EP 16. Connecting To Your Calling

Sometimes we are just kind of waiting for this bombshell idea, heavenly download to come, and then when it doesn't, we're like, God, why are you speaking? Why are you giving me the blueprint and showing me what I'm supposed to do? I'm so frustrated here.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a phase of life and we're like, Why haven't I made it there yet? Why is this taking so long? Why is it such a frustrating process? And why am I looking around at other people who just seem to be getting there?

And we can feel really discouraged and really frustrated. So I really want to dove in here because I think there's many different ways that you can get connected into your calling. So I want to talk about some of the things that I've done and some of the things that I've watched. Other people do as well in getting connected to where they really feel like they're walking in their living in their purpose and they're excited about life.

They're doing what lights them up. This is, of course, the goal. We all want that in some capacity. So when we find ourselves in a phase of life where that's just not what it looks like for us, we can get really discouraged and really frustrated. But what I want to bring to the table here is strategies so that if you do find yourself in that place and maybe you're not there now, maybe you have been before, maybe you will be at some point in the future.

I want you to be able to take some of the things that are shared today, apply them to your life, adapt them and adjust them in ways that work for you and just be inspired and encouraged that you're not alone despite how often you look at it. Other people and you see that they are doing things that they appear to absolute love and enjoy and they're killing it and they're talented and they're walking in their field.

I want you to know that you're not alone in the fact that maybe you feel like you're not doing any of those things. And so, you know, lately I have been like I would say that I'm like a podcast junkie in the sense of like I listen to podcasts several all day long, so I'm watching so many other people who are in this podcast world and they are absolutely killing it.

Like, I love Megan Kelly. I listen to Megan Kelly if not every day, almost every day. And she's somebody that I've always looked up to and admired. I'm really drawn to her how articulate she is and just how fierce and unapologetic she is and can conveying her thoughts and ideas. She's somebody that I admire a lot. I listen to Ben SHAPIRO, I listen to Candace Owens, I listen to Kayla Craft for Molly Mommy millionaire.

Those are kind of like my for go tos. I also listen to a lot of think media by Sean Kanal and I just really, really love and absorb those podcasts all day long. And so I see these other people who are killing it in the game and it can be so inspiring. But the flipside of that is if you're not careful, looking at other people for inspiration can also make you feel where you are in a deficit or where you just are not emulating that at all.

So one of the first things that you can do when you are looking to get connected into your calling is to surround yourself with people who are doing the things that you want to do. And so my example here just now, I listen to podcasts all day long. That is a way that I do that from an online perspective.

No, I don't know these people in real life, but I'm constantly immersed in that world. A podcast thing. And while podcasting for me is just one piece of the puzzle, I have bigger aspirations and dreams that are completely outside the podcasting world. If I were to like narrow down into somebody or people that I feel like are totally immersed in that world and doing amazing at it, it's those podcast podcasters that I just mentioned.

And so for you, you can think about what are ways that you can follow and be immersed in the world that you want to be in online. People who are walking these things out. And so what I want you to do is look for people online who are doing what you want to do and who are immersed in the field and follow those people and get ideas from them and just see what they're doing, how they're working it out.

How did they start out doing what they do now? What baby steps did they take? Did they start off with just a really small micro version of what you see them doing right now? Chances are the answer is probably yes. Most people don't have the money or the resources to just go all in and go all out at what they want to do.

They had had to start small and just take it step by step and build and grow as they go until they've created maybe the empire that they have today if they're at that level. So I think so many times, especially if you're in a small community already, it's hard to find other people that are interested in your same things, are passionate about the same things that you are.

You can be connected on many different in many different ways with other people. Maybe you're connected on a spiritual level, maybe you're connected, you know, because you have kids the same age. There's many different ways that we can connect with other people. But the things that make our heart beat, sometimes it is hard to find other people whose desires and passions completely match up with yours to feel like, Oh, I've got somebody to vent to about the frustrations of walking this out, or there's somebody that really gets this industry in the challenges that I'm up against.

