Seeing how the members of my team, a mix of senior executives and people that had joined me straight out of school, had grown into strong entrepreneurial leaders over the years was the most rewarding part of my journey.
Second, I realized that when entrepreneurial leaders are values-driven, they have the capacity to make a uniquely positive impact on the world with the businesses they build. (The opposite is true as well. When leaders do not have strong values, they have the capacity to cause great harm.)
Mercenaries vs. Missionaries
Another way to explain this difference between striving and calling is with a mercenaries vs. missionaries frame — a distinction popularized by VC John Doerr.
“Mercenaries are driven by paranoia; missionaries are driven by passion; mercenaries think opportunistically; missionaries think strategically,” said Doerr. “Mercenaries go for the sprint; missionaries go for the marathon. Mercenaries focus on their competitors and financial statements; missionaries focus on their customers and value statements. Mercenaries are bosses of wolf packs; missionaries are mentors or coaches of teams. Mercenaries worry about entitlements; missionaries are obsessed with making a contribution. Mercenaries are motivated by the lust for making money; missionaries, while recognizing the importance of money, are fundamentally driven by the desire to make meaning.”
A Calling Unique To You
Everyone can have a unique calling. Some leaders have a moment of epiphany and others have a growing sense of calling throughout their life. So don’t put immense pressure on yourself to “find it”. Often the calling will need to find you.
This calling will be rooted in your worldview and could be anchored in a belief about what the world needs, a social cause, a moral philosophy, or even a spiritual encounter. Whatever it is, it needs to be other-centred versus self-centred, you need to believe in it, and you must care deeply about it. It needs to affect your heart as much as or more than it affects your mind.
Many people have changed the world through pursuing a calling, but there are two people that stood out for me.
The Calling of William Wilberforce
The first is William Wilberforce, the British politician who led the movement to abolish slavery in the U.K. in the 1800s. What initially led Wilberforce to Parliament and drove him in his political career wasn’t fighting for justice or equality, it was striving. “I did nothing to any good purpose,” he said, “My own distinction was my object.” He could have continued down this path, potentially seeking higher office, but that need for attention and external validation wouldn’t have sustained him in his mission to end the slave trade. Abolition took decades, and Wilberforce was hated throughout England and physically attacked by slave traders. He needed his work to be driven by a calling, which for him became the liberty of the oppressed.
Reorienting himself enabled him to accomplish something that didn’t appear possible.
“So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the Trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition,” Wilberforce told the House of Commons in 1787. “Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”
It took fifty highly uncertain years, with a growing coalition of participants, to accomplish this massive project, and the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833; Willberforce, released from the weight of his calling, died a few days later.
The Calling of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My second example only understood his calling in hindsight. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize-winning author of the Gulag Archipelago, was so driven to record the horrors he experienced in Soviet Union labour camps that he risked his and his family’s lives and diligently committed thousands of lines to memory amid hunger and exhaustion. He shut out of his mind the possibility of his work being published in his lifetime and was driven instead by a duty to tell the stories of the millions who had suffered alongside him. He didn’t know his book would be read by tens of millions of people across the world and play a part in the fall of the Soviet Union.
“I felt as though I was about to fill a space in the world that was meant for me and had long awaited me,” he said, “A mold, as it were, made for me alone, but discerned by me only this very moment. I was a molten substance, impatient, invariably impatient, to pour into my mould, to fill it full, without air bubbles or crack, before I cooled and stiffened.”
So callings come in many forms. They can be clear from the outset or obscured for decades up until the point that they’re fulfilled. Also, they are unique to each person. While you can’t choose exactly when and how yours forms, you can attempt to understand the meaning behind your work through awareness. I’m convinced that we grow at the pace of reflection.
Questions for My Younger Self
If I could coach my younger self on this journey, I would offer him these questions:
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What practices of reflection do you have?
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Who are your heroes? Who do you want to be like when you grow up?
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What is more important? What you are building, or who you are becoming?
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What is motivating you? Who told you that was important?
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What does a good life look like? Why do you think that is the case?
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What do you want in life? Why? Who convinced you that was important?
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What do you want to leave as your legacy?
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What are your values? How does that make you different from the people around you?
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What behaviors will allow you to live your values in work, your family life, etc.?
Rather than requiring crucible experiences to force me to face these questions, I could have begun the transition from striving to calling much earlier if I had considered these questions when I was younger.
From Striving To Calling
Surrender
Ultimately, our movement from striving to calling is dependent on our willingness to surrender to something greater than ourselves. To have the scales drop from our eyes and discover the mimetic illusion of our first desires. And from there, to grow into a deeper, bolder, and more noble calling for the benefit of others. These “I was made for this” moments are a form of worship.
This truth was captured well by the late David Foster Wallace:
“Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”
Transformation Towards Joy
The path of calling is more challenging and will require all the skills and capabilities and self-knowledge you have gained in the previous stages. But in the end, you are a different kind of person.
Here are just a few of the transitions that can occur as you grow into your calling:
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From anxiety in self-reliance to peace in a stable identity
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From distress in the storm to rest in the storm
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From temporal gratification to creating a legacy
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From the death grip of control to wisdom and courage
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From fleeting happiness of success to joy in the journey
The greatest reward on this path from Striving to Calling is that rather than mere happiness, we can arrive at a place of deep joy.
Miroslav Volf, a professor at Yale, has made studying joy his specialty, and he concludes that joy is the crown of a well-lived life:
“Joy is not merely external to the good life, a mint leaf on the cake’s whipped cream. Rather, the good life expresses and manifests itself in joy. Joy is the emotional dimension of life that goes well, and that is led well.”
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