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Discovering Your True Calling: The Journey to Authentic Purpose
When Barbara Sher's book "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was" first appeared in the early 1990s, it landed like a revelation for an entire generation of seekers. Oprah Winfrey reportedly kept a copy by her bedside, while countless celebrities from Julia Roberts to Tom Hanks have cited it as transformative in their careers. What makes this book so compelling isn't just its practical advice, but its radical premise: you already know what you want to do with your life. The confusion you feel isn't because you lack direction-it's because something is actively blocking you from seeing it. "The good life," as Sher quotes a friend's father saying, "is when you get up in the morning and can't wait to start all over again." If you don't feel this way, this book promises to uncover why-and show you how to change it. In an era where career changes have become the norm rather than the exception, Sher's insights feel more relevant than ever, offering a compass for anyone who feels lost in the wilderness of possibility.
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The Silent Messages That Shape Our Lives
From our earliest days, we absorb expectations about what we're "supposed to be doing" with our lives. These messages come from family, teachers, culture, and society, forming an invisible script that runs in the background of our decisions. Some messages are obvious-"Get married," "Make money," "Be a doctor"-while others operate stealthily, affecting us without our conscious awareness.
Consider how these expectations shape us: A father who wanted to be an artist but became an accountant might push his child toward creative pursuits. A mother who sacrificed career for family might subtly discourage her daughter from doing the same. Even when we rebel against these expectations, we're still being defined by them.
The first step toward freedom is asking: "Who says?" When we examine where these expectations originated, we begin to see how arbitrary many of them are. The exercise of listing everyone important in your childhood and what they wanted for you can be eye-opening. One client discovered her mother wanted her "careful and respectable" while her father wanted her "bold and competitive"-contradictory expectations that had left her paralyzed with indecision.
Even more revealing is creating a visual representation of the "perfect person" your family wanted you to be. This collage typically reveals an impossible ideal-like Anita's creation of a designer-dressed professional with a nun's face against an African village backdrop. The realization that what your family wanted simply can't be done liberates you to pursue what YOU want instead.
These exercises aren't about blaming our families, but about understanding the source of our confusion. Once we recognize these external expectations for what they are, we can begin to distinguish between them and our authentic desires. The weight of "supposed to" lifts, and we can finally hear our own voice beneath the chorus of others.
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Action Creates Clarity When Direction Is Unclear
When you don't know what you want, taking action becomes even more essential than when your path is clear. Action breaks the paralysis of indecision and creates opportunities for "lucky" encounters that theoretical analysis never could. There's profound wisdom in this approach: movement creates momentum, which creates clarity.
First, action provides better insights than thinking alone ever could. Even moving in the wrong direction gives valuable information about what doesn't work for you. I've seen countless clients who spent years analyzing their options without making progress, only to gain immediate clarity once they took even a small step forward. The world responds to your movement in ways it never responds to your thoughts.
Second, each time you face a fear and act anyway, your self-esteem rises. The opposite is also true-each time you back down, your confidence erodes. High self-esteem comes after action, not before. This explains why ex-addicts often succeed by "acting as if"-dressing and behaving as though they already have confidence until real confidence develops. The most rewarding things in life begin with incompetence and embarrassment, and your willingness to tolerate necessary discomfort will determine your life's course more than any other factor.
Third, good luck happens when you're in motion. My own career emerged through seemingly random events that wouldn't have occurred if I'd stayed home waiting for clarity. Planning has its place, but it's mostly "science fiction"-hopeful predictions rather than certainties. The real value of planning is that it gets you out into the world where opportunities can find you.
Finally, trust your instincts even when they seem odd. Consider Jessie, a shy 45-year-old office manager who suddenly announced her desire to race sled dogs. Despite having no experience, she pursued this unlikely goal-training, traveling alone to Bear Grease, and completing a hundred-mile race. Surprisingly, after achieving this, she didn't want to continue racing but instead felt ready to quit her thankless job. The animal inside her knew she needed to overcome a significant challenge before finding courage to change her life.
Your desires have a practicality beyond rational thought. Following them will point you in the right direction better than rules or advice ever could.
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Uncovering What's Blocking Your Path
If you don't know what you want, something is blocking you from knowing it. The most effective way to expose this hidden resistance is to start moving toward a goal you genuinely desire. Your resistance will immediately emerge with discouraging messages: "You'll fail," "This isn't for you," "This is a stupid idea."
Being stuck isn't logical-you could always make a choice and change it later if needed. Your immobility suggests you sense danger ahead, like an animal that won't move. By taking action, you force these protective mechanisms to reveal themselves, allowing you to design strategies to overcome them.
