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how can you be at your Best in Your Work Calling? By Emily Heisinger

7 ways to refuel and return to your calling, on the blog:

Picture this:

You wake up in the morning and you feel excited to start your day. You get ready for work and perhaps grab breakfast before heading out the door. It might be early and you might be rushing, but you are ready for your day because there is a project at work you have been loving working on. You have been in a positive flow recently and the work you’ve been producing is high quality. You leave work feeling satisfied with how you spent your time that day, and feeling like your work-life is thriving.

Now, entertain this:

You wake up, feeling tired and beat down already. You are dreading going to work, and your shoulders feel heavy with the weight of the things you need to accomplish that day. You walk into the office and half of your time at work is spent sitting and waiting for motivation to strike. This lack of motivation has caused the quality of your work to decrease and you no longer feel proud of what you are producing. When you leave for the day, you feel disappointed and downtrodden.

There is most likely an in-between of these two scenarios, a place where you might find yourself on the way from one state to another. But for some of you reading, the second scenario rings far too true in your life. Perhaps you once claimed the first- to be thriving, creating, and producing things you were proud of at work. Now, however, you are in a slump, and you’re not sure how you got there.

In a chapel talk at Biola University, Arianna Yeh (nee Molloy) spoke about calling, and inspired students with ways to find theirs and feel content with the journey God was taking them on in any time they might spend searching. But near the end of her talk, she spoke on “the darkside of calling”. She made two important points:

1.When you are living out your skillset and your passion, it can be easy to go above and beyond certain boundaries.

The first point challenged students to come face to face with this question: If you feel called, when do you start saying no, and how do you say no? Yeh said this habit of always saying yes can slowly and deceptively lead you to “job idolization”. This means that you begin to think that because you appear called to your work, it is the greatest area you should be involved in. Unfortunately for most, when you begin to idolize your job, work moves from being an expression of who you are to the definition of who you are. This is dangerous and damaging, but so easy to fall into.

2."Workaholism" is a real and tangible addiction.

In the second point about the “dark side” of calling, she talked about a commonly used term “workaholic”. This term has become like a compliment in our culture, but working can become an addiction, just like anything else we idolize. But when you overwork, it can become less about feeling good from completing the tasks, and more about avoiding the bad feelings that come when you do not do it. Workaholism can be a damaging lifestyle that can cause burnout of your passions, but also affect your life in other ways.

So, if you are finding yourself relating to any of these concepts, you might be asking,

“Ok, Emily, but what can I do about it?”

Stefan Sagmeister spoke in a 2009 TedTalk titled “The Power of Time Off” about this very concept. He gave his own testimony to losing passions and quality in his work life. Then, he explained his very shocking and innovative modern day version of “sabbathing”. Sagmeister cut a few years off of his retirement and dispersed them amongst his working years. Now, every seven years he closes down his business for an entire year.

After his first year sabbatical, he returned to work, and returned to his calling. He felt that his job became his calling again, and the enjoyment of completing his projects and in the time spent at work returned. In addition, his business plan worked in the long term, because after his year of exploration and rest, the quality of his craft increased and he was able to ask for higher prices in return.

Sabbathing is, in the first place, a biblical concept.

The Jews in the Old Testament practiced sabbathing religiously every week, but also in longer periods of time such as the sabbath year referred to in Leviticus 25:1-7. It was a time to rest from hard work and was modeled after God’s rest after the creation of the heavens and the earth. In the New Testament, it is found Romans 20:7 that the early church still observed this day of rest.

In the creation story, God rested on the seventh day from all of his work:

"1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he Rested From All the work of creating he had done."----Genesis 2:1-3

In my bible class, my professor, Andrew Kelley, recently talked about the sabbath of God. He said the reason God rested on the seventh day was not that he was fatigued, but rather was a declaration that his creation was ready to go. Everything we would need on earth had been provided for, and he was finished working. So, when we sabbath, we are to rest, but also reflect and remember that God has provided all we need.

The idea of rest has been lost on many who work in our modern day. It can be looked down upon, feel like a waste of time, or make you anxious to get back to work. But, like the early followers of God, resting is important for us.

What would it be like to refuel our souls and bodies?

Are you tired of living in the worklife you have now?

Do you feel like your calling has fizzled or become difficult in ways it never was before?

Did you relate to some of Arianna Yeh’s thoughts on exhaustive and toxic work?

Are you inspired by Stefan Sagmeister’s sabbaticals?

Do you feel ready to rest, reflect, and refuel?

Here are some ways to get started:
  1. Revisit your hobbies you hold outside of work.
  2. Find an activity that allows you to take your mind off work for an extended period of time. Get involved in this at least once a week.
  3. Practice saying “no” or turning down a few projects a month. You do not have to take on everything.
  4. Learn to set a boundaries and keep them.
  5. Leave work on time if you are in the habit of working too much overtime. Try it once a week and see how you can increase that over time.
  6. Schedule a vacation. Get it on the calendar so that you will have time set aside for prolonged rest.
  7. Spend time in scriptures like John 1:12, 1 Peter 2:9, Matthew 11:28-30, and Philippians 4:6-7 that remind us who we are in Christ and teach us how to rest.

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