Episode 30: Vocation vs Work - Are You Following Your Calling?

Are you stuck in a job that drains you, wondering if there’s something more?

➡️ Why work isn’t the same as a calling.

➡️ If you're "job hugging," can you take some time to consider what you feel meant to do?

➡️ As Wayne Dyer always said, "Don't die with your music still inside."

Sara's award-winning biography of Dag can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

Her forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will release globally on July 29, 2026. 

#DagHammarskjold #DecodingTheUnicorn #Vocation #CareerChange #BurnoutRecovery #WorkWithPurpose

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

In Episode 30 of "Decoding the Unicorn," host Sara Causey discusses the difference between vocation and work, using a friar's story during the 2008 recession as an example. She highlights the concept of vocation as a calling versus a job, emphasizing trust in divine guidance. Sara shares her own experience of buying a foreclosed house during the recession and the phenomenon of "job hugging" during economic downturns. She encourages listeners to reflect on their true vocation, suggesting meditation and introspection to find their true calling, and concludes with a motivational message to not let life pass without pursuing one's passion.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

vocation, work, Great Recession, job burnout, economic downturn, job hugging, vocation vs job, trust, economic uncertainty, job market, career fulfillment, meditation, higher self, existential questions, personal calling

 Welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to Episode 30 of Decoding the Unicorn the podcast, I'm glad that you're here. Today, I want to talk about the difference between vocation and work. I was listening the other day to a friar talk about his process of becoming a Friar. And I'm not Catholic, so I don't pretend to know all the steps involved in that process, but he was discussing that he was about to become a novitiate, and it was expected that he would, I guess, clean up his side of the street, so to speak, before he went into the monastery. And there was an expectation that he would be coming without baggage from the outside world, things like debt hanging over his head or unresolved issues, and one of the things that he needed to do was to sell his vehicle. Now this was taking place in 2008 during the Great Recession, and if you remember that time, it was awful, it was difficult, so much of anything, because we were all broke. It was, it was an awful time. So he's struggling to get rid of this truck, and he's starting to come up to the deadline of like, well, maybe I need to postpone this and delay the dream for a little while, work for a while longer, and try to pay off the truck or find somebody else who will take it. Maybe I just need more time. And his priest told him, I think you just have to trust God. And his father told him, I think you just have to trust God. And at the 11th Hour, as it seems to be so often the case in these situations, another person came through and said, I'm interested. I hadn't really been thinking about it before, but I know that I'm supposed to be the person who does this for you now. And so it all worked out. But one of the things that occurred to him is this was a vocation. This wasn't just I'm going to go work a job and see what happens. It was a calling. And I think that was one of the things also that his priest and his father tried to impress upon him, is like, if you feel that you've been called by God to do this work, then it's a reasonable expectation that God will help you. If you feel like you've gone as far as you can on your own steam, and nothing is working, relax, let go. It's like the Scriptures about be still, but so often that isn't quite well how we want to handle it. But that's the difference, in my mind, also, between a vocation and a, J, O, B. Now, as I'm recording this in September of 2025 the headlines about burnout are pretty depressing, and that doesn't surprise me. If you just go and do a simple Google search about how many workers are burned out, the headlines are dour I'm seeing things like Forbes reporting that job burnout is at 66% I'm amazed that it's not higher than that, frankly. And then the hill reports that burnout is at a 10 year high for US workers. Now. Just a second ago, I mentioned the Great Recession, and this Friar was having to try to sell a truck, an expensive truck, that he had obligated himself for during a terrible economic time, and it was proving awfully difficult.

