too many activities at once. Saying yes to everything had limited my ability to do the most good with the limited amount of time and energy at my disposal.

My mentor recommended a very simple exercise that I still use to this day. On a blank sheet of paper, he drew a line down the middle. At the top of the left-hand column, he wrote the phrase “Life-Giving.” On the right column, he wrote “Life-Taking.”

Then he had me pick a side on which to write down each of the numerous roles and obligations I had assumed were all somehow part of my calling. That I was capable of fulfilling any of these roles was beside the point. Instead, if there was anything I’d said yes to that seemed to slow the clock and sap my energy, it should likely be placed in the “Life-Taking” column. Those items were probably not part of my calling and should be the first on the chopping block when it came to seeking out a more livable life.

This is not to suggest, of course, that you simply shouldn’t do anything that you’d prefer not to do in work or life. If you feel called to be a medical doctor, you’re going to have a tough time living out your calling if you categorize scientific reading as a life-taking exercise. Indeed, in pursuit of our life-giving calling, most of us must labor through days, months, or even years of life-taking work on the path to fully living it.

Is a Calling Always a Job?

Speaking of work, the entire notion of a calling often seems synonymous with our formal work—our profession or our job. Is that the only option? No, I don’t believe so.

While it may be ideal to find our calling in the primary way most of us spend our waking hours as adults—at our job—it’s not a necessity. In fact, necessity requires many people to take any available work to pay the bills. They instead find their calling elsewhere, perhaps through coaching sports, heading up the PTA, or teaching Sunday school.

I know construction workers and plumbers who’ve found their calling in their day jobs, but I also know lawyers and doctors whose callings are outside of their well-established professions.

Can a Calling Change?

Michael Evans, the son of a proudly Irish member of the Chicago Fire Department, applied his entrepreneurial energies initially in his calling as a Chicago Mercantile Exchange commodities trader. You know, those guys who run around yelling at people all day, predicting the price direction of coffee beans and oranges? “Most days,” Michael told me, “I returned home to my family tired and happy.”

But the advance of global electronic trading predicted the end of traditional floor trading in the early 2000s. At the same time, an experience in a “safe” investment gone bad led Evans to serve as a lead plaintiff in a class-action suit against those responsible for what amounted to a collapsed Ponzi scheme. Michael began to envision Calling 2.0 in the form of a company he would start, offering personal financial guidance to individuals and families to help them avoid the pitfalls of investing that he’s seen at very close range.

“Making the leap from a one-man show to forming—and being formed by—a personal wealth support team has been one of the most rewarding personal makeovers ever,” said Evans. “It’s been a little like the television show Survivor in reverse, where I’ve discovered that getting voted off my own little island was actually the best thing that could have happened for me and my family.”

Yes, a calling can change. Sometimes it may even be forced upon us. But we must be careful not to confuse a shift in calling with resistance—the natural fear that seems to creep into those moments when we’re on the precipice of stepping out boldly into our calling.

Does Everyone Have a Calling?

Which leaves us with the most challenging question in this vein: Does everyone have a calling, or is it for only a select few?

I believe with all of my heart that there is a calling out there for each of us, a lesson I learned the hard way.

In the summer of 1994, I was the stereotypical eighteen-year-old punk kid with a chip on his shoulder and a singular value, goal, and calling all wrapped into one—me, myself, and I. I was looking for Enough in all the wrong places.

After a day that was not particularly long or hard, basically twirling a whistle and perfecting my tan while working as a lifeguard at a community pool, I spent the evening playing a couple hours of volleyball and engaging in some activities of questionable wisdom.

My girlfriend wisely drove my car back to her parents’ place, where I entered a deep slumber, until I was roused at 2:00 a.m. with this panicked reminder: “If my dad finds you here in the middle of the night, he’ll kill us both!” I groggily sloughed to my 1988 Plymouth Horizon, bedecked with the stickers of classic rock bands, which never made it home that night.

I don’t know exactly where on the road I fell asleep, but the rumble strip in the shoulder awakened me just in time to fully experience my car careening over a steep embankment. After rolling down the hill, the car landed on its wheels, and although I shunned the use of seat belts, I somehow landed back in the driver’s seat.

But all was not well. My right leg was visibly broken and, unbeknownst to me, so was my pelvis. Fearing an explosion—because that’s what happened in all of the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard movies so popular in that era—I scrambled to open the driver’s side door, to no avail.

Over the course of the next four hours, through spans of unconsciousness, I flipped and flopped my way to every door in an unsuccessful attempt to escape. As the car had rolled down the hill, the metal had folded over each door.

Finally, I lay down in the backseat amidst the shattered glass, broken and bloodied, relinquishing my grasp on life.

Shortly after a truck driver spotted my car at dawn, I was awakened by the sound of metal being cut and bent to free me from the vehicle. The last thing I remember from the accident scene, as I was wheeled to the helicopter bound for the University of Maryland’s legendary shock trauma unit, was the sound of a medic alerting his colleagues, “It doesn’t look good—I don’t think this kid’s gonna make it.”

His initial diagnosis would soon be confirmed. After reaching the hospital, my left lung collapsed. When my body began fighting the breathing tubes inserted into my chest, the doctors were forced to induce a life-saving coma, not knowing if or when I’d reemerge.

At one point, the medical staff warned my parents that my chances of living had fallen below 10 percent. Although visitors were not allowed in the intensive care unit, extended family and close friends were now invited to say their goodbyes.

I lived, and it is a testament to one of the best shock trauma units in the country. But it also defied the odds, a reality with which I struggled for more than a decade. It was a long and painful rehabilitation—especially since I ignored physical therapy—but it was the psychological and spiritual implications that plagued me the most.

I couldn’t understand why I had been spared, of all people. I felt I didn’t deserve it, and I practically resented the second chance. I didn’t want to “do something with my life,” and for several years I didn’t.

My behavioral patterns became even more destructive and self-indulgent until one day, six years after the accident, I succumbed to the Reality that never stopped pursuing me—that there is a purpose for each of our lives, even mine.

It’s up to us, however, as to if or how we pursue that purpose. Everybody has a calling, but not everyone finds it.

It’s up to you.

1. The foundation of life planning, created by your values, is lived out in the form of pursuing your goals and culminates in your calling. This is the life-giving pursuit that makes you think, “I was made to do this!”

2. You might be living out your calling if the following are true:

· You can say without hesitation, “I love doing this.”

· You’re good at it.

· It’s life-giving—the activity generally doesn’t “wear you out.”

· The activity is consistent with your values.

· Your goals are complementary to your calling.

· You’ve received recognition from multiple sources that this is “your thing.”

· It benefits others.

3. It’s great if your calling lines up with your job, but that’s not the only option. You might find it in another context.

4. Everybody has a calling, but not everyone finds it.