At the heart of meaningful work is a profound connection between your soul and the world outside you. There's a critical insight here: doing what you love and doing something meaningful are the same thing. Without activity that matters to you, you'll feel empty regardless of external success. And contrary to common belief, pursuing what you love isn't selfish-it's the most generous thing you can do. To do "great" work, you must be in love with it.
Many people believe meaningful work must help mankind, make a splash, be driven by intense passion, or represent conventional success. But meaningful work is actually about personal connection-finding what matters specifically to you, like the person who felt at home in a bookstore filled with 1890s periodicals.
To discover what truly matters to you, try designing your fantasy job with no practical limitations. Consider what activities you'd perform, where you'd work, and who you'd work with. Let yourself dream wildly! Then create "The Job from Hell"-detailing everything you'd hate in a job. This negative exercise often comes more easily to people who struggle with positive visioning, revealing what you truly value through contrast.
By taking every detail of your nightmare job and reversing it exactly, you create a map to what you truly desire. This technique bypasses resistance that blocks positive imagination, allowing your true preferences to emerge through contrast.
Once you've identified what matters to you, make a total commitment to this vision-but only for one hour. Pretend all other choices are closed and you're trapped in this decision. This exercise reveals how resistance creates paralysis through fear of making wrong choices. By taking concrete steps toward your scenario for just one hour, you'll experience what commitment feels like and trigger powerful emotional responses that expose the resistance that's been blocking your progress all along.
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The Security Trap: When Safety Becomes Your Biggest Risk
When you constantly choose safety over adventure, you're taking the biggest risk of all. Inside you is a genius who's original, curious, and bursting with potential. Until you act on that energy, your life remains on hold. When an unfulfilled wish waits in the shadows, you don't fully invest in anything-work, family, or even vacations. You must pursue your dreams; as soon as you do, your life awakens and everything gains meaning.
We mistakenly believe adventure requires radical lifestyle changes or dangerous risks-jumping from planes or sailing across oceans. This misconception actually helps us remain stuck. Adventure should be thrilling, new, and meaningful, but it doesn't necessarily mean abandoning your entire life. I once equated adventure with impractical escapism after becoming a single mother, choosing safety over the "guts" I once had. But real adventure isn't necessarily about exotic locales-it's what lifts your heart, opens your mind, and makes you catch your breath.
Unlike shallow escape dreams, real dreams are deeply personal and unique to each individual-like fingerprints from your inner genius. They're not about fantasy but about authentic desires that often hide because remembering them can be emotional. Paradoxically, grandiose escape dreams feel safe to think about but dangerous to do, while real dreams terrify us to contemplate yet usually involve minimal actual risk.
We're designed to turn new experiences into habits-a survival mechanism that helps us navigate life without having to think about every action. This habit machinery serves us well, but the problem is it has no OFF button and resists all excitement. Learning to sidestep this machinery is what real adventure involves. Whether you're an artist or someone taking a bold step in a new direction, the experience of doing what you truly love creates freshness and intensity that awakens you from routine.
People aren't cautious by choice-something genuinely frightened them. Three types of inner voices create caution: First, internalized voices of fearful adults who trained you to be scared; second, a parent-voice you created to control yourself when your actual parents were unreliable; and third, unspoken "no" commands that permeated your family atmosphere without being explicitly stated.
When we feel our world is out of control, we invent magical thinking and control rituals. Unlike animals that accept life's inherent dangers, humans create the illusion of safety through strict self-regulation. Nadine's compulsive neatness with clothes began in childhood as a way to feel control over her chaotic environment. This "magic" evolved into a tyrannical inner voice that criticizes her constantly. Until she realizes that folded clothes won't fix her mother's problems, she remains trapped in compulsive behavior.
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Self-Sabotage: When Success Feels More Frightening Than Failure
You have a problem others envy: fearing success. You keep sabotaging yourself just when opportunities arise. Despite your obvious gifts, you mysteriously lose focus at crucial moments or become discouraged when things are going well. This pattern often stretches back to childhood.
To identify this pattern, create a chronological timeline starting from age 5, noting every five years when you avoided getting something you wanted. Beverly discovered she learned early that being smart cost her love and popularity. Marcia had no problems until age 25, when she sabotaged her speaking career by mysteriously losing her voice. Look for patterns in your own history-when did you first stop pursuing what you wanted or lose your natural enthusiasm?