So one way to kind of combat this in a sense, is to look for people in that online space that you can connect with. And while you might not be able to have a dialog with them because you don't know them personally, it really does help. I think in following their journey and getting inspired by the ways that things have unfolded for them, the challenges that they face, the successes that they've reached.

If you go about it with the right mentality and the right perspective, getting immersed in that way can be a really good thing. And so what do I think about how to do this in real life? As far as like in person? I think this can come about in a few ways. You can look for people who are in your own unique community that are doing somewhat close to what you want to be doing.

Or maybe they're somewhere in the same thread or roughly the same industry, and you can look at what you can provide them. That's a value and just come alongside them, help them. I've talked about this in previous episodes, help them build what they're doing, and in the process you're going to learn so much along the way you can ask them to go to lunch and just have a conversation.

And I know people are busy and it can feel really intimidating, especially to reach out to somebody who's super successful in the field you want to go into. But I remember this was probably several months ago now. It was when my husband and I were thinking about really going in, in creating advertising productions for people. And I had asked a lady to lunch who did this for businesses.

Now, I didn't want to do it for businesses, so I wasn't direct competition. I was going to go for a completely different set of clients, completely different genre in that sense. And she was a busy lady friend of her on Facebook. And then I said, Sure, I laid it all out and described for her what I wanted to do and just asked if I could pick her brain, if I could talk to her, basically explaining this message.

I didn't say it directly like this, but like I'm not competition. I'm not looking to steal your ideas. I just wanted to connect with somebody else who's roughly in the same industry. And she was very busy. It took a few weeks, but she we did connect and we did go to lunch together. And that's just a simple, small way.

You may send several lunch invitations, but maybe only get one or two back that agree to meet with you for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever. But part of the benefit of that for you also is just learning to put yourself out there, learning to accept a rejection if you get one, learning to know how to just connect with other people who are in that space in a way that doesn't make them feel insecure or like you're in competition, but in a way that grows relationship and connection because when you are looking to build something, you do want to create relationships around you and you may never utilize that relationship in the future and you're not

necessarily doing it to get something later. But just maybe you just want to connect with somebody else who gets it. And you may have a friendship or relationship that blooms from that and maybe, maybe it doesn't. But regardless of whatever you think the outcome may or may not be, I really do think there's value in doing what you can to establish a good name and a good reputation in the field that you want to go into, even with your competitors.

And sometimes, of course, it doesn't always work perfectly and sometimes relationships just don't form the way that you want them to. But I do think there's value in reaching out and trying to establish those things. So that would be just a few ideas for what you can do when you're trying to create relationships in your field. You're trying to get connected and immersed with other people who are doing what you want to be doing.

And I know there's so many other ideas to go into, so I would also love to hear your thoughts. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave them down in the DMS, things that you've done to connect more fully into your calling. And I'm going to dove in here to some more, but I just wanted to mention that I know my lived experience, the advice that I can give you, but I want to encourage you as well to share your ideas, share your thoughts on how you have learned to connect into your calling.

Secondly, I would encourage you to explore what makes your heart beat. And when I think about this, this gets me really excited because I love reflection. I love thinking about what is it that makes my heart beat? And depending on where you're at in your life, when you're listening to this, you may feel like I don't even know I'm just so discouraged and depressed because I have tapped into my calling.

But I don't even know anymore what I want to do. And I so get that I went through several months, most recently where I was like, I don't even know what brings me joy anymore. I have. So, for lack of a better phrase, beat this horse to death, or it sucked all of the life out of me to pursue my calling because I have prayed and contended and pursued and never really felt like I found where my uniqueness and passion converged and it left me feeling just empty isn't probably the right word, but just really discouraged and frustrated.

