If my life mission leaves me lots of options, how can I narrow down my choices?
In my last post on life missions, I talked about aligning your career with your life mission. The idea is to choose a career path in which simply living your life mission every day will naturally and inevitably bring you success. But as I also pointed out in that article, your life mission can do that in more than one career!
So if you've identified more than one career in which your life mission is bound to bring you success, how do you narrow down your choices? That's where your unique set of personal talents and interests comes in. Your career needs to be aligned with your life mission, but it also needs to suit your personality.
To use the example from my last post, standing for the principle that "everyone and everything has unique value" is a life mission that is very well aligned with being a teacher, or being a personal agent, or being a life coach, or being a corporate manager. But different talents and interests will work well in each of these different careers.
Someone with a talent for interacting with many people at once will be better suited to be a teacher or a manager. Someone who prefers one-on-one interaction will prefer being a writer's agent or a life coach. Someone who loves books will want to be a writer's agent, while someone who loves sports will want to be a sports agent.
If it sounds simple, that's because it is. People are complex, but the concept behind matching people with the right jobs is not. Each of us has our best place, and finding that best place includes taking into account both your life mission and what you enjoy doing. The right career for you will be aligned with both.
Think of a tree. A tree's most basic mission is simply to grow, and it's going to try to do that no matter where it is. But a particular kind of tree will need a particular PH balance, a particular climate, a particular amount of water, and a particular soil texture in order to thrive.
Like a tree, a human being will live out his or her life mission anywhere, but he or she will prefer some environments over others. Our personalities makes up our individual needs. People need a particular amount of human interaction, a particular amount of structure, a particular amount of creative freedom, and a particular amount of variety, just for example.
People also have their own interests and abilities. Not everyone would be happy as a physicist, or as a writer, or as an astronaut, or as an artist. The trick is to find the career where both your life mission and your own unique set of interests and talents will have intrinsic value.
(Next up in the series: recognizing the true value of your life mission.)
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Articles in the Life Mission series:
- Discovering your life's mission - 11/15/05
- The nature of a life mission - Part I - 11/19/05
- The nature of a life mission - Part II - 11/20/05
- The broad scope of a life mission - 11/24/05
- Expressing your life mission in your own way - 11/26/05
- Aligning your life with your life mission - 12/2/05
- Using your talents and interests to find direction - 12/5/05
- Recognizing the value of your life mission - 12/13/05
Comments (2)
I agree that finding your life's purpose is easy. I had no idea what mine was some 7 years ago, when I was about to kill myself... but my time was not to go... And some spiritual work stopped me too. So a whole bunch of coinicidences led me to Norway, where I was an au pair for 2 years. Started to lead the spiritual groups as a volunteer there. Studied the Norwegian language first, found a booklet about the Oslo University and anthropology department later on. I thought how can I unite all these things I love to do into one? I loved to write, travel, communicate with people from different countries and read books from different places and peoples. So I understood, anthropology can be the one to unite all of these. Trusting my inner guidance, followed it. In the very end took one film course, loved it too. Got really into anthropological film. Later on took one semester in South Africa. Which was a lifetime experience! I used this time as a preparation time for my fieldwork later on. I got connected to my angels and met a lady who had an angel house in Cape Town. Then went back to Norway and continued my studies about visual cultural studies, which includes the film fieldwork on your own. My idea was to go back to South Africa and then make a spiritual film about what I was most interested in - the angels... and that is exactly what I am doing now. So I am doing my angel stuff and filming at the same time. I have united most of my talents and it is absolutely amazing to wake up every morning and say out loud: ' I am living my DREAM and fulfilling my soul's mission!' Next year I should be finished with my film and master degree and the idea is to conquer the world with spiritual films, to awaken more souls into their soul's missions! it is absolutely beautiful!
Posted by Katlin Roovik | August 1, 2006 10:05 AM
Posted on August 1, 2006 10:05
Awesome, Katlin! That's wonderful! My faith and prayers are with you--let me know if I can ever help!
Posted by EM Sky | August 1, 2006 12:46 PM
Posted on August 1, 2006 12:46