You know, when life gets hard, maybe you lose loved ones, friends move away, or you start
to wonder and worry about whether the life you're living is the one you've been called
to live.
How do you have joy in these moments?
It's a hard question.
And in this episode, I want to try to help you answer it.
What's going on, guys?
This is this episode of the Pursuit of Calling podcast.
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is also again in the show notes.
What's going on, guys?
So in this episode, as you already know, we're talking about joy.
You know how joy is greater than happiness.
It's not the same thing.
So I want to quickly start off with a definition of what joy is.
It's choosing to respond to external circumstances with inner contentment and satisfaction.
And as a Christian and for the Christians that are listening, we know that God will
use these experiences to accomplish his work in and through our lives.
Right?
So that's where our peace comes from.
That's where this contentment and satisfaction comes from.
And whenever we're talking about this episode, as you already heard or have already read
a few times probably that this episode is called Joy on the Journey or Staying Joyful
on the Journey.
And what I mean by that is how do you have that inner contentment, that inner peace,
no matter the circumstances that you're going through, regardless of the circumstance, right?
Regardless of whenever you maybe fail to meet your own expectations, maybe whenever you
lose a loved one or life just keeps throwing these curveballs at you that you don't expect,
how do you stay joyful in those moments?
It's a hard question.
So I want to keep diving into that.
First though, one of the first things you want to think about right now is remembering
what your calling is and why you're doing it.
It can be frustrating when you have a calling and you know you're calling, but feel like
life keeps getting in the way or maybe there's something devastating happens.
And you're working towards it and life gets in the way and you don't know how to deal
with it.
However, there's a bigger purpose.
I know that there's a bigger purpose on my life and that doesn't stop me because of my
circumstances.
I have muscular dystonia as you know, just like that definition said earlier, that joy
is an internal response of how we choose to respond to external circumstances.
The thing with my dystonia, I'm going to skip down my notes a little bit just because this
is where my mind's going right now.
My muscular dystonia, it's in my body, right?
There's a lot, like you can have stress, you can have anxiety, you can have other external
factors happening.
The reason I say like my dystonia is external is because it's external to my mind.
Like so many other circumstances are external to your mind, external to your heart where
these, where this mind is where like this stress is being constructed, but it's also
where this peace can be created.
There's internal peace that comes from your soul, comes from your inner being, that of
remembering like looking and remembering why you're doing it.
I'm going to jump ahead now and saying like remembering why you're working towards something
is like remembering like the vision is like looking towards the future.
Like you have a reason, right?
Why you're working towards, why you want to work, live in your calling.
Why you want to work towards a particular goal.
And now we've said before that your calling goes with you wherever you go.
And that's a great, great to remember as well.
And it gives you inner joy that wherever you go, you are representative for your calling.
But whenever you know what your calling is, like, and you, you can apply it to a particular
goal.
You have something to work towards and you can remember it like you remember it.
Like why am I, why am I doing this right now?
Why am I so stressed out?
Why am I, why am I, like, why am I doing this podcast personally?
Like why am I doing this podcast?
Well, like I'm going to be honest with you guys.
Part of me did not want to sit down and record this episode today.
I'm tired.
I sat down and I'm recording it right now because I know that this is a part of my calling.
This is part of me being able to have joy in the circumstance of being tired, of being
in pain and remembering that this is going into your ears right now and hopefully giving
you some, hopefully reminding you of that joy or giving you a look into what this joy
is and helping you have joy on the journey of your calling.
Like I want to be able to have that impact in people's lives.
And this podcast for me is a piece of that.
There's, so let me kind of put that in more of a practical sense.
This is in my note, so bear with me.
Whenever I'm sitting down to do this podcast, like I'll think about it like today when I
didn't want to do it, I knew I was still going to.
I knew because the reason I knew I was still going to, here we go, is you might have to
go back and listen to this again.
The reason I sat down and decided to record is because I have a forward focused vision
on what I'm working towards.
Like we said before, what am I working towards?
I'm working towards being a life coach.
I'm working on changing lives.
And that brings me joy knowing that this podcast, me sitting down recording right now on August
4th at 2.50 PM, it brings me joy knowing that this plays a part in my calling for a greater
purpose for something that is greater than me.
And that's another thing to remember that your purpose is greater than you, is more
than you.
It's greater than yourself.
It's there for, it's not, this isn't to be daunting.
This isn't to be scary.
This reminds you that you can have joy knowing that this calling is good and holy calling
that you have in your life.
It's something that's on you in order to make other people's lives better, in order to love
other people, in order to serve other people.
Maybe some people don't understand how that you can find joy in that.
How can you find joy in something that isn't for yourself?
I would bear the question, how do you find joy in something that's only for you?
And I know we're talking about these circumstances of like, I'm not just tired right now, man.
I'm in pain.
My shoulders hurt.
My neck is all kinked up.
I probably slept weird last night.
Pardon me, I'd rather be taking a nap.
I, and, but I know I want to get this recorded so that Ian hopefully has time to edit it
and get it into your, so we can get it into your ear holes and so that you can then experience
whatever you're going to experience whenever you listen to this episode.
Okay, but let's move on.
I'm happy I got to say that to you guys.
So if you, if you, again, I'm going to stop real quick.
If you want to let me know how this podcast is going, go ahead, put it in a comment and
let me know.