There's always a good reason behind self-sabotage. Lynn, who creates research packages for scientists, often loses crucial pages or forgets to check for mistakes right before submitting work. Self-sabotage operates half-consciously, like someone else taking over when we diet but reach for cake. Beverly never consciously decided to hold back her intelligence, but after experiencing coldness when she was "too smart," she mysteriously developed trouble concentrating.
To uncover your resistance, imagine you've achieved everything you ever wanted. Visualize what success looks and feels like-signing big checks, performing on stage, making scientific discoveries, winning Olympic gold. After a few minutes, notice if your mood changes-this discomfort means your resistance has awakened. Now let your negative voice speak. Andrea said "Dancing's stupid. It's just showing off." Saul worried his father would take credit for his teaching awards. Beverly felt isolated, as if she deserved to be alone.
Though we like to think childhood doesn't affect us anymore, our most primitive defenses activate under stress. When success looms, sabotage follows. Understanding your underlying conflicts is crucial. Many men won't surpass their fathers professionally. Males learn early to suppress vulnerability, but when a boy becomes too strong, his father often feels threatened and becomes competitive. This dynamic is now appearing between high-achieving mothers and daughters too. Many daughters feel unable to be happy when their mothers led unfulfilled lives-as if their happiness would abandon the person who made their success possible.
When failure has eroded your parents' confidence, you may either become determined to break free or feel protective of your parents. This protectiveness conflicts with creating your own success, as though succeeding would say "Your world isn't good enough for me" or "You didn't have what it takes."
Understanding the source of your fear of success is already a major breakthrough. Like discovering your car won't run because it's out of gas rather than having a mysterious problem, you can now take appropriate action. However, your parents can't free you even if they want to-you must free yourself from being tied to someone else's fate. The hard truth: you must process your past by expressing those old feelings now.
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Finding Direction When You're Pulled in Multiple Directions
When you're interested in many things and can't choose just one path, it creates real discomfort. You watch time passing while others with no more talent advance in their careers, and you remain at the starting gate. Society respects specialists, not generalists-calling you a "dilettante" rather than a "Renaissance person." There are two possible explanations for this pattern: either you're a natural "scanner" who delights in variety (a respectable trait), or you're actually a "diver" who's being blocked from going deep into your true passion.
Scanners want to taste everything-from flower structures to music theory to politics. They see the universe as a treasure house with too little time to explore it all. While our culture values specialization, scanners possess valuable skills: adaptability, quick learning, curiosity, and respect for diverse thinking. Their problem isn't lack of discipline or intelligence but finding work that allows them to use their scanning talents.
Career aptitude tests often miss scanners like Jack, who showed equal skill in music, nature, mathematics, science, and literature. When told he had to choose one field, Jack knew he'd be unhappy-he loved the overview of subjects but lost interest after introductory courses. After wandering for years, he accidentally found work writing for an inventors' newsletter. Twenty years later, he's a successful freelance writer who travels the world with opera companies and mountain climbers.
Scanners often feel rushed, suffering from "time sickness"-the hysteria that everything must be done at once because time is running out. But there's more time than you think, and hurrying is inefficient. If you want to do many things, you can do them all-like Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Ted Turner. You just need to understand there's more time available than you imagine.
To manage multiple interests, list "ten lives" you'd want to pursue if you were ten different people (poet, musician, businessperson, scholar, etc.). Then match these potential lives to different time periods by quickly answering questions about which life you'd pursue this year, after the first is completed, and so on. This helps you see how you can fit multiple passions into your life sequentially rather than simultaneously.
Unlike scanners, divers have telescopic vision and find delight in depth. They become transfixed by subjects, wanting to explore them thoroughly rather than just sampling. However, some people who appear to be scanners are actually frustrated divers who fear diving deep. These unhappy divers constantly change direction not from genuine curiosity but as a defense mechanism.
Some bright people shine during the enthusiastic beginning phase but can't transition to the slower, more difficult learning period. Never having learned how to learn, they become frustrated and drop out, missing the big payoff that comes from persistence. Others use new activities as an escape from uncomfortable feelings. The excitement of beginning something new provides a temporary high that evaporates once the activity becomes familiar.
When you find yourself jumping from naval aeronautics to opera, three cures exist depending on your issue: For alarm-jolts, acknowledge it's okay to be happy, feel your feelings, then return to work. For learning difficulties, embrace "Beginner's Mind" and push through frustration. For novelty addiction, create a "Lost and Found for Dreams" box where you write down and store future possibilities. The key for all unhappy divers is working until you achieve mastery, which eliminates self-evaluation extremes and provides the steadying "keel" that calms fears.
