8 Reflections to help reveal your Calling as a Highly Sensitive Person
‘The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t’ Baz Luhrmann
There was a girl in my class, super smart and upright, who knew she wanted to be a doctor at 14 years old. I remember sitting in stunned silence when she told me thinking ‘how do you know that?!’ Part of me felt this deep envy for her clear sense of direction because I wanted that so badly. I wanted to ‘know’ too and to have a strong sense of purpose and certainty. But I didn’t, I didn’t have a clue. The only sense I had was to follow what I loved and was talented at, which for me at the time was the arts, but there really was no clear ‘role’ to aim for.
I find this lack of clarity and sense of being lost is the case for many highly sensitive people I work with, the path to their role in the community or their Calling can be more convoluted. This is for many reasons (see ‘8 Reasons Empaths have later blooming careers blog’) but a key one I believe is that as a highly sensitive person our ‘role’ may be more unconventional or a unique blend of skills and experience that is not on the typical ‘career road map’. There is also usually a journey of self discovery and deep healing that is required, as well as a healthy dose of life experience for you to mature into ‘your calling’. That was certainly true for myself.
Now what do I mean by ‘a Calling’? The sense of alignment of yourself: your gifts, passions, needs, world view, your life experiences coming together in coherence and expressing itself in a role that ‘lands’, it feels ‘right’ or fulfilling for you - be that a career, vocation or life role. That this life energy is looking for expression through you, calls to you as much as you search for it. So if you feel you have no compass, are lost or blind to which direction to take, what can you do?
Firstly, step back and allow yourself to take the long view, that this journey to a sense of authentic Calling MAY be a decade in the making or more (not what you want to hear perhaps!) but you could already be more than halfway there… That you can begin to help yourself by seeing yourself more clearly and having a deeper sense of where you are already at, with the knowledge you have now - to help guide where you are going. Grab a journal and let's begin to reflect on the eight areas of influence channeling into your Calling.
1. Direction - Passions and interests
We all have interests that inspire us and they can become clearer or more pronounced with time. If you don't think that's true - that you have no real passions, then just reflect on the things that deeply disinterest you or turn you off. I'll give you an example of some of mine to start you off: football, computer programming, buying tech, small talk etc! We all have subjects where our mind is just shut down from boredom and conversely topics that light us up or make us curious.
Now the subjects we are interested in can give us a clue as to the direction to spend our time and energy when it comes to developing our calling or it might inform the method of the way we work. For this article I will use myself as an example to demonstrate. Since I was very young, I was obsessed with the question of the meaning of life - what is our deeper purpose? In relation to this I was also deeply curious about the nature of mind and perception, why we all respond so differently to the world. When I was younger I LOVED the arts, but it was always about the transformation of self - through the medium of participating in theater. Now my writing channels my creativity, reflections and helps me digest my views. These are some key broad areas for me:
Meaning of life - leading me to study, different philosophical traditions, and landing with a Buddhist practice (with esoteric leanings)
Psychology of people - I love the puzzle of people, why we are the way we are and how our past is impacting, our present, thoughts, belief and behaviours
Transformation - I'm incredibly interested in methods of personal mental, emotional and physical transformation be that meditation, energy healing, shamanic, work, etc
Creativity as an important channel for self understanding, realisation and healing as well as producing new project ideas
How to work powerfully with the connection between the mind, emotions, body and spirit
Action
Make list of topics that you are interested in, perhaps even deeply passionate about or that simply raise your curiosity. Allow yourself to freestyle - don’t be restrictive at this stage and see what emerges. If you struggle with this, then make a list of topics you have no interest in to help guide you.
2. World view and perception - informing how you work
I remember taking a career test in my teens with the hope of finding a sense of direction. It was in theory a great idea but was a blunt instrument of convention that lacked imagination. Interested in healing… then become a nurse or a doctor etc. Part of the problem is some of our interests may not be widely known or taught about - or even known about yet, or might be very niche or counter cultural.
