Calling
(Typically during your 20s and 30s)
Early on in our youth, we begin to recognize the activities, skills, and settings that make us come alive. This is not just a feeling, it’s a calling—an invitation to your own meaningful way to serve the world. Pursuing authentic callings aligns your values and talents with communities and causes to which you can give your heart.
Leadership for Life has helped hundreds of women and men explore, discover, and pursue their authentic callings. And we’d be delighted to help you too.
Now I become myself. / It’s taken time, many years and places. /
I have been dissolved and shaken, / Worn other people’s faces . . .
—MAY SARTON, “Now I Become Myself” in Collected Poems, 1930–1973
Identifying your strengths pays huge dividends in the form of increases in happiness, well-being, meaning, and purpose. This book shows you how.
Here are three of my top resources for discerning your calling, depending on your decision-making style.
The Conscience Code provides ten steps to help you fight for your values. But what if you don’t know what your values are in the first place?
In this book, Jonathan Haidt distills time tested wisdom for living well from the world’s religious traditions and insights from contemporary social psychology into ten lessons for living well.
Shawn Achor’s suggested practices are staples of my own practice of cultivating the optimal mindset.
The Power of Meaning introduces the foundational elements for crafting a more meaningful life, along with promising practices for cultivating them.
Rick Hanson provides a trove of scientifically based (and wisdom-tradition-endorsed) practices for leading one’s life with compassion, courage, and positive impact.
Neuroscience shows that we can leverage the architecture of our brains to create a more peaceful and productive mind.
Rituals enhance our lives by transforming ordinary actions into the extraordinary. Go out and experiment.
The Enchiridion is timeless wisdom for all those who want to live freely and decide wisely.