The Art of Manliness: Find Your Calling Part I

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In May of 2010, Brett and Kate McKay of The Art of Manliness started a series on Finding Your Calling:

Part I: What Is a Vocation?

A vocation is work you do for its own sake; you almost feel like you’d do it even if you didn’t get paid. The rewards of wages and prestige are peripheral to getting to use one’s passion in a satisfying way. Those in a vocation feel that their work has an effect on the greater good and an impact beyond themselves. They believe that their work truly utilizes their unique gifts and talents. This is what they were meant to do.

Brett and Kate start by explaining the differences between a job, a career, and a vocation. Short version: a job is what you have to do to earn a paycheck; a career is driven by progress; a vocation or calling you would do even if it didn't pay. And the closer your occupation is to a vocation, the more likely you are to be more satisfied with it.

Your vocation is tied to the parts of you that are hard-wired since birth or early childhood; I've always been reading books and making up stories and messing with crafts, since I can remember, for instance. But finding a vocation means listening to those parts of you instead of the external influences and "shoulds".

So that's the easy part of this series: the "what". The "how" and "why" are coming...



Do you agree? How do you define "vocation"?

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