When we're dealing with Job vesus Vacation, we have to know that a job comes from the mind. It comes from reshaping and reformulating the mind to a new paradigm, and training the mind to get into gear with what we feel comfortable in doing. We call that our job. However, a vocation is something that comes from within. It comes from your heart. A vocation is not something that has to be programmed by the mind as discipline the way a job does. A vocation comes from deep within your heart, or your spirit, where you know for certain you have found the vein of your life. In the same way, we can contrast career versus calling. A career is a service we perform. We trade our time, effort, skill, knowledge, and experience for a salary, benefits or other income. Many people work a job because it offers great benefits, and that’s wonderful, but we need to look a little deeper into things.
Let’s continue with career. You may refer to it as your employment, your work, your livelihood, your occupation, your living, your trade, your vocation, your profession, or maybe it’s just a job. Many people work just a job. You may have many reasons to go to work each day, but unless you are independently wealthy, earning an income is a primary career motive. You realize that in order to survive financially, you need to go to work, and work hard to make a living.
We have to know the difference between a career and a calling. Not many in society know their calling. As a life coach, I have more people coming to me saying, “I don’t know what I am called to do in my life.”
And I reply, “You have to look at the words you just said. ‘I don’t know what I’m called to do in my life.’” The majority of the people that I talk to about a calling I ask, “Do you presently work?” “Well, yeah I have a job.” “What are you looking for?”
Many people tell me, “Well I’m looking for another job.” Well, guess what? You don’t know what your calling is, and you will never know what your calling is.” I respond. A calling is not a job because anyone can work a job. A job is something that a person goes out to get because they need to make money. That’s a job. A calling is something that comes from within, as I stated earlier.
Your calling refers to a personal interest, maybe an attraction, a drive or a passion that is usually of a higher order. It isn’t just something you want to do, but rather something you need to do. Let me stop for a moment and explain what I mean when I say it is something that you “need” to do. First of all, a calling is something that captures your imagination. It touches you deeply. It absorbs you, whether or not you can explain why.
Many people don’t stop to realize that when dealing with a calling, it is something they say, “It’s something I know I just have to do.” When you go to a job, it’s not necessarily something you have to do. (You have to with regard to making a living and surviving because you need to feed your family), but it’s not something that drives you and makes you feel that if you don’t accomplish it, it’s a matter of life and death. It’s a matter of your joy. It’s a matter of something awakened in you saying, ‘I know now this is why I was put here on planet earth.’ Now you can tell the difference between a job and a vocation, and the difference between a career and a calling. A calling is something you know you have to do, you need to do in order to find the ultimate, unspeakable joy
you need in your life. It makes you say, “This is the real me.” How many work a job and realize that you’re really not being the real you?
I talk with many people, those I coach or those that call me, and they say, “My job is something that I hate to do. I hate to answer the phone. I hate having to do accounting, and numbers just drive me crazy… but I’m good at it.” It’s frustrating when you look at the situation you realize that it’s something that you pretty much just have to do because you need money. On the other hand, for some people owning an accounting firm is something that is their calling, their vocation, where they know they have to do it.
Why? It’s back to job versus vocation. Where a job is where we go to work to get money to pay the bills, a vocation is from within. If it is someone has a vocation as an accountant, for example, they realize the purpose and the definition behind it says, “I’m not just here to make money.” No, a vocation says, “I like to add these things up because of the fact that I am empowering someone else. When I’m doing accounting for my client, (sarah), it becomes my mission. There is a drive within me that makes me want to do this for her, because there is a greater desire to bless her, take care of her, supply her needs so that when I lay my head down at night I know I have empowered someone with what I love to do.” See what I’m saying? It is something that touches you deeply. Something that goes beyond. Something that absorbs you, and you absorb it.
