Callings: Finding a following an authentic life
Author: Gregg Levoy
Official Description:
How do we know if we’re following our true callings? How do we sharpen our senses to cut through the distractions of everyday reality and hear the calls that are beckoning us?
Is the first book to examine the many kinds of calls we receive and the great variety of channels through which they come to us. A calling may be to do something (change careers, go back to school, have a child) or to be something (more creative, less judgmental, more loving). While honoring a calling’s essential mystery, this book also guides readers to ask and answer the fundamental questions that arise from any calling: How do we recognize it? How do we distinguish the true call from the siren song? How do we handle our resistance to a call? What happens when we say yes? What happens when we say no?
Drawing on the hard-won wisdom and powerful stories of people who have followed their own calls, Gregg Levoy shows us the many ways to translate a calling into action. In a style that is poetic, exuberant, and keenly insightful, he presents an illuminating and ultimately practical inquiry into how we listen and respond to our calls, whether at work or at home, in our relationships or in service. Callings is a compassionate guide to discovering your own callings and negotiating the tight passages to personal power and authenticity.
Why I recommend it: Callings was recommended to me during a time in my life when I was working on coming into my own identity. Callings helped me to tune into my inner listener, so to speak, so that I could sense into what I was being called towards. The author details what usually gets in our way of hearing what we are being called towards and how to move those obstacles out of our way in our search of a more authentic self. This book helped me to move in action towards things in my life that would bring me more joy.
My favorite quote from the book: “If we ask our bodies what remedies they need—not just for the sake of curing our maladies, but also for healing our lives—they’ll tell us. ‘Symptoms are purposeful conditions,’ he says. ‘They could be the beginning of fantastic phases of life, or bring you amazingly close to the center of existence, or be a royal road to the development of the personality. Anyway, there’s no known method I’ve ever heard of that will allow you to avoid a message that wants to come into your life. Even right up to the moment of death, it will try to pop through.’”