During the Great Recession, in 2007 I bought my first house, and it was a foreclosure, and that was the only way that I could afford it. The house itself was a major fixer upper, I'll put it that way, and it wasn't in the greatest neighborhood, but it was all that I could afford. And certainly, had I known what was coming like from oh eight to 2010 I wouldn't have done it. I would have just rented and said, I'll sit tight for a while. But the job that I was working at that point in time, there were things that I liked about it, yes, but it was also highly repetitive, and there were people that would get burned out on the job because of that. And I made the decision, even if I am the last person standing, even if this company goes belly up, I will not be fired with cause I am not going to do anything to wind up tossed out on my ear trying to find a job with everybody else that's unemployed right now. I do not want that in my life, and so whatever I had to do during that period of time to keep that job, I did it. And in fact, they told me, you'll have a job here for as. Long as you want one, as long as you want to be here, we want you here. Keep doing what you're doing, but I did not want to be tossed out. We had people coming in every day. Can I please leave a resume? I know you don't have any job openings, but I'll do anything. I'll be your janitor. I'll sweep the floors. I just need money. It was a scary time. Now I bring that up because in stark economic times, people will hang on to that job like it's a life preserver. Whenever I'm posting something on LinkedIn and I look over on the side panel, I'll see stories about job huggers, and what that's referring to is people that are hanging on and hugging that job like it's the last lifeboat off the Titanic, or like it's a life preserver in the middle of the ocean and it's their only chance for survival. It's depressing, but it's not surprising. I spent 15 years of my career doing HR and staffing work, and this is the kind of thing that you see when the market is hot and people feel like they're living off the fat of the land. People are more willing to Job hop companies are more willing to hire and to take a chance on people, and employees are more willing to shuffle around to see if they can get a bigger better deal somewhere else. But when things are tough and the job market is in the dumper, which it is okay, let's be honest, they're talking about revising job reports to the tune of 1 million jobs being reported in the past that never existed. I'm not surprised by that. I warned people for a long time that I felt like the job market was due for a crash and it was being held together perilously by bailing wire and duct tape. And sometimes people would listen to me. Oftentimes they wouldn't. Whenever we're in a boom cycle, nobody wants to hear the voice in the wilderness who says, Yeah, but we're headed for a bus cycle too, and when the bus cycle happens, it's going to be really bad. I remember back in the day, Alan Greenspan telling people with a straight face that you can't tell you're in a bubble while you're in the bubble. And it's like, yeah, you can. I've said before that dag was an economist, and he's about the only economist that I would actually trust, because nowadays you can hire an economist to say anything. It's really ridiculous, in my opinion, but we have this phenomenon of job hugging, because people are scared and they feel like, even if I hate this job, I would rather stay here and have a paycheck than to go out into the jungle. I'm thinking of Axel rose, and this the story behind that song was like, he had hitchhiked into Los Angeles, and when the truck driver let him out, he's like, Welcome to the jungle, baby. And then that became a hit song. They don't want to get tossed out and and feel like they're in the middle of dog eat dog fight or flight. Well, there's a real difference between a vocation, something that you feel called to do with every fiber of your being, versus a, J, O, B, and I know that this is going to sound like an odd thesis, and it's just my opinion, and it could be wrong, but I'm thinking now of Warren Buffett and how he said, Whenever everybody else is getting greedy, that's when you should panic. When everybody else is panicking and acting like Chicken Little that's when you should be greedy, in the spirit of watching what everybody else is doing and making a different choice, I would just posit a theory. This could be the time to think about what you truly feel called to do now. I'm not saying walk off the job. I'm not saying not to be a job hugger. What I am saying is that, is it possible that you could use some spare time to consider, to to meditate, to pray, whatever it is that you believe in. This is an inclusive program. I certainly don't want to shove any belief system down anybody's throat, whatever it is that you do to get clarity. Is it possible to do that and to figure out what's my vocation, not something that I'm doing for the money, not something I'm doing out of obligation, not something I'm doing because I have to do it, but because I want to do it. I remember the passage from DAGs diary, which was later published as markings where he talked about being driven forward into the unknown. He knew that. Or something else was going to happen. He knew that he was destined for something. He just didn't know what it was yet. And then whenever the UN Secretary generalship was offered to him, it was like, ah, the light bulb moment. Okay, so this is what I was feeling all that time. We have more direction, we have a better sense of what's happening. Who am I and where do I fit in this world? When we can find a sense of stillness, get away from the noise and the clutter and the detritus which is everywhere, I really think one of the hardest things to do in modernity is just be still and be quiet, because devices are everywhere, and even when we're meditating, we want to put in our wireless earphones and hook it up to YouTube and listen to music, which I'm not hating on that I do that too, but we're still connected to a device. You know? It's like there's still a screen involved, there's still noise involved in all of that. And it just seems to me that really getting still and quiet and figuring out, who am I, what am I meant for, and what am I supposed to be doing, those are huge existential questions, and I feel like we spend so much time avoiding them. And I think whatever you believe in your higher self, a higher power, eventually, that higher thing will come after you. It's a bit like Saul on the road to Damascus, or Jonah in the belly of the whale, like you can only ignore what you're supposed to be doing for just so long, and then it will come and find you. If you have decided you're not going to tune into the energy of it, it will tune into the energy of you. I've lived it myself, believe me, decoding the unicorn would not exist if that hadn't happened to me. So it really is true that what your seek is seeking you, and it can also be that you're being sought by something that's seeking you, but you have to be able to tune into that, and that's my point in today's episode, there is a real, true difference between something that you feel called to do and something that you're just phoning it in. It's just a, J, O, B, it's whatever. I don't care. And we're better able to deal with setbacks and challenges if we're doing what we know we were meant to do, as opposed to doing something like, Well, I'm just here for the paycheck. I don't really care. My boss is a jerk. My co workers are incompetent, but I've got a mortgage, I've got rent, I've got a car payment. I have to be here. We have all of these obligations that wind up hanging over our head like a sword of Damocles, and then we trap ourselves in a job that we don't even like. Nine times out of 10, we don't even like what we're doing. So even as you're hugging that job like it's the last boat off the Titanic. Is it possible to spend some time in stillness and solitude to figure out what would I rather be doing instead? If this is not fulfilling to me, if I don't believe that this is what I've been called to do, by my higher self, by God, by whatever, could I take the time to figure out and to tune into the energy of what that other thing is? Wayne Dyer used to always say, don't die with your music still in you. And that's really what I want to say today as I wrap up this episode, don't die with your music still in you. If there's something that you know you were supposed to do, even if you don't know quite what it is yet, if you just have the suspicion that there's more to life than what I'm living today. Don't you think you owe it to yourself to figure that out?

Stay safe, stay well, and I will see you in the next episode.

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