What Is a Personal Calling?

What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream.

Why do we not achieve our dreams? Paulo Coelho says that there are four obstacles standing in our way.

1. We are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt.

2. Love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

3. Fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn't work out, because we cannot fall back on old excuse; ‘Oh, well, I didn't really want it anyway.' We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey.

4. The fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives. . . . The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either.