Work is More Than Material: Follow Your Inner Voice to Where You Belong

When we think about careers we often look at how we make choices from a material perspective.  We examine our talents and abilities combined with our interests and what we want from life materially, then go about planning our jobs without consideration for the spiritual side of our natures.   That spiritual side is important, however, because just as work needs to suit our physical and mental abilities, it works best when it satisfies the soul.  Work, indeed, is a divine calling.

If we think back to our earliest experiences with hobbies and with tasks, we can all remember those things that gave us joy.  There was something we all seemed to be commanded to do.  Some of us watched the birds and nature, collected poetry and pictures about animals and spent lots of time with pets.  Some of us liked to stay in our rooms and fill pages and pages with drawings of anything and everything our minds could conceive.  Still others were out helping people in the neighborhood with special things that needed to be done and were always looking for ways to serve others.  This was an early foundation for discovering what might fit not just our material natures but our spiritual ones as well.

God gave us nudges early, but many of us didn’t pay attention to them.  Instead we listen to what other people said when we talked about our dreams, our ambitions and our inner thoughts and feelings.  Rather than listening to these, parents, teachers, friends and advisors thought about the practical and perhaps from a point of view quite different from ours because they had different messages as children, different interests and their own unique skills.  It wasn’t that they wanted to impose their wishes on upon us; they just had their own inner drumming for their marching and therefore couldn’t hear ours.

We have built in us that small voice we talk about as adults, but that voice didn’t just begin when we grew up.  It began to speak to us as children, in framing our joys and our discoveries about ourselves.  But many of us were channeled into unfamiliar, alien and unwanted places in order to fulfill the dreams of others seemed to think should be ours, never knowing who we are for the reasons just discussed.

So let’s remember those early childhood days, when we found joy in activities that virtually commanded our attention, that drove our actions from day to day, that compelled us to move in one direction or another and remember those things as we begin to reexamine our lives and our careers.

God spoke to us as children as He speaks to us now.  He gave us opportunities to discover who we were and what we liked.  We moved naturally into things we enjoyed and in where we excelled.  We moved away when others told us that we should or when we felt compelled to do so because of some special material need of the time.  Much of that came from our fears, the struggle between our truest natures and the commandment of the world to realize only our material ambitions.  It is, however, in listening to that inner voice that proscribes our true calling that we find fulfillment and happiness at work. 

Whether you are started on a career, re-careering, lost your job because of layoff or disability or just want to make a change, listen to that inner voice and remember the joys and interests of your childhood, because that will lead to where you really belong and the place and vocation that will bring your ultimate joy.