Cultivating Your Creatively Unique Calling - An Intentional Practice

Once you connect with your calling, the question isn't IF it can
be done - it's an ongoing, "What's mine to do (no more, no less) to serve it?" Asking if it can be done takes you out of the present and into a place of guessing, hoping and trying to 'figure it out.' It is binary. It takes you out of direct experience.

Listen into what is yours to do

Instead, asking what's yours to do is an intentional practice that keeps you in the present, moment by moment, where you can unfold and cultivate it as it emerges. No more = not taking on more than is yours...and letting go of whatever is not. No less = stepping up to what is needed to serve it, even when it is uncomfortable and ambiguous. (See my blog post about difference between Just-do-it thinking, Whatever-will-be-will-be thinking, and What's-mine-to-do thinking).

Don't wait to start walking until after you get clarity

Unlike with conventional planning or goal setting, you can't see the end when you get started cultivating a calling. When you are called to into your truly alive work - your inspired vision and mission - asking if it is possible is no longer a relevant question. The daily whats and hows - in doing and being - are what's relevant. As is learning the discernment of what's not yours to do. With every healthy yes, there is a series of healthy no's.

You discover exactly what is possible and how as you engage the process.

You discover what is authentically for you, and what's not. And you discover an infinite resource within you (I call it the Creative Source since is contains pure life-giving creative energy - there are lots of different names for it) that you have as an ally for the rest of your journey.

It is this, our inner sherpa, that helps us navigate the landscape of the amazing, rich, abundant fertile unknown. It carries the most holistically generative choices for us at any time - creatively, financially, and spiritually/meaningfully interconnected. Working with it it to cultivate your unique calling is an intentional practice. It will not lead you astray. It's job is life generating more life.

Use your whole brain and body

There are many ways to cultivate its creative wisdom. The more of our whole brain's multiple intelligences we engage - and the more of our whole selves we bring to it - the more expansive our understanding of it can be...and the more fun we will have! In addition to verbal questioning, start drawing it out, painting it out, journaling with both words and images, embodying it, bodystorming (acting it out in your body - using your somatic intelligence), etc. Using non-habitual ways to generate answers "tricks" the habitual thinker in us into generating something new. I see this everyday in my work...once we intentionally use our brains and bodies in different ways, breakthroughs happen more quickly and consistently. Breaking patterns leads to breakthroughs.

The world needs your Creative Uniqueness

Time for us all to claim and create what is ours to do! I believe the world is waiting for your unique creation that you and only you can offer us. There is no competition for that role - no one can be a better you than you. And when we find what is ours do it. it is always connected to helping other in same way - that really is embedded into the authentic callings...they are never just for ourselves. It just does not have to be limited to society's views of what is means to serve...our true callings always serve a higher purpose. :-)

Comments

[Saya]

Nice article. It is very true that in creative process you can really see the end from the start and it is journey
Thanks

[Michelle]

Thanks so much, Saya. So true...convention asks us to know where we are going and stay on that pre-determined path to get there. Emergence asks us to have a sense of where we are going, and discover the path - and other surprises - along the way. :-)

[Adamjorlen]

Thanks for this post. Really helped me.

[Michelle]

Thanks for letting me know that Adam. I am so delighted that is was helpful.