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The Gilded Cage: Success Without Fulfillment
Fast-track success without genuine fulfillment creates a unique trap: the pace, material rewards, and social admiration make it difficult to stop even when you're heading in the wrong direction. You've achieved what everyone calls success-good money, respect, glamour-yet you only enjoy how it makes you look, not the work itself. Your personal life becomes merely a "pit stop" in your career race.
Unlike others who can complain about unsatisfying jobs, you feel no right to voice unhappiness because you supposedly "have it made." But winning by cultural standards while losing personal fulfillment is the worst possible bargain. Your heart knows who you really are, and its pain demands attention before your spirit gets worn out.
The first step to addressing this situation is managing your feelings. Don't put on a happy face when you feel rotten. Your feelings won't kill you; repressing them might. The best way to manage feelings is to release them regularly. When I find myself rushing frantically, I sit down and say "Hello feelings," and usually sadness rushes up. Suddenly the world looks calmer and more manageable.
Despite your big paycheck, you're probably just a couple of paychecks away from bankruptcy. When giving your life away to success, you need toys as consolation prizes. Julie, a management consultant, spent on clothes, a condo, and a BMW, trapping herself in a cycle of deprivation and reward. Remember: you can never get enough of what you don't really want. Start saving by cutting expenses-stop buying expensive clothes, drive the old car, refinance your mortgage. By saving money, you're buying the most precious thing: time to explore what you really want.
Successful people become successful for different reasons, and unhappy with it for different reasons too. There are five scenarios that might explain your situation: 1) You never actually decided on your career but just followed the logical steps; 2) Your work consumes your entire life, leaving no room for relationships or personal interests; 3) The work is fine but the environment or people are toxic; 4) The work isn't what you expected-the reality differs drastically from your vision; or 5) You achieved your trophy but feel empty because you were chasing success to please someone else or make someone love you.
The cure for burnout isn't just a vacation, which will be erased within hours of returning. As Merlin says in Camelot, "The cure for sorrow is to learn something." Learning something new or doing something creative refreshes your mind by waking up the imagination you've neglected. Choose something completely different from your job skills-if your work uses language, try painting; if you're confined to small spaces, try mountain climbing.
If you've achieved success only to find it hollow, you may have pursued accomplishments to win someone's approval rather than for yourself. Like Devon, a champion athlete who crashed after seeing her father's disapproval, you'll need to rediscover your original love for your work. After facing the sorrow of having an unloving father, Devon remembered her passion for running and became a coach who trains girls to win for themselves. The solution lies in finding personal meaning beyond external validation.
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Breaking Free from Tribal Expectations
When your deepest desires conflict with your family's values, you face one of life's most difficult challenges. Like Marnie, who wanted to be a college professor while her bar-owner parents dismissed academia, you may be suffering from what Hans Christian Andersen illustrated in "The Ugly Duckling"-being born into the wrong tribe. Your heredity carries genes from unknown ancestors, explaining why a family of singers might produce a farmer or lawyers might produce an actor.
When you're born with different values and interests than your family-like a swan hatched among ducks-you create internal conflict between your "tribal voice" and your "personal voice." This conflict creates a constant debate in your mind that can sabotage your success, as it did for Marnie who struggled through college after her father dismissed her academic ambitions.
To resolve this conflict, create a two-column debate on paper. Label one column "Personal" and the other "Tribal." Begin with a strong positive statement about your heart's desire, then record the immediate negative response from your tribal voice. Continue this debate, alternating between columns. Kate discovered this when debating her desire to be a fashion designer despite coming from a family of social workers. Her tribal voice argued "Fashion design? When people are starving on the street?" but she countered that "Dressing well enhances everybody's self-esteem" and that social work isn't the only way to help people.
Once you begin breaking away from tribal rules, expect anxiety-what I call "the shakes." You might miss appointments, doubt your talent, feel like a fraud, or sabotage your success. This happens because you've given up family safety to pursue your adventure, leaving you both excited and lonely. Remember that these growing pains are normal when pursuing your true identity.
Being an outsider in your newly chosen field can actually be advantageous. Like Joseph Conrad, who mastered English despite being a native Polish speaker, your unique perspective allows you to notice things that insiders miss. Your different background gives you fresh insights that can become your strength.
Ask yourself why someone with your talents and background is uniquely qualified for your dream. Kate, the would-be fashion designer from a philanthropist family, realized her background taught her to care about people beyond haute couture, giving her insight into comfort, cost, and pride in appearance. Marnie, the aspiring professor from a family of bar owners, recognized she could ask obvious questions that academics in their small world might miss.
