The art to find your calling

Since a short while an inner uncalmness forced me back to self-reflection and more thinking on my future and what it is that I am passionate about. I always felt a certain jealousy when I heard people talking about their passions and about the moment when they knew what they want to do in life... stories like... I was sitting on a hill in South Africa and I knew I want to found a university once.
I never had a moment like this, I am interested into a very broad range of things and topics and there is not one thing as far I can tell that I am extremley passionate about. Something I know this is it what I want to spend my life on.

So back in self-reflection mood I was spending 2 hours in a bookshop looking for food for thought. One of the books I bought - and which I already read - is called "Die Kunst seine Berufung zu finden" by Petra Bock (The art to find your callin). The book is written by a woman who had a successful career in business, but always felt that business is not the only thing she wanted to spend her life with. The book goes through history and describes how since a long time people try to find out what their calling is and also gives guidance on how to work on it yourself.

The approach she promotes is to first think back to your children days and to the activities you liked back then. Then to think about the now and about the activities / topics you enjoy. You should combine this with what your dreams for your future and then go through a time of "incubation" where you free your mind and through intuition and inspiration the calling will (slower or faster) come to you. The book then goes into detail about the phases after the initial calling - trial and error, planning, fears and inner criticism and how to make your calling a reality.

I started with the first step and wrote on a piece of paper all the activities I enjoyed while I was a kid / teenager. Here it comes:

• doing puzzles
• drawing and painting
• baking cakes and especially cookies
• crochet (häkeln)
• playing theatre ( I was part of a group and also did performances)
• fotography (I had a special camara with filters etc..)
• music ( I played the piano and also took part in jazz workshops, been to a record studio etc)
• writing poems and short stories (published in newspapers) and also I was chief editor of the graduation newspaper of my graduation year
• horse riding
• reading books - favorite ones where rather philisophical ones
• playing chess ( I was Tyrolan chess champion)

So looking back I was rather on the creative / arts side doing all kind of activities; mostly it was about creating something new but within certain boundaries e.g. I was not so good a free drawing but rather at copyng something (nature, a person, another picture..) Sometimes I wonder where this side of me has gone? I am doing nothing of these things at the moment? Why? Did priorities simply shift? Do I just not take time? Is this just a part of my past, a different chapter of my life that is closed?

Do I miss it? I don´t know...

Then I also sometimes think about what are my dreams? I admire people with dreams and often think I have lost my capability to dream? I don´t normally say... my dream is... I rather sometimes see pictures... mainly two picutres.

the first is about me on the front page of a magazine with the title under my fotossaying "young entrepreneur of the year". the second is me standing on a window looking outside into a beautiful garden with a baby in my arms.

Dreams? Just some pictures in my head? How do they link to what I used to spend my time on in kid´s days?

Open questions..