And so I guess if you're listening to this and you're kind of in this place where you have tried so many things to connect to your calling, but it's not happened, and you're like, okay, I don't even know what to do anymore. I wouldn't even know where to start. But I want to encourage you to dove into this again, because it is so valuable to think about what it is that drives you, what motivates you, what makes you angry, what makes you just leap off the chair and want to join in the conversation?

What topics come up that just make you come alive and you can just talk all day on those topics or it just really makes you feel alive to dove into those conversations. I think when we can reflect on what makes our heart beat, it does allow us to start to identify things. And one of the ways or the angles that I want to dove into with this is really thinking about what is that deeper, fulfilled longing.

So I feel like when you do this, it helps you to identify any deeper longings that you have that you want to be fulfilled. For instance, if you desire to write a book, what is the underlying desire for wanting to write a book? Is it that you have a heart that has a message that you want to convey and you just have this burning on the inside of you to release that message because you just feel like you want to connect with other people that understand or you want to.

You have this deeper desire to help other people because maybe when you were struggling, you felt like you didn't have anybody. I think it's important and I wish I could think of like ten more examples to to really convey this idea. So maybe I'll just use myself as an example. So in doing this called Fourth Podcast, one of my deeper desires is connection.

I'm doing the podcast, I'm excited to share. I want to help people. I do have a message in my heart to convey, but at the end of the day, if I peel back the layers here, I'm really looking for connection in a community of ambitious women of faith, because that's how I would identify myself. I'm an ambitious woman of faith, and I love to have connection with other women who are ambitious women of faith as well.

So there's just this deeper desire that I'm looking to in some ways be fulfilled through this called Fourth Podcast. So that's just kind of a applicable example that you could use to then think of how this applies to you. And I think you could take this a million steps deeper, however deep you would want to go. And one of the journeys that I've been on lately is really discovering how to have my desire and longing fulfilled in God, because ultimately, at the end of the day, all these beautiful things that we go after and create and the desires on our heart that God does place there to do something more ultimately, at the end of

the day, because we live in this fallen world, our desire is only going to be ultimately fulfilled in God. And I think that's really valuable to remember when we're pursuing our calling and our purpose. Because sometimes and I can raise my hand to this, I have made my calling, my obsession or my idol. And I was just so focused on feeling like if I was just in my calling, I would feel fulfilled.

If I was just in my calling, I would be happy. I would be financially free. I would have this life that I dream of having. And what I've really had to lean into and look into further is how I can peel back the layers to what I'm really looking for, desire fulfilled, and then taking that and going into my spiritual life with my Heavenly Father and saying, God, I want my desire to be fulfilled and you, because that's the ultimate fulfillment.

All these other things are going to fade away. All these other things, they're going to bring some excitement and joy. But those that excitement and joy will fade. And I'll need the next new thing or only the next level. So there's this scripture that comes to mind when Jesus was talking to the woman at the well and she was offering him a drink, and he said that the water that he has to give you will thirst no more.

The gist of it is our desire and fulfillment will most profoundly be filled in our relationship with God. And that doesn't mean it's a perfect experience in the sense of there's times where we go through challenges in our spiritual life and challenges in life in general, and we're doing the mom thing, we're doing the wife thing, we are working in our careers and we just feel drained or a lack of fulfillment in life just doesn't feel like what we thought it would.

But that's where we go back to our relationship with God and we really focus in on making Him the main thing. And then when our relationship with him is what we are ultimately pursuing, some of these other things begin to work themselves out. And it doesn't again, it doesn't mean that everything's perfect, but I just want to encourage you in that, because I do think it's easy to get frustrated in the process all along the way when things just aren't folding the way that we want them to.

The third thing that I would direct you to do is look for patterns and what you're drawn to. If you're looking to connect into your calling, look for patterns. What are you naturally drawn to? I did this most recently when I was really looking at, Okay, I have all these podcasts that I listen to, but what is the commonality between what I absorb all the time?

