00:00:05 Sheri: Welcome to the Discovering Your Calling podcast. I'm your host, Sheri Miter. I'm here to help you unleash your strengths and get clarity on your calling. I believe, when you find your purpose in life, fulfillment, joy, and success will follow. If you're ready, pop in those earbuds, hit that follow button, and join me on this journey towards Discovering Your Calling.

00:00:33 Sheri: Welcome back, friends, to the Discovering Your Calling podcast. This is your host, Sheri Miter. And I'm so glad you're here today because I have a really special message that came to my heart after doing my prayer time this morning. I'm not going to lie. It is 9:00. And I'm on my, I think, third cup of coffee. It is a cold, icy, snowy day here in Upstate New York. And I was doing my prayer time reading for Lent.

00:01:00 Sheri: So it's the second day of Lent. It's February 23rd. And I’m reading Draw the Circle, a 40-Day Prayer Challenge by Mark Batterson. And I was reading that and then thinking about the women in my Discovering Your Calling group program, who we'll be meeting with later today, and some of the challenges they've been having, and just praying for them, praying for the future clients that are going to come into my life and for my own future. 

00:01:26 Sheri: But anyway, all these things started coming together. And today's podcast is brought to you by me, but I also feel it's Godly inspired. And I hope that you'll hear the message that I felt compelled to share with you today. And one of the things that I'm finding in the group program of my Discovering Your Calling students, is that one of the most challenging things is they want to know exactly what's ahead for them right now.

00:01:58 Sheri: And I hear that. And I'm guilty of that, especially with high futuristic. I just want to know, like, what is ahead? What are we doing? I'm one of those people, when I have breakfast, I want to know what's for dinner. So it's really hard when we don't know. And I'm seeing that we're on phase four, which is week four of the group program. And I'm seeing these women challenge with that because they want more clarity.

00:02:23 Sheri: And unfortunately, that's not what we get right away. And only God knows what's ahead for us. That part of the plan, of the clarity, and knowing exactly what's ahead, that's for him only. And he doesn't always give us those signs right away.

00:02:41 Sheri: And I know that that's not the answer the women in my program want to hear. And I know that's probably not the answer you want to know right now either because most of us aren’t control freaks. And again, I am totally that. Ask my husband. But here's the good news. What is in our control is being ready when opportunity knocks.

00:03:06 Sheri: I'm going to repeat that again. I hope you stop and really hear this. What is in your control is being ready when opportunity knocks. There's three ways I'm going to share with you, how you can be ready, when that opportunity knocks. One is knowing the talents and gifts God put inside of you and have ideas on how to use those gifts, so you can be successful and feel fulfilled. So you'll know your true purpose on life. You may not know exactly how you're going to use those gifts, but you know what your gifts are. 

00:03:44 Sheri: Second thing you can do to be prepared is be in a mental space of peacefully searching. Key here is peacefully searching and being open to the possibilities. We need to allow ourselves to just be in this space that we're willing to be open to what lies ahead, open and ready to open that door when somebody's knocking at it. And that takes a lot of work. It sounds simple, but that might be one of the hardest things to do.

00:04:18 Sheri: The third thing you can do to be ready is be willing to say yes when that knock comes. And I want to share one of my client’s stories. So this is Angelica. And Angelica and I have been working together for, oh gosh, probably six months now. No, probably eight months now. We started working together this summer. She was one of my one on one Discovering Your Calling clients.  

00:04:45 Sheri: And we're wrapping up. We just wrapped up phase 12, which is the final phase. And what's really cool is Angelica doesn't know exactly what her, what next is. But she has four opportunities to test out some things and see which one fits best with what she wants for her future self. And that's part of what I really teach in the Discovering Your Calling program is. And I tell my clients. It's like, I don't promise you that at the end of the 12 phase, that you're going to know exactly what your, what next is. I can't do that because I don't know.

00:05:23 Sheri: And again, only God knows that. But what I can promise you is that you'll have more clarity, and you have opportunities if you take them. And you get yourself ready to test out the waters and start to see which one fits best. And it's all testing phase, but I'm digressing. I'm getting sidetracked here. So I want to bring you back to Angelica.

00:05:44 Sheri: So on our last session, she was sharing with me four opportunities she has to test out the things that we've been talking about, the things that align with her natural gifts and talents, the things that align with what she feels she's made for, the opportunities that sound intriguing to her. And let me share these with you because they're all different. 

00:06:06 Sheri: So these are the four opportunities that she has said yes to, and that's the key. She said yes to testing them out. One is she was asked to be on a summit, to be a guest speaker as part of a panel at a technology convention coming up in May in Florida. She has to travel for this. It's inconvenient, but she said yes to it. 

00:06:27 Sheri: Now, Angelica, just a backstory, she is the vice president, holds a very high executive position in a large global technology company. So this was a great opportunity for her to go and speak. And we talked about how she can make the most of that opportunity on our last session. 

00:06:43 Sheri: The second thing she said yes to is mentoring at work. She's been mentoring mostly women in her company, who are rising up, who want to rise up and be like her and follow her examples. She's been taking that time to mentor them. She's also said yes to being a strategic partner for somebody in her company, who's looking for a large promotion. She's helping them figure out what to do, how to say it, how to go about positioning themselves to be in that opportunity for a large promotion. She also said yes to being a board member for a startup company.  

00:07:19 Sheri: Did Angelica have time for any of these? No. Is she necessarily even getting paid for these? No. But she said yes to them because these are all things that she's interested in possibly creating for her future self. So she said yes. But here's the thing. She put herself in the position to have those opportunities come to her. And she also put herself in a position to seeing those opportunities when they showed up. All those things are key.