Therefore, sometimes it can take years to explore different philosophies or alternative practices to uncover what makes sense for us and have clarity. I know what has made a huge amount of sense to my life and my world view was all learnt outside of the education system. These views will affect the way we work and what type of work we are drawn to. Here are some of my personal views, interests and beliefs that influence my work:
We experience multiple lives (buddhism), past lives that impact us now
The mind, body and spirit are connected
The subconscious mind is what to work with for healing
Trauma response is a common experience
Intention and conscious is powerful (quantum theory)
There are unseen realms and unseen beings, such as guides and angels
Being a highly sensitive person means you can become a channel for healing, music, arts, insight or messages - in conversation or writing,
Action
Make a list of your beliefs in terms of your world views and beliefs about the reality we live in? What lens do you look through and inform the choices you are drawn to take, the teachers you listen to, the friends you spend time with, the approach you take to receive healing etc. How can this influence your work?
3. Life experiences
Tad Hargraves, of Marketing for Hippies says that ‘Your greatest wounds are often the doorway to your truest niche’ - so they may point the direction for your ‘life's work’. I agree with this to some degree, but I have to say I've not made a business out of my most painful wound as that felt depleting and didn't bring me joy to think about! However using this advice I decided to explore one of my most impactful traits on my life - which is being highly sensitive.
There is a strange magic that happens where you often draw people to you who are struggling with the same problems you have had in your life. When I did shiatsu I always attracted people with shoulder problems - as I had them, whilst my colleague was always working with people who had back pain, like her. There is a resonance that people unconsciously pick up on ‘they know this pain or struggle’, that we understand deeply which is powerful.
Those big archetypal themes that have been your personal mountain to climb or solve can become the problem we help people with as the gift in this is that hopefully with experience, training and skills - we will know how to help them most effectively. Some of our personal life experiences will interest us more as a topic to explore further and talk about. Here are some of my personal wounds and life experience for example:
Recovered from trauma symptoms
Neurodiverse (dyslexic)
Highly sensitive person - developed my intuitive abilities
Experienced narcissistic abuse - had to work hard on developing boundaries!
I am a Mother
I am an entrepreneur
I could choose to deep dive in just one of these areas but for example, I'm a mother, but I have no desire to explore motherhood or parenting as the main theme of my work as it doesn’t interest or inspire me enough (!) At the moment, my work bridges or calls on a number of these experiences - with the key theme being a HSP. I chose what felt most fundamental to me and hooked me most.
Question:
What are some of your key life experiences that you have wisdom to share on to date? Even if you’ve not fully mastered the issue you might be 5 steps ahead of someone who is struggling and those might be big steps if they need help…
4. Training influences
Even if we would want to completely switch directions for our Calling our training to date can become part of our skill set which we can utilise moving forward. Our training will also be influencing our personal perception which informs the way we work as well as being an articulation of our passions and interests. Obviously we can always build on our training experience, here are some of mine for example:
Key training:
Shiatsu practitioner
EFT advanced
NLP (integrated energy work techniques)
hypnosis
Reiki
Silva method student
Buddhist training and practice of 14 years
Theatre degree - running workshops
Marketing and events manager
When I left the arts to move into alternative health, what I discovered was I had lots of transferable skills for my new working life. My experience in project management and marketing fed into my life as a freelancer. My experience of running workshops naturally led into work beyond one to one in the healing context etc. You too will have skills that can feed into your new Calling. I mention this in case you feel like you've ‘wasted time’ or all is lost. It's useful to reframe our experiences as building blocks to our calling - seeing the experience as a teacher for the direction to take now - even if that’s ‘how not to do something’ is helpful!
Some of my greatest training was my life experiences. We can be very hung up on certification these days - and this can hold us back when it need not. But the main work I do now as a healing channel, no one taught me. It’s an accumulation of all my understanding of the subconscious mind and it emerged naturally from the development of my skills and experience. Not everything can be taught but they may be simply created - just think of great inventors or entrepreneurs, they sort out a new way of doing things as the old wasn’t working for them. Maybe that will be you.
