Discerning Livelihood: How Do You Know What Work is Yours?

18 Jan Discerning Livelihood: How Do You Know What Work is Yours?

Discerning Livelihood: How Do You Know What Work is Yours? It’s less of a challenge guided by our few basic principles to stand you in good stead your whole lifetime of livelihoods. This livelihood icon is open-source from the Noun Project.

Discerning Livelihood: How Do You Know What Work is Yours?

This post is inspired by a question from a soul-colleague who reads my blog and asked how to decide what work is his to do in this world.

First, all of the below is written anticipating that livelihood is something that will change over the course of your life. Mine certainly has, and at age 64 as I revise this (originally written when I was 57), this continues.

I anticipate living to 150; it is important to anticipate change. In this post, I provide a few basic principles that I intend to be useful throughout your life, culling from my life experience, economic research, and others’ life experience. Let me know in the comments to this post if I’ve met my aim.

1. Discerning vs. Deciding

First of all, I want to note that I’ve replaced the questioner’s use of “deciding” with “discerning.” Discerning is an ongoing process you get better and better at. Deciding is a bit scarier. It sounds quite final. That’s not how I see livelihood.

One of my favorite quotes about the difference between discerning and deciding is from historian Natalie Zemon Davis on how she decides what “really” happened in history when she is writing about it:

I see complexities and ambivalences everywhere…am willing to settle, until I can get something better, for conjectural knowledge and possible truth…make ethical judgements as an assay of pros and cons, of daily living and heroic idealism. [My intellectual opponent] sees things in clean, simple lines; he wants absolute truth, established with no ambiguity by literal and explicit words; he makes moral judgements in terms of sharp rights and wrongs.*

We are rightly in a process of discernment throughout our lives, especially when it comes to something as all-important as how we will spend the bulk of our waking hours, our contribution to the planet, and our utmost happiness–all of which can be understood as “livelihood.”  We are less well served by “sharp rights and wrongs.”

So think of figuring out your livelihood as a process.

2. Age Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re a Cheese**

The questioner (in what he wrote me about his question) assumed that his (young) age might change the game of figuring out his livelihood. Not so. Unless you say so. If you think in linear terms about your age, you box yourself into the categories of your own creating. That’s fine; just realize they are yours, not Life’s. I haven’t noticed Life caring about what age we are. Especially nowadays, when really famous, accomplished people do amazing things not just in their 40s, not just in their 30s or 20s–but in their teens. There are some wise children being born.

Likewise, I am seeing fabulous examples of people doing all kinds of interesting things as they near (and pass) “retirement” age. And you can bet I am looking for them! Nowadays, older people are finding funding to go back to school and starting 2nd and 3rd careers, or donating their lives to livelihood rather than a “straight” job when they were able to retire. This means they are taking on student debt, and wanting to work for non-profits, just like our questioner. (Lucy Kellaway is my favorite recent example.)

So think of figuring out your livelihood as something that ends when you die!

3. Niche + Gifts Still = Choices

The questioner wondered if, being young, the process is harder because “one’s more unique gifts may not be developed yet–and/or one may not fully understand one’s ‘niche’ yet.” I think of gifts as paints in a paintbox. Hopefully, as you get older, your palette gets more and more colorful. We know more, we become more useful to even more good things happening.

So, it is true: when you are young, you have not developed all your gifts. If you view livelihood as a process, you anticipate knowing more and more about yourself. And you may throw yourself into more and more challenging situations. I hope you do! I try to live continually at my edge of growth, while utilizing the skills I came in with and develop as I grow.

The questioner continues:

I was intrigued by the part of your interview with Kimberly where you talked about returning to organizing projects, and how earlier on, as you said it: “in my heart I couldn’t figure out what was the most important thing.” Perhaps you’ve gleaned some wisdom over the years on that discernment task.

This refers to my 20s when I was beset by trying to figure out which cause was most important or most urgent. (We tend to confuse important and urgent, but that’s another blog post.) I was a social-justice organizer who finally chose to become a fulltime grassroots fundraising consultant because it allowed me to work on many different causes at the same time.

The wisdom I’ve gained is that my livelihood choices tend to revolve around a combination of the momentary, the cosmic, and the personal.

See Yourself at the Confluence of the Cosmic, the Personal and What’s Between

• • The momentary: I see and seize the moment. I’m strategic in how I use my gifts. What is going on right now? That has huge impact on what I turn my talents to next.
  • The cosmic: it matters to me that I think my work is meaningful at a cosmic level. (Everything matters. Don’t try to tell me it doesn’t; that’s just a given for me.)
  • The personal: my happiness matters. I do a much better job at things I enjoy.

Don’t let niche or gifts make your choices! See yourself at the three-way intersection of the personal, the cosmic, and what lies in between. Choose! even if it seems impractical. Don’t fight, don’t resist what is, but don’t cave in to the merely practical, as what is considered practical will change before your very eyes. (On this, you can trust my aged wisdom!)

Remember: Calling is Distinct from Livelihood

A calling isn’t necessarily your livelihood–and your livelihood may or may not be your calling. Here’s my page devoted to resources on your calling.

And if you liked this post, you may be interested to know that one week after I wrote it, I followed it up with this one, “Freedom from Fear in Discerning Livelihood,” which focuses on calling more directly.

*I found her wonderful essay, “On the Lame,” here on 1/16/18.

**A bumpersticker whose brilliance I cannot claim, only quote.