Jolt! by Phil Cooke (whitelam books .TXT) 📕

A calling is the highest form of life purpose because it transcends the need for fame, financial success, or status. Calling drove Mother Teresa into the slums of Calcutta, compelled writer and Harvard professor Henri Nouwen to spend his life with the mentally handicapped and physically disabled, and persuaded Dr. Paul Brand to give up a prosperous medical practice to spend his life caring for lepers.

In a world absorbed in the reckless pursuit of riches and fame, you could do no better than experience a calling that would cause you to make a genuine difference in the world.

MOVING FROM THE GENERAL TO THE SPECIFIC

Now that you have a list of possibilities and are starting to narrow down those possibilities, it’s time to focus on specific destinations. Start matching your goals to your own personal gifts and talents. Take a serious look where the match is the strongest.

First, a word about skills, gifts, and talents. People often have enormous difficulty determining what they are really good at doing. It should be quite easy, but many people spend their lives without thinking about their talents and therefore lose touch with their greatest strengths.

What do you find easy? Are you an exceptional leader? Do you make friends easily? Do you love numbers? What about financial advice, networking, decision-making skills, or managing in a crisis?

Draw two columns on your paper. List your goals on one side and your skills on the other. Don’t be shy—this is the time to focus on your strengths, not to be modest.

There are formal evaluations that indicate personality types as well as strengths and weaknesses, such as the Myers-Briggs evaluation and the DISC profile. Some resources are low-cost or even free on the Internet—an example is Tom Rath’s Strengths Finder. But if you don’t have access to a professional evaluation, talk to some friends you respect and ask their advice. Show them the list of skills and talents you feel you possess, and get their feedback. Sometimes others see things you can’t see, and might point out additional areas of strength.

Then, begin connecting potential dreams and goals to the appropriate skills and talents you possess.

Karen was raised in an environment where people told her she would never achieve anything significant. She was never encouraged or allowed to excel in anything and grew up believing she was worthless. She was an excellent math student in school, but her parents never paid any attention to it. It never crossed her mind that math was something that would help her beyond high school. Right out of school, she married a man who was no different from her parents, and she spent the next seven years being berated, criticized, and humiliated. When he unexpectedly died of an undiagnosed heart problem, she was forced into the job market, having no idea which direction to go or what career to pursue.

She tried a series of jobs—housekeeping, retail clerk, and factory worker—but was miserable at each position. One day at the factory, she was having lunch with an assistant bookkeeper who mentioned how far behind she was with the latest sales figures. Karen offered to help after work, and the minute she started adding up the figures, a light came on. She suddenly remembered her gift for math and plunged into the task with an excitement that amazed her friend. Karen finished in half the time it took her bookkeeper friend and so impressed the factory manager that he offered Karen a job in the accounting department.

Today the company is paying Karen to take night classes toward an accounting degree. For the first time in her life she feels as if she has a purpose. She loves her job and can’t wait to get to work each day. The possibilities are wide-open for Karen. Because she decided to make the necessary changes in her life to go back to school and finish her degree, she will have the credentials to move into accounting, engineering, or anywhere else her passion for numbers can take her.

It’s about connecting the dots, so stop dreaming and start connecting. Take your list of skills, gifts, and talents, and start connecting them to your dreams and goals.

The next step is to decide what really matters.

REVIEW

Jolt Your Direction

The time to change is now. List anything that is stopping you from making changes in your life today. Then answer the following questions.

1. What changes in my life need to be made?

2. Are there areas in my past I need to leave behind?

3. Do I need to forgive anyone in order to move forward with my life?

4. What is my destination?

5. At the end of the change process, what type of person will I be?

6. As a result of this book, what three major goals do I want to set for my life, and/or what three major changes do I want to make?

JOLT

WHAT

MATTERS

» Jolt #6

JOLT YOUR PRIORITIES

Taking Control of What Is Important

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.

—MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, FOUNDER OF THE CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND

If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn’t lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda?

—SETH GODIN, LYNCHPIN

Today we live in an oddly conflicted world, with a confused moral map. On the positive side, I bought a cup of coffee this morning from a national coffee chain that donates a portion of every sale to help the rain forest. My wife buys groceries at a store that only sells food produced in ways that help the environment. Office supply stores feature recycled paper, printer companies recondition print cartridges, and even mechanics now dispose of oil and grease in ways friendly to the environment.

All is well in the world.

On the other hand, in the age of Bernard Madoff, corporate corruption seems to be at an all-time high, the public