5. Resources - Your Gifts
We are each born with our own unique gifts, but they often need to be recognised and developed. Your gifts may even feel like a curse to begin with (!) - as I know my high sensitivity certainly felt like this. But with time, experience, with healing, through nurturing and mentorship, training and practice… our gifts can emerge, for example;
I can channel healing and writing - I can 'open' and something flows through me, I just trust and practice. For you it might be music, art, knowing, ideas
Knowing what to say or a key important word that lands - another form of channeling really, but for me it is that I am just able to point to the real problem or issue. For you you might just ‘know something is wrong’ with someone.
Gifts that felt like a curse
I can feel what others feel in my body - I didn’t know this was happening for a long time, I just felt exhausted and pulled around. Now I use this as an intuitive skill in my work.
People finding it easy to open up to you - For many years this caused some resentment for me as it fed into my overwhelm until I realised it was part of my Calling, and I could use it as a skill for which I was paid and had boundaries around it!
You might even take your abilities for granted as a HSP? I know that as a HSP you will come with many gifts to offer the world due to this trait. Personally, I remember my mum repeatedly saying to me over the years when I was playing down something I could do or undervaluing myself and in response to me saying ‘well that’s easy, everyone can do that’, she would say ‘just because you can do it, it doesn't mean that it's obvious or easy for everyone else’. I just assumed it was of no value and everyone could do it, which wasn't true.
This is the beauty of us each being so unique and different, we each have something to contribute to the whole. But at times, we may need support to recognise was our strengths, to develop them and value them! Even now I think ‘everyone can do this’, but many can't, just like I couldn't be a happy accountant or astrophysicist - it's not in my make up, I’m not interested and I don’t have the skills! Also, some of these skills may not be very conventional and require discovery, like my highly sensitive somatic empathy, that wasn’t explained in school books.
Question
What skills do you think you might be undervaluing? What comes naturally to you t but you may feel is effortless and for that reason you discount it? What abilities do you have at the moment that feel like a curse that might become a gift?
6. Deep drivers - your key needs
We each have deep drivers in terms of our needs to keep us satisfied and engaged. What feels meaningful will be different to each of us, depending on those fundamental needs - see a list of needs from the NVC - such as play, community, authenticity, awareness. For me there are some fundamental needs that have repeated in every role I've undertaken or organisation I've worked with, or industry I have been in as an example I need:
authenticity and value deep and meaningful connections, depth (not small talk)
to support growth, empowerment and transformation (mission driven)
to be challenged and have my questioning mind engaged
freedom, flexibility and creativity in my work (I am neurodiverse, dyslexic, so I approach things differently)
beauty and enjoy creating a sacred spaces
space and quiet - due to being a HSP
It can be really helpful to recognise our needs when it comes to our working life consciously rather than unconsciously. As it can, then help us to discount options, because we know in reality, it won't be supportive to us in the long term. We can then navigate more clearly towards that which expresses our deepest needs. We each have core needs that create the foundation of how we work or the methods we practice.
You may have noticed as well that I mention my neurodiversity here. This is important because I have found that it has a foundational impact on both my needs and the supportive structure I need to work most effectively. Many highly sensitive people I work with are neurodiverse, so if you suspect you may be then receiving a diagnosis can be really, really helpful in understanding your core needs to live and work a fulfilled life.
I want to acknowledge that here we have not considered the first stages of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and maybe you know what your ideal Calling is but it doesn’t fulfill your basic needs of food, shelter and security as it doesn’t earn enough or is too unpredictable - as these needs are important too! I have certainly found that in certain careers, it just wasn't tenable. But here I want you to allow yourself to explore your needs without reflecting on this for now. I found that my needs were met in both full-time employment and in self-employment - but only because I recognise what was important to me, and could then seek it out.
Question
Are you aware of what some of your needs might be and how they might connect to your Calling? What are the strong needs you see there, perhaps they re-occur in the jobs you take on - perhaps think of when you felt most happy and satisfied at work, what key needs were being met? Or conversely when were you most unhappy in your work and why, what needs were not being met?
7. Approach - Personality
Expanding from our core needs, it's really important to get to know yourself well and understand your makeup in terms of your personality as this will impact how your Calling reveals itself to you as a HSP. We may have very similar interests to someone else, but how we engage in the topic or our Calling may be radically different due to our personalities. Some personality test tools that I am aware of:
Myers-briggs
Enneagram
Human design
Ipersonic.com (I’m a dreamy idealist!)
