Today I thought I should do a little check-in. I was slated to explore my Calling—the third of the North Star components that Lance Secretan discusses in his book, The Spark, the Flame, and the Torch—in this week’s blog and I did spend my time working through the tool to understand what it might be. But truth be told, I’m not quite ready to share that part of my journey yet. Sitting with what I’ve discovered so far and acknowledging that it’s a tender feeling is more authentic for me right now.

So in order to honor my commitment of weekly entries, I thought a check-in to see how I was faring might do. Where am I on this journey? Has anything shifted? Do I have a greater sense of inner inspiration since I started this process?

First, let me say how refreshing it was to change directions and feel fine about it. Because I am trying to live the principles I’ve been studying, making choices based on what I feel inspired to do matters to me more than before. Or maybe because I’m spending more time recognizing that I am often living my destiny and character statements that a day feels like I’ve done plenty just by showing up. Whatever the reason, I didn’t feel like I had anything to prove in this week’s entry. Getting another blog posted is important to me, but not more important than being accepting and responsive to myself and my family’s needs (part of my character statement) or nurturing or connecting with myself (part of my destiny statement). I was washing dishes at the end of a long day thinking that maybe I would change my blog entry. But this time, instead of having any kind of internal debate, I just thought, “Well, that would probably be fine. It’s more important to do what I find inspiring.” Then I spent a few minutes marveling at my reaction, just doing dishes and wondering if this is the sort of blissed-out state that inspired people live in: doing ordinary things in an extraordinary feeling of grace.

Suffice to say this isn’t how it typically goes with me. There’s usually a bit more of a debate, pressure to perform, and a sense of obligation to my decisions. This is a bit different from the first week of this journey when I realized that I couldn’t say yes to questions about feeling empowered by my choices or empowered about how I spend my time. Yes, it’s clearly part of a big win!

And how about what’s shifted for me, if anything? Well, back to that promising quiz from the beginning of this journey. Originally of the 20 questions, I answered not so much for the majority of the questions. In other words, I rated as very uninspired. By today 14 of of those questions have shifted to yes, and two to neutral. Add that to the few yeses I had before and now a majority of the questions are yes! Not to get all Jim Carey about it, but saying yes definitely feels better than the long list of nos I had going into this.

So things seem to be looking up. Guess I’ll get back to those find-my-calling exercises and finish so I can keep this rolling. Who knows where I might be in four more weeks!

Join me next week when I promise to actually share my calling as a way to living an inspired life!