Helping You Figure Out How to Identify the One Thing You Were Born To Do

 

The world can be a strange place. There are so many questions around us, and so few answers. This leaves many of us perplexed. Each person on this planet is different to the other one. We have different needs and a different sense of achievements. One person’s achievement may seem to be another person’s basic necessity. It makes many of us wonder, how life would have been so much easier if we just knew what our exact role is, and more specifically what we were born to do. This desire to know our true calling - what we were indeed born to do - seems like a spiritual impulse.

However, no one to date has any concrete idea of how to find their true calling. The main reason for this is that the answer to this question lies within each one of us. Hence, self-discovery is required to get the ideal answer exclusive to every individual. It may sound peculiar to many, but one of the best methods to find the answer to this question is, in fact, answering a series of questions.

The first and the most critical question to answer which aids in self-discovery is what gives you true happiness and satisfaction. It has been noticed that people often pursue things for reasons unrelated to their satisfaction and joy. While this may look like a good idea in the short term, but over a period of time, it may not be as fulfilling as doing something in which you are genuinely interested in. In order to avoid such circumstances, it is always beneficial to find out what brings you joy. One way to do so is to list all the things you may have loved and been passionate about from a young age. It may not necessarily have to be something you have continued to do. It could something be as simple as you receiving unique birthday gifts as a youngster, which prompted you to start a new hobby that you may have lost touch but enjoyed thoroughly in the past. You should avoid adding something to the list just because you are good at it or you have practiced and mastered it. The sole criteria to be included in the list should be the upliftment of your soul. Only those activities or interactions that have caused your soul to be uplifted must be added. It may be an emotional experience, material acquisition or just a target being achieved. Once you have listed those things, you need to dig deep and find out what makes these things memorable. The literal answer to this question may not be of vital importance. Here, the subtext is crucial. A simple activity is done by you when everyone around you thought you could not do it, maybe a more significant personal achievement to you than being promoted at work when everyone congratulated you for it. This step will tell you more about your character traits than any assessment that you may have gone through in your college or work. It will highlight your strengths and weaknesses. This, in turn, will help you understand yourself better. Character traits such as being creative and intuitive, bold and adventurous, funny and entertaining can help you envisage what you should do in future.

The next question which will help you in your endeavour to find your true calling, is the opposite of the first one, i.e., what do you loathe? The method of elimination is one of the most primitive ways to find the right answer. Once you identify all the things that you absolutely despise, the path to the ultimate discovery will become a lot clearer. However, it is essential to know the reasons behind your hatred for these activities. You should list all the activities which bring negativity to your life and try to eliminate them from your life. It is vital that you add even the smallest of these things to the list as this is important in bringing clarity of thought. During the elimination process, you should figure out on an average how much time is devoted to those activities that you hate. Once, that has been chalked out; you should make the necessary effort to decrease the time spent on doing those things gradually. After the completion of both the lists, make sure to arrange them in such an order where the first list is topped by the thing that brings you the most happiness, whereas the second list is headed by that one thing that you hate the most.

Once these two lists are prepared you to need to ask yourself six essential questions in regards to the list of things that bring you joy (first list). The following are the questions.

Would you do this activity even if you were not paid for it?

Would this activity inspire you on a daily basis?

Does this activity come naturally to you?

Do you feel you have a natural flair for it?

Does time fly by when doing it?

Is it possible to make money by doing this?

If the answer to any of the questions mentioned above is a ‘No,' then that task is definitely not something that you were born to do. However, if it is a yes to all of the questions, then no matter how unlikely it is, it could be that one thing that you were always meant to do. Once you have six ‘Yes’ to all the six questions stated, then you need to mark them while crossing out the remaining options. Now that you have found out at least one or more of these activities you need to pass them through one final test. You need to ask yourself if the marked activities involve any of the hated activities mentioned in your second list. If any of these tasks pass with less than two yes answers, then that may be considered as tolerable, and hence not be scratched off the list. However, you also need to simultaneously double circle those activities which have anything less than three yes responses, as you will be reviewing them at a later stage. In case, any action gets more than three yes responses those activities need to be eliminated from the list entirely. While performing these tests you need to remain calm and patient and as honest to self as possible. If you are not honest consciously or subconsciously then it may hamper your result.

After you have narrowed down to two or three activities, your last objective is to find the right synergies between these activities and pick that particular gift which defines you gift most accurately. This will help you to identify the correct theme of your true calling. Once you have the theme of your real gift, you can tally various things that you like, depending on your choices and preferences and finally find what you were actually born to do.

Once, you have found out the thing that you were meant to do; your life will seem much more purposeful than ever before. You will be able to face the challenges of your life head on knowing that this is what you were meant to do. In most cases, this leads to many positive changes in a person’s personality. It can bring about a new level of self-confidence, which inevitably boosts the performance of the individual.