Are Making Money And Following Your Soul's Calling Mutually Exclusive?

Today I'm Talking about money.

Can you do your soul’s calling and also make money? That’s the question. Read on to find out more about my take on this.

I’m 22 years old. I’m in my first job after graduating with a B.A. psychology. It’s the 1980’s and we are the midst of a great recession. Jobs are scarce.

I don’t even know what kind of work I want to do or can do. Without a PhD, my psychology degree qualifies me to do very little.

I seek random, social-science sounding jobs without success in Montreal. Then, discouraged, I move in with my parents in Toronto, and realize that my only doorway into the world of work, is my summer job experience, working with intellectually disabled people.

And I land a job!

I’m a teacher for pre-school, developmentally delayed children. I plan my class and all the developmental activities – speech, fine & gross motor skills; I coach the parents in the afternoons and work with psychologists and behaviour therapists to help the children progress. I can’t believe my luck. I love the work. I find that I’m a natural – even though I secretly dropped my Child Psychology course in university because it was too early in the mornings. 

And then pay day comes around.

Every Tuesday morning, our cheques are delivered. (Pre-direct deposit.) We sit around the lunch table and open our cheques. Every Tuesday, I’m mad. I can’t believe how little we are paid. I’ll never be able to afford an apartment – and it looks like I’ll be riding the buses forever at this rate.  I wonder why my colleagues aren’t as angry as I am.

But clearly, their salaries aren’t essential. One of my colleagues is returning to work after her children have grown up. This job is fun for her and provides money to play with. It’s her husband’s job that provides the family security. And each woman I work with has a spouse or a fiancé that makes the money for the family. These women bring in snacks and supplies to make the children’s experience better (without being re-imbursed) and we all get paid less than anyone I went to university with – for the same amount of time -  who did a 4-year degree in engineering or finance or computer engineering.

Why?

I’m pissed. And I’m super pissed because I could have made that choice too. Doing a degree in psychology was a last-minute switch from biology, because I finally admitted that I was more interested in how people thought and functioned, than anything else. It feels like I am being penalized because of my interests. It seems like helping professions don’t pay.

Why is this job that is so needed and useful paid so little?

My only conclusion is because the work is not valued in our society. It’s work that is mainly populated by women. We deeply care about these children and their parents. We put our heart and our souls into this work, helping, and supporting others and the most marginalized in our society – the intellectually handicapped.

This job is an example of Pirate World –where gaining power over others is valued but helping others isn’t.

I get outraged about salary. I decide to get a job that pays more. I’m SO frustrated and angry that this important work was paid next to nothing, and I begin my soul’s calling discovery journey. I intend to find work that makes me come alive AND pays. I dive head-first into the corporate world, determined to resolve this dilemma, do work that is who I am and pays me.

After 25 years on my soul’s calling journey, this is what I can confirm. Drumroll please….

Making money and following your soul’s calling are not mutually exclusive.

And…

Pirate World WANTS you to believe that it’s impossible to make money as a helper or healer.

Yep. Because then you won’t even try. Because then you won’t disrupt the status quo. Because then you can continue trying to fit into the Pirate World model where you give and give and give and think that it’s wrong to get paid for helping.

And when you do that, you support the Pirates who get and get and get – and then they build rockets to start travel services to the moon – without ever considering paying or funding all the services that humanity truly needs.  (I still have hope they will wake up one day…)

So how do you make money if your soul’s calling is helping, healing, guiding and teaching?

In my experience, and for many of my clients and colleagues, it involves creating your own career, creating your own work.

After unending frustration in the corporate world, closed doors and lack of opportunity for me, I dared to decide to create my own work. I finally realized that the only job security that I would have was what I created for myself.

And, I learned that in order to make money from your calling, if you were born to help, heal, guide or teach, you need to find the intersection of these three things:

• Clarity on what truly lights you up,
• Clarity on what problem you love to solve,
• Clarity on who has that problem and is willing to pay to resolve it.

This takes way longer and requires far more testing and tweaking, and failing than you think.

However, when you discover who has been calling for YOU, and you provide them with something that they want and are willing to pay for, that you love doing….it is bliss.

But it’s not one and done. Because your calling changes and deepens. It takes a deep commitment and persistence to continue to make your living this way. Sometimes the time isn’t right in the world for your “thing”. Sometimes you’ll need to find “survival” work to subsidize your “sacred” work. I wrote about that HERE.

I’ve had my own work for 25 years now – and about six years ago, I finally started doing exactly what I’d dreamed of, that lit me up and also made money.

Six years ago, I offered my Soul’s Calling® Coach Training for the first time – in Mexico. I’d dreamed of being outside with women and helping them to return to the happy chatter in their souls. Yes, that’s poetic – but that was the dream. And that’s what I created in the deep dive retreat and robust intensive training. Soul’s Calling® Coach & Facilitator training. This training helps born healers, helpers, teachers & guides to discover their genius & purpose, develop their intuitive coaching abilities, all within a framework, and start doing the work that they were made for – that will likely disrupt Pirate World.

And I made this job up.

I dared to decide to do my soul’s calling AND make money too. That’s my act of rebellion to Pirate World.

I want you to know that you can do it too!

Big love,

Bev