When he was nearing 80 years old, legendary Chicago Bears football coach George Halas was asked how much longer he intended to work and coach. He replied, “It is only work if you would rather be somewhere else.”
When the passion to get to work starts from the first minute of the morning and lasts throughout the day, we can’t really call it work. When the activities that comprise what others describe as your work are your life’s passion, that work becomes a calling. You have found your calling when your professional life aligns so strongly with your personal interests and passions that they are indistinguishable.
People who have found their calling never really retire or step away from what they have trained themselves to do. They may do less of it over time, but they don’t have anything else they would rather be doing or anywhere else they would rather be. The very idea of retirement to someone who views work and play as the same thing is puzzling to them. Why would anyone stop doing what they love if they didn’t have to?
The famous quote popularized by Rev. Ernest T. Campbell seems apropos here: “The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.” For those who find their calling early in their lives or careers, their passion grows with each successive year. Over time, what they do and who they are become one and the same.
When at the end of his life Frank Sinatra was asked how much longer he was going to sing, he replied that he didn’t have a choice. He was a singer. Singers sing because that is who they are and have made themselves to be.
We often think that finding your calling is a matter of trial and error or the happenstance of luck. But, more often than not, it is a commitment to perfecting a craft that over time takes over how people see themselves.
Passion isn’t always something you find. For those with a true passion for excellence in life, it is something they bring to everything they do and it eventually makes them who they are and how they see themselves.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
