Your calling reveals itself after you commit to the journey of self-mastery. By consistently investing in each area of your life, you realize the end-goal of self-improvement, which is to be of service. Your gift—your dharma, calling, or eco-niche—is your unique way of serving the world.
OVERVIEW
Service reveals your calling, so you can contribute to the world and find lasting fulfillment.
When we become whole human beings, we express our gift in Service. Through virtue, we create harmony in our life and the world around us.
If you neglect your calling, you never realize the purpose for which you were born. Whatever you do manage to achieve will never satisfy you.
ON THIS PAGE
What is the Service Area?
Service covers balance, harmony, and wholeness. It's the ultimate goal of self-development. To overflow like a wellspring so you may give your gift to the world. The act of service is often missed entirely in self-improvement. But to live a good life, we need to contribute. Few contemporary people reach this stage because the areas of life are unbalanced or underdeveloped.
A human life, although complex, beautiful, and unique, is no different in purpose than a bee from its hive or the ant from its colony. We develop and work on ourselves so that we may serve. What marks a good life is not perfection but taking one's place in the web of life. To develop specific areas at the cost of another creates lopsided growth and a fragmented existence.
Service is empty as the space in a cup. It’s present in all areas but cannot be actively developed. Yet its influence, although subtle, is great. Each area’s purpose is to grow so that the whole self can overflow with water. It’s the giving that brings purpose. Growth in all areas, from wealth to awareness, clarity to creativity, and health to connection, is there to serve the world.
Immaturity and ignorance
Service is a sign of maturity. The young caterpillar only consumes while producing nothing. Only after it's fully developed does it become a butterfly that can pollinate plants. If we do not develop all areas, we never reach full human development. We then not only rob the world of our contribution, but also contribute to the destruction of life through mindless consumption.
You are already born with a unique gift for the world. The task is to enact this blueprint. But this is not an easy endeavor, and few ever reach the state of maturity. One needs to be fully developed to serve. This means creating alignment and achievement. But mastering yourself and developing all areas of your life is such a daunting endeavor that most people never even try.
Ignorance is numbness. The most effective way to neglect one’s calling in life is to pretend the areas of life do not exist. We negate whole parts of ourselves to chase isolated success, believing it will make us happy. We do anything to avoid the fact that if we used our Body, Mind, Matter, Relationships, Heart, and Spirit toward one purpose, we would succeed.
How to find fulfillment
The problem of achieving anything in life is that nothing exists in isolation. Everything stands in relation. Not only the areas of our life, but the self and the world are intimately linked. The first step is to become aware of all seven areas. Only once you know they exist can you hope to develop them. Then get to work, and once you’re whole, you will be ready to look beyond.
Finding our place in the web of life comes when we are fully mature. Our calling is to be a node in the web that supports the whole world. Fulfillment comes not from using the world for our own gain, but from bringing our purpose out into the world. Knowing your gift and manifesting it is to enact who you were meant to be. This is the meaning of self-actualization.
To live your own life and no one else’s is the highest form of pleasure. It’s as hard and beautiful as nature. This is the only thing that life is asking of you—to be yourself. To embrace all that you are requires going into the parts you have neglected. Bringing harmony to your own life is the only task you need, and the most effective way of changing the world.
Five pillars of meaningful contribution
Essential books for Service
The Republic
— Plato
Attaining wisdom and bringing order to yourself.
The Four Agreements
— Don Miguel Ruiz
A simple code of conduct for freedom.
Man’s Search for Meaning
— Viktor E. Frankl
On finding meaning, even in the worst suffering.
Tao Te Ching
— Lao Tzu
Effortless action and harmony.
Meditations
— Marcus Aurelius
The diary of a Roman emperor on virtue.
Common questions
A perfect static balance is impossible. Yet, unconsciously overdeveloping one part of your life while another pays the price is unsustainable. What you can do is develop each life area in such a way that it does not collapse due to your own neglect.
To be whole is to be at home in every part of your life. You walk better on two legs and live more effectively if you’re aware of all seven areas of life. To welcome each aspect of the human experience is necessary to become whole. Life will still be challenging but no longer fragmented.
Give from a full cup, never from an empty one. Servitude comes at the cost of yourself, while Service arises as the overflowing of your self-development work. An apple tree does not give more apples than it can produce. Care for your own life first so you may enhance those of others.
You can’t control how much you will influence the world or change people. But imagine if one in ten people develop each area of their life and start to serve. Society as we know it would transform and be unrecognizable. Your task is simply to live life fully.