Astrological chart (!)
You can receive a lot of information for free online in terms of testing yourself. GET TO KNOW YOURSELF - and not only through personality tests, but through therapy, mentorship, life experience, spiritual practice etc. We can't do this alone, because we have too many blindspots, or shadow sides and don't always see ourselves clearly. We also learn about ourselves in relation to others in what they see in us. We are not meant to have all the answers by the time we enter our 20s. You're not failing, if you're still learning about yourself. But when you know yourself deeply, it becomes easier to know what to say no to and have trust to open to your quiet or gentle yes as you know your tendencies, your needs, your interests etc. The more we know ourselves, the easier it is to guide ourselves to the right shore and not get derailed by 'shoulds'.
Personality tests can be so revealing, I find. I remember doing some temp work at the council and the head of the arts department kindly paid for me to do a personality test. When we reflected on the answers, one of the points she pulled out was the label of ‘Maverick’. That I helpfully revolutionise systems, but have no interest in maintaining them - exactly what I had done in my previous roles! This tendency also meant ‘I'll do what I want, regardless of what the authority tells me to do’. She looked at me and asked if that was true? With a coy smile, I said ‘yep’.
I've never really seen that in myself, but when I read it, it was completely clear and incredibly helpful to know that if my tendency is to buck the system so maybe I should stop trying so hard to have a ‘normal job’ I thought as I need to do something that accommodates this more radical part of me… Personally I find that some personality tests can impact us more deeply than others in terms of what we take away or what resonates more - so just have a play. But they’re simply potential pieces of the puzzle to understanding yourself as a HSP and moving you towards what would suit you best in terms of Calling.
Question
What key things do you know about your personality already that has informed the work you do to date? What kind of calling would be of greater service to your personality? Which personality tests have been really useful to you?
8. Method - Balance tendencies
Just before I became a mum, I was doing three different jobs at once. I found it incredibly satisfying as it balanced out these different needs within me. I think sometimes like a relationship, we can look to our Calling as the fulfilment of all of our needs when in reality, actually, there are going to be bits of the role that we find tough or boring. Also perhaps we have very opposing needs within us that are so divided that in fact we need to do two different jobs to create a greater sense of wholeness for ourselves as an expression of our needs.
For example, the introverted part of me wants to be in a cave and not see people so I work from home (!), but the theatre performer in me wants to be in front of a group of people and create community so I do some online events. The part of me that longs for connection really enjoys deep one to ones, but the quiet creative in me that loves philosophising and beauty loves to be alone to write and enjoys creating the marketing. But I have to get the right balance of each to not feel depleted or lonely. I am multi-passionate and have different parts of my personality to balance out. So being an entrepreneur actually suits me really well but all of this took time to learn to balance and it is still a dance. What’s the balance of opposite tendencies within you? I.e:
Introvert vs extrovert
Connection vs space
Creativity vs logic
Intuition vs strategy
Our tendencies can also change as we enter different stages of our life - motherhood, menopause, period of ill health, realising you’re a HSP etc. This can also evolve further or shift dramatically, as we change - ‘the call’ of your intuition might redirect you. For example, when we're younger, we might feel much more extroverted as we grow older, we want to slow down and want more time alone. But deep self knowledge can help to smooth these transitions.
Question
What ‘opposing’ or complementary needs do you have within you and how do you balance that out in your life? Ideally how would you structure life if you could…give yourself permission to imagine…
Reflect
I realise that it may feel like there's a lot there to reflect on! Some of the answers, you may already be very aware of or clear on, whilst some aspects may require exploration and investigation over time. But the better we know ourselves, the more we're able to move more quickly towards what we need. We are more able to access or enhance our abilities to fulfill our potential as well as slipstream into a lifestyle and calling that feels like an inherent expression of our greatest inner song and attributes as a HSP. We need to do the deep work to live a satisfying and fulfilling life, to feel able to be of greatest service to the world.
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