This information that I'm absorbing all the time? And for me, I love the fact that these podcasts I listen to Candace Owens, Megan Kelly, Ben SHAPIRO, they're all people who are dynamically intelligent and articulate and fierce, and they're not afraid to speak their mind. And they are truth tellers and they are just dominating in their space from the perspective of being unabashedly unashamed in sharing and exposing lies and pursuing truth.

And I just love that. And it's something I want to dove into more with other series that I, you know, I have in the works thinking of of what I want to create on YouTube and in additional projects that I share that to say with you, the things that you're drawn to, whether it's the information you absorb or the conversations that you're drawn to, or the people that you're drawn to look for patterns in that way.

Because I do think it helps us to paint a picture for why we're drawn to that and to start to peel back and uncover Who am I really? And that's going to lead into another point here that I'm going to dove into who you are, really, which also impacts the way that you can connect to your calling. And so I think I'll just dove into that part of the conversation now, and that is asking God how he sees you and who He is called you to be.

And I shared a while ago about how this concept of for this podcast called Forth came about. And this ties into this point I'm going to make. I just envisioned how when we are pursuing our purpose, sometimes we are just kind of waiting for this bombshell idea, this heavenly download to come. And then when it doesn't, we're like, God, why aren't you speaking?

Why aren't you giving me the blueprint and showing me what I'm supposed to do? I'm so frustrated here. I know I've been there myself. And I felt like when I started this podcast, what God was saying, like, you're already invited into the throne room, you've already been called forth. And so you don't need to necessarily wait on me to say you do this.

You know, like if you picture like a royal scepter touching the soldier on the shoulder and the other shoulder. And if you think of of this activation, I guess I can't think of the word, but it's probably the word closest to what I'm trying to get at. Sometimes we wait to be activated and God's already like I've activated you.

You've already been called forth. Like I go back to the story of Esther and how in her day, in her situation, she had to wait to be called into the throne room. She couldn't just go in there or she risked her life and she made that decision and that choice to risk her life, her position, and go in uninvited to a place where she typically would have to wait for an invitation.

And in our calling and in our life, I believe that God has called us forth from the very beginning. And more often than not, what we need to do is take those steps forward instead of just waiting for this bombshell idea. I remember way back in the day when when people would write checks, which people still write checks, but they're just not as common, and we would be just so broke financially.

And I just pray for a check to come in the mail because that's like a thing. You hear people say, Oh, check's in the mail, you know? And I'm not saying that doesn't happen or I've had people that did receive checks in the mail. I think that's great. But what God was challenging me on is like, No, you need to be more financially wise.

You need to make better financial decisions. You can't just rely on praying for a miracle time and time again to get you out of your bad decisions. And so I relay that to our calling in the sense of step out, step forward. You've been called forth like fill it out, walk it out and don't be so stuck in.

Well, if I walk it out and it's not exactly what I meant to do, then I have wasted time. Because the truth is no. Oftentimes we're stepping out. We're going to evolve, it's going to shift and take shape in different ways. And that's okay. And that's a very normal thing to start out building something only to have two years in five years and however long and it starts to take a different shape and form.

But you won't know that until you take the steps to walk it out. And those first few times are going to feel like a failure because maybe you only have like two customers that buy from you. If you start a business or you only have a few listeners, if you're starting something that you're communicating information or you don't have very much feedback from friends and family or customers or clients or consumers for the thing that you're trying to launch and do.

That's okay. And that's a very normal part of the process. And starting small, there's actually a lot of gift and starting small. And I've spoken on previous episodes about that because you just learn to grow in front of a small audience instead of making your flops and failures in front of a huge audience in the very beginning. So there's very much a gift to starting small.

But I want to go back to my point of asking God what he says about you, because often we can be so deep in the discouragement that all we see is the failures. All we see is the flaws and the mistakes. But God's like, that is so not how I see you. Like you're my precious, beloved, adored child.

And when I look at you, I just see the gold and the gifting and the beauty. I mean, think about your own children. Yeah? Do they frustrate us sometimes? Yes. But when we look at our children, we see the incredible human beings that they're becoming. And we see their potential, even when they're showing us their worst. We see past that.