So another thing I do is I believe that like, no, I want you to think about it now.
I want you to think about that now.
Do you find joy in the calling that you believe you have in your life?
If not, maybe it's time to reevaluate or maybe, or maybe it's time to ask a friend where you
can improve.
What do I mean by that?
So let's go back to the first quest.
First part is I asked, do you find joy in the calling that you have in, have on your
life that you believe you have on your life?
If you don't have, if you don't have see joy, maybe you don't know what your calling is.
You're like, well, I don't, I can't have joy in something.
I don't know what it is.
I say, we've talked about it before, you can always go back to God.
You can ask him, but you can always be like, you can always go back to him and be like,
Hey God, like, I know you have a calling in my life, not just to serve others.
That's your call is to serve others.
And then you can figure out what that, what that way means for you.
And then you can say, okay, like, how do we, we're going to talk about that in different
episodes about like, how do you really like understand what your calling is?
But we're going to, we're going to move on.
There's a whole other episode.
I'm going to record about all that.
So but if you, yeah, maybe, but if it's time to reevaluate and maybe it's time to, like
I said, go to, go to God, think about what you enjoy doing and we're going to talk about
that in a future episode and maybe ask a friend though, where you can improve, ask your friend
what you're good at.
And maybe, maybe ask your friend, like maybe they, your friends see something on you that
you don't see yourself.
And they're a friend that's going to tell you the truth and tell you the truth and like,
be like, Hey, like you're actually really, you're actually really great at speaking life
into people or you're really great at, you're really great at tech.
You're really great at tech or the way you work with, the way you are with kids is amazing.
Or like, man, you just make delicious food.
You're a great cook.
Like man, like maybe that's not something you thought about before.
And maybe that's, maybe these are the ways that you can provide joy to other people and
have joy on this journey yourself.
I want to move into a small, one other part real quick.
When we're talking about when falling short of your own expectations.
Now, you know, I just mentioned that you can ask a friend where you can improve.
Now think about the times when you know, you didn't meet your own expectations that you've
had on, that you've had of yourself.
When didn't you meet, like you ask a friend where you can improve where you didn't meet
a, maybe their expectations of you.
But how about this?
You think about, how about this?
Like you think about when you had an expectation of yourself and you failed to meet that expectation.
And maybe I shouldn't use the word failed, but we'll use it in this context.
You know, that can be pretty discouraging in those instances.
Whenever you feel like you should have done better, or you know you could have done better,
but you didn't.
Like it's good to remember that it's okay to fall short as long as you don't stay there
and you don't keep falling short.
It's like, I love the term failing forward, right?
Like you, it's not really a failure.
It's a learning experience.
Like John Maxwell will say like, sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.
So, or sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.
I might have messed that up.
And like Lee said in his episode, like you don't actually, like whenever he said his
take on failure was like, you only fail when you don't start.
If you've already started, you haven't failed.
And so then whenever you fall short of an expectation that you had on yourself, or maybe
you missed the mark on a certain, hitting a certain goal, well then you like, will you
reevaluate?
You see what you did, maybe you did wrong or could have done better.
You ask a friend and you get going again.
Like you get going again.
Like you go back to what we were talking about before.
You remember what you're doing and why you're doing it.
And that can give you motivation as to like, I have to figure out like what you need, like
what you need to do to improve.
I talked in circles.
We're going to keep going.
Okay.
And then, okay, this is one last thing I just want to say.
If you haven't started yet, if you don't know what your calling is and you haven't been
looking, well now's the time to start.
You don't want to get to the end of your life and realize that you never pursued your calling.
That's why I love this podcast.
That's why I love doing it because, and I love the name because it's called the pursuit
of calling.
I think everybody in some sense tries to pursue that even if they don't know that they're
doing it.
And the reason so many people don't have true joy is because they never really understand
what their calling is.
And that hurts, like me internally.
To think that some people just don't experience true joy because I believe the source of joy
as a Christian, the source of joy I know comes from God, comes from Christ.
And so many people don't know that.
And I think, I feel like I've been leaning into my face more in this podcast, especially
as I've been doing it on my own and like, I mean, Sean and I talked about it a lot,
but I've been leaning into it a lot more personally.
And like this, I'm leaning into that and maybe this is becoming an actual Christian podcast,
but I'm really hoping there's people that listen to this that don't particularly have
faith that still get a lot out of this, that still understand, hear what I'm saying and
find joy in their calling or learn to have joy in their calling.
Maybe it's something you didn't think about that, think that you had before.
So just take a moment, think about your calling, like think about where you fall short in accordance
to it.
We all fall short of certain expectations, fall short of others' expectations and especially
fall short of our own.
Yeah, we especially fall short of our own expectations.
I know I do all the time.
So and that's not to be hard on yourself.
It's just to have, it's good to have expectations of yourself.
It's just like you think about that, you think about what you're doing and why you're doing
it.
If the why doesn't bring you joy, then you're doing the wrong thing.
Where are you guys going?
Oh, that was good.
If your why, oops, sorry.
If your why doesn't bring you joy, then you're doing the wrong thing and you're looking at
the wrong place, you're getting in the wrong source.
So just think about that and I will leave you right, I'll leave you there with that.
I hope you guys have a great rest of your week and I'll see you next time.
Peace.