Make a list of at least twenty assets you inherited from your family-interests, habits, temperament, physical traits, and skills. Include qualities from extended family members too. Reframe criticisms as strengths: "You're uppity" becomes "I'm independent." Then draw connections between your family's values and your aspirations, no matter how different they seem. Marnie connected her family's self-reliance in running their bar to her scholarly pursuits, recognizing she inherited their curiosity, stubbornness, and combativeness-all useful in academia.
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Navigating Life's Transitions: Finding Direction After Disruption
Life doesn't follow the expected trajectory of setting up family, business, home and finances, then resting while everything runs on momentum. Instead, change is inevitable-whether through job loss, children leaving home, retirement, divorce, widowhood, illness, or even unexpected good fortune. These transitions force us to regroup completely. Though initially appearing as disasters, these changes actually represent gifts-second chances to design entirely new lives with fresh choices.
When life changes dramatically, you're essentially abandoned on a strange shore. The loss of familiar routines is deeply disorienting, and you must find ways to process emotions without becoming overwhelmed. Three methods can help: First, if you know what you're feeling but hesitate to express it, complain anyway-whine, panic, and vent those emotions privately. Second, if you tend to suppress feelings, take time to identify them by mentally reviewing happiness, anger, sadness and fear. Third, if you wallow in negative feelings, set boundaries-like the 80-year-old who says "I only mope on Tuesdays."
After grieving your loss, turn and face the new territory. Though you're a stranger here, you've successfully navigated transitions before-like moving from high school to college. Modern life requires more frequent reinvention, with 1990 college graduates expected to hold 10-12 jobs across 3-5 fields during their careers. Though uncomfortable, you've already proven you can handle change.
Before making decisions about your future, reconnect with your authentic self-your style, abilities and talents. For those comfortable with imagination, fantasizing offers a direct path to discovering your desires. Answer four revealing questions: Who would you like to spend a day with? What famous person would you like to be? What animal would you most like to be? What time and place in history would you like to visit? The answers provide valuable clues about your authentic desires.
For those who resist fantasy thinking, recall activities you enjoyed at different ages without censoring your responses. Create an exhaustive inventory of everything you enjoy in your present life-from having tea at three o'clock to finding lost items when nobody else could. This extensive list will reveal how many things you actually enjoy, contradicting your belief that you have no idea what you want.
Your touchstone is the delicious core of all the things you want-what makes them truly appealing to you. Look for patterns in your fantasies, childhood activities, and current loves to identify this core. Activities that recur throughout your life are decisive indicators.
Everyone faces obstacles to their dreams-lack of time, money, credentials, know-how, or confidence. The solution is creating your own Success Team, because isolation is the dream-killer. Unlike work or family obligations that others enforce, nobody makes you pursue your dreams. A Success Team is a buddy system where friends help each other achieve their goals through support and accountability.
Finding what you truly want can trigger an emotional crisis similar to mid-life awakening. After years of responsibilities and "benign servitude," you suddenly realize there are two of you-the workhorse and your free spirit. This recognition often brings painful regrets about time "wasted." Don't avoid these feelings-becoming mature means accepting what you cannot change and facing unresolved sorrows. The cure for regret is determination to fill those empty spaces now.
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Embracing Your Authentic Self: The Path Forward
Throughout this journey, we've explored the many barriers that prevent us from knowing and pursuing what we truly want. Whether it's family expectations, fear of success, scattered interests, unfulfilling achievements, or tribal conflicts, these obstacles have one thing in common: they disconnect us from our authentic desires.
The good news is that your dreams have survived intact despite criticism, expectations, others' unhappiness, and lack of support. Understanding these blocks should lead to action. Even one significant breakthrough should have your wishes reappearing, whether timidly or forcefully.
Though defense mechanisms will continue to arise whenever you pursue beloved goals, you need never be hopelessly stuck again. You can pursue whatever makes your eyes light up without sacrificing security or hurting others. While deferred dreams atrophy "like a raisin in the sun," dreams that receive daily exercise grow stronger and more beautiful.
Remember that doing what you love isn't selfish-it's the most generous thing you can do. The world needs people who have come alive through their work, who bring passion and authenticity to everything they touch. As Novalis said, "We are human and our lot is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds."
The journey to discovering what you truly want isn't always straightforward, but it's invariably worthwhile. By facing your resistance, understanding your patterns, and taking consistent action, you create momentum that carries you toward a life of meaning and fulfillment. You already know what you want-now it's time to clear away whatever has been blocking your path and move boldly in that direction.