And we can look at them and say, like, this is what you're showing me, but I know this isn't who you are because we can see, you know, few years down the road to know, like they're going through something, they're growing through something and they're going to be better humans because of it. This isn't going to take them out.

This is just going to build them and strengthen them so that they can be more effective down the road because of what they're going through. That's what we see. And if that's what we see as humans looking at our human children, how much more does God look at you and your devastation and your frustration and see, I see this is where you see yourself, but I see you off in the distance over here and you are growing and thriving in everything you're going through.

Now, I'm going to use it for your good and for your benefit, and you are going to find beauty in the pain that you're in right now, because there's going to be something that you pull from it that's going to help you in the future. I just really feel like that's how God sees us because, you know, we are image bears.

The Bible says that we bear the image of Christ. And so if we in our humanness can manage that, and I believe that God takes it to the next level and beyond and can do it on such a bigger scale than what we can. And my last point I kind of touched on here and there, I'm going to dove into it a little bit more.

Is that understanding that where you're starting from, when you're starting to connect into your calling, doesn't have to be what you end with? And this is why I bring this up, because there's sometimes so much fear around feeling like you're not going to get it right or you're going to miss it, or you feel like, Gosh, I don't know if this is really the thing, so should I go for it?

And there's been times where I've pulled back from pursuing my calling because I just really didn't feel like I was aligned. And I'm glad that I actually didn't pursue that particular thing. But even if I had, I know that everything that would have evolved from that is something that would have been used for my good and my benefit.

And it would have been a lesson learned and it would have been fine. But I think it's really about wrestling through this mindset that if you have a huge dream, you can still walk out smaller facets of it knowing that the bigger picture will come to be. And I think about this with the called Fourth Podcast, I want have a big media production studio called Fourth is a piece of that.

But if I was so dead set on waiting till I had the hundreds of millions of dollars to start the media production studio, I'd probably be sitting here twiddling my thumbs, continuing to do jobs and work and projects that really aren't ultimately fulfilling for me. Now I am still doing all those things, but the point is, I'm walking out a piece of my bigger vision while I do the things I have to do.

And so I want you to think about this when it comes to yourself. What smaller piece or facet can you begin to walk out of a greater or bigger vision that you have for your calling and your purpose? And then while you're doing that, continuing to contend, I know something that I've really leaned into recently is just asking God, I have this big vision, but what is it that I really need to pray into for right now?

Because there's so many things when you're trying to start something that you could really focus on. Do I build the team? Do I develop the concepts more fully? Do I the perfect content concept? Do I get tested like there's a million things that you could focus on? Do I focus on funding and fundraising? And so one thing that I've done is I got this bigger vision of a media production studio.

So outside of my current realm, what do I focus on right now and what do I even need to exactly pray into? And he's given me some things to pray into, and I've been doing that lately and in the strangest ways. I've been seeing how he's been answering those prayers, not in the way that I ever would have intended.

And if I wasn't sensitive or spiritually aware, I believe I would even bypass those things that are happening right now is not related. Not that I think that I'm so incredibly spiritually gifted or connected. But my point is we have to be intentional to pray into things like this and then recognize when God's moving in a certain area because it would be easy to miss it, because oftentimes the way that he answers prayer is so different the way than the way we think he's going to answer.

So I think a lot of this goes back to this phrase that I got in 2020 when I was doing brand builders as a brand building type of marketing that I invested in. And one thing that came out of that is my phrase of let go of the outcome. And so that's what I want to encourage you to do today, is let go the outcome, keep connecting to your calling and so if any of this has spoken to you today, I want you to pay attention to the connected videos that you're going to see coming up here, especially if you're listening on YouTube.

I have other videos where I connect into these concepts even more fully and I'll leave them linked in the description. Or if you're listening to this as the podcast, take a look through my other titled episodes and I'll see you on the next one.