How to find your vocation (new article from Oliver Amberton)

Very many of us believe in the existence of a magical substance called "vocation." “If only I could find my calling,” we say bitterly. "I would be happy if I found my calling ..."

What to say? Vocation - a reality, and, incredibly powerful. But almost everything that people know about his search is fundamentally wrong. This is what Oliver Amberton talks about in his last article. We continue to reflect on personal effectiveness!

The first rule: Calling is the result of success.
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All our emotions arise as a result of something. We experience a feeling of hunger in order to maintain the vital activity of the body and not die from malnutrition. Saturation comes as a signal that there is enough food, and if you continue to eat, you can burst. And we feel that we have found a vocation, as a confirmation that our efforts are focused on what we get the maximum possible results from.



Imagine you signed up for a dance course. It's easy for you. You quickly realize that you are doing better than others.

The growing enthusiasm that you experience at the same time is your vocation. It is this that prompts you to come again and again, develop skills and increase the intensity of the load.

The main enemy of such interest is disappointment. If you are constantly struggling with something, you definitely will never find your calling in it. You are completely trying to avoid such situations, denying the very possibility of development in this area.



Many people realize this over time. They think that if we find our calling, it distinguishes us a priori in some area. In fact, it is more like a self-suggestion that you are worth something. In fact, vocation is a consequence of success.

The second rule: Childhood is the time when vocation is destroyed at the root

Theoretically, in childhood there is a unique opportunity to try yourself everywhere, to reveal your talents and interests.

But think for a second how much the system works against you. The school provides an opportunity to study 20 subjects, while comparing you with thousands of other children. This is not equal conditions. Most children by definition have average abilities. And it does not matter how much we develop the education system, because people need to feel their uniqueness in order to find a vocation, and the system simply raises the bar of the “average level”.

Suppose you were lucky, and you showed outstanding ability in mathematics in elementary grades. The education system will promote your growth to a certain level - for example, to a university - where you will cease to be an exception. Even if you are objectively incredibly intelligent, one day you will just feel like a middling and you will find that the whole fuse is gone. And this is provided that you are lucky, prone to exact sciences.



And what if your soul lies to art? Even in childhood, interest in this area is doomed to be condemned by social realities. “It’s impossible to make a living by drawing,” say your parents. “Your brother excelled in engineering. Why don't you follow in his footsteps? ” And so, you put aside all your aspirations and let them go out.

The population of the planet is billions of people. Obviously, not everyone can be unusually gifted in a limited number of academic subjects. What if your talent is in oratory, or in dance, or in the creation of video announcements on YouTube for video games? None of this is in the school curriculum.

Thus, most people grow up with a lack of interest in something.

Rule Three: You can create a vocation.

This rule will help to understand that the most successful people chose a non-finished script, just as they take a book from the shelf.

In fact, many successful people dropped out of training. Not because they were stupid - but because they found other areas where they found a use for themselves. The education system could not notice this.

They created their own sphere of interest.



Only a very small proportion of people can differ in the highly specialized subjects that school offers in childhood. And, in fact, your competitors in this area are “everyone who went to school”. This does not increase your chances.

But if you go beyond that, you will find less competition, and greater opportunities. And here you take the first step to new opportunities.

Option 1: Create something

When you create something new, you invent something that you can be interested in to your taste.

You can develop a new design of cushions or write about Batman, or create a Twitter account where you will write reviews about the work of politicians.

New things are relatively undeniable. Having created something new, your opportunities to become special in this area are incredibly increasing.



Now it is important to note that this does not cancel the first rule: vocation is a consequence of success. So, if your new Twitter account has collected only 5 subscribers in a year, you probably will not be very inspired by this. But if you had 5 million subscribers, you would have quit your job. You have to succeed to heat up your interest.

But at the very least, you have greatly expanded your capabilities, because competition is limited. Only a few people will risk trying something new. And you can be one of them just by starting.



You can discover this trend by the example of prominent personalities. Student Mark was not going to become the best programmer in the world. But he began to create good websites, and found that it came out very worthy of him, because programmers had never tried to create something new better than him. And it happened quite by chance that one of his small experiments was the social network Facebook.

Option 2: Set the trend

The older and more authoritative the area of ​​your interests becomes, the more difficult it will be to compete in it. Millions of people before you tried to do this, and the less they differed from the rest, the less were the opportunities to find their calling in this area.

But you can always find a new area of ​​interest - an area where any other person is completely unfit, and even your modest skills can be impressive.



Imagine that you are a teenager who started shooting and uploading videos on YouTube back in 2001. They subscribe to you, and your growing success inspires you. By the time the “adult” world realized that YouTube is a promising project with a four-billionth daily audience, you have become a recognized master in the new and priceless art.

This is not fiction. A huge number of successful YouTube users started the same way: before everyone else. The same story with the first bloggers, rappers and video game designers.

If you find something new that is continuously developing, and you have learned to use it early, it will not be difficult for you to stand out thanks to minimal competition. This is your vocation.

Capability 3: Combining Abilities

The education system limits the range of your abilities. She usually finds the area in which you are most capable and develops it while you endure.

The problem is that most of us, by definition, cannot be the best in any one area. But we can be exceptional in combinations of their abilities.



Suppose you are a good artist with a good sense of humor. You will not find yourself if you get an academic degree in the arts, but you will not be able to study “humor” as a subject. But you could be a great multiplier.

Or take the average student-manager, possessing the ability to programming, and good sales skills. This person is surprisingly well suited for the role of leader for those who were better than him only in one area.

The most successful people are almost impossible to characterize as specialists in any one area. They are a collection of skills and abilities and often not outstanding. But they made this combination special. Steve Jobs was not the best engineer in the world or an unbeatable sales person, designer or businessman. But he was undeniably good enough in all these areas, and made of them much more.

The main advice on the way to finding your vocation: combine your abilities into something more valuable. Remember, vocation is a consequence of success. If the combination of your abilities is effective, this is where your vocation may lie.

Why is calling important?

The vocation is attractive. Since it is based on the belief in its uniqueness, then being interested is a sure way to say to yourself: “By the way, I'm cool.”



Your interest will make people follow you. Make them believe you. But more importantly, your passion will interest you. Interest is an emotion designed to make you go crazy and climb out of the skin just because you sincerely believe that it can change the world. Such a passion, like love, is a feeling worth fighting for.

And, like love, what you find yourself in is too important to leave it to the mercy of fate. If you have not yet found your calling, make discoveries, set trends, combine abilities. But never stop looking for something new!

Successes!