00:07:51 Sheri: So Mark Batterson, I shared this morning. I was reading the Draw the Circle, the 40-Day Prayer Challenge. He also shares in his book, in a pit with a lion on a snowy day, there's a line in there where he says, God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time. But it's up to us to see and seize those opportunities that are all around us all the time.  

00:08:19 Sheri: Here's the things, my friends. These opportunities, they're there for you as well. They may not look the same as Angelica’s did because that's not your path. But there are opportunities that are around you, that you are not seeing right now. And it's like, have you ever bought a car? And when you were looking to buy this car, you chose it because it was something unique. You never see this car on the road.  

00:08:46 Sheri: Maybe, it's because of the model. It's a new model. Or maybe it's because of the color. And you're so excited to have this car that's going to stand out among other cars. And you go to pick up this car, and you're driving it home. And you're driving down the road in the highway, and what do you see? You see several other cars of the same make and the same exact color. Have those cars been there all along? Yes. 

00:09:14 Sheri: Your brain was just not picking up on them because it wasn't on your radar. Now, there are scientific pieces of your brain. And I'm not going to go into that because I don't know those things. I just know it's part of how our brain works. We only see what we are ready to see. 

00:09:31 Sheri: Or it's also for the women out there who've ever had a baby. When you're pregnant, what do we see? We see pregnant women everywhere, right? We see them in the elevator. Half of our friends are pregnant. We see them at the mall, in the days we used to go to the mall. So it's because again, our brain is picking up those and attracting those like things to us.  

00:09:54 Sheri: So the opportunities again are there around us. Your brain and your mind is just not in a position to see them yet. But here's the thing. I want to share. Don't worry. I am going to share some things that you can do to start being ready to see them. But before I do that, I want to share why you may not be seeing them and what's stopping you from seeing those opportunities, why you're not in a position to be ready right now.

00:10:25 Sheri: Number one is you're waiting for perfect time to start. You're thinking that it's not the right time right now to even start looking. So you've shut down any opportunities right away because it's not the right time in your brain. And let me tell you, friends, there will never, ever be the right time for you. Never.

00:10:47 Sheri: It's not the right time for Angelica to travel to Florida to be on the summit. It's not the right time for her to sit on a board. She's already extremely busy. But sometimes, we have to just start even when it's not, doesn't feel the right time. Something else that might be stopping you from seeing all these opportunities right now is fear of failure.

00:11:07 Sheri: Sometimes, it's also fear of success. We don't want to start because we're afraid we're going to mess up. We're afraid that it's going to be hard. We're afraid of things that I don't know. I don't know what you're afraid of.

00:11:21 Sheri: But there's all these fears that we have. We're afraid of not being perfect. Maybe we're afraid of what others are going to say when we start looking for different opportunities. So it's that fear of failure. We're afraid we're going to fall flat on our face. And that's a real possibility. 

00:11:37 Sheri: But here's the thing. Most of those fears we have, there's not going to be a big hole that opens up and we fall into. So some of them may happen, yes, but they're not going to be life changing. They're not going to alter who you are. What will be life changing is when you step into the right opportunities. So sometimes that fear of failure and/or fear of success just keeps us from even starting.

00:12:01 Sheri: Another thing that might be stopping you right now is you haven't allowed yourself the quiet time to do the work. We just spent 45 minutes of an hour session talking about this in the Discovering Your Calling group program. And I will be doing a future podcast on all of these things. So I'm not going to get totally into this now. But that is a huge thing I'm realizing, and how many people struggle with this about just not allowing yourself that quiet time to really figure things out.

00:12:35 Sheri: And it takes being introspective. It takes time. It takes sitting with yourself, which is so scary for so many people. So again, that may be what's stopping you. I'm not going to get into how to fix that right now because I'll do a future podcast all about that one.

00:12:51 Sheri: The other thing that might be stopping you right now is you don't know your God given gifts and what to even be looking for. So again, all of these four things that I just share that might be stopping you, if they resonate with you, I'm going to address all of them in a future podcast. But if you're ready to take action today, to take that first step, even if you don't feel ready, even if you're fearful, have that fear of failure, I have two opportunities for you to take action today.  

00:13:24 Sheri: The first one is, go ahead. Take that CliftonStrengths assessment, if you haven't done it yet, and schedule your 90-minute navigating your strength session, where we will dive into your assessment reports, and you'll learn exactly what your natural talents and gifts are, those God given gifts inside of you, and how they will guide you to lead a fulfilling life. So that could be your next best step. And if you've already taken the assessment, then just book the 90-minute navigating your strength session.  

00:13:59 Sheri: The second opportunity you have to take action right now is grab one of the two spots left for my Discovering Your Calling one on one coaching. The group is closed until probably next fall, but I do still have one on one coaching opportunities, where not only do we start with the strengths, but we will take it even further. So you'll be ready to see the opportunities just like Angelica did.

00:14:28 Sheri: So if either of those sound like a possible next step for you, I would encourage you to just send me an email, sherimiterco, S-H-E-R-I-M-I-T-E-R-C-O@gmail.com, or schedule a clarity call. Both of those will be a link in the show notes to see which, if either, is that next best action step for you. Because here's the other thing. God knows where you're headed, but he does expect you to start taking the steps to get there, even if the path is not clear.

00:15:09 Sheri: So, my friends, I will be back next week on the podcast with another true calling story. But don't you worry, future episodes are going to address those things that might be stopping you. I also have some plans for probably next month to do a YouTube series on all of these things that we've been talking about and more. But if you're ready, reach out to me today and let me know that you want to grab a 90-minute coaching session. You can actually book that off my website, sherimiterco.com.

00:15:42 Sheri: Also on my website is several places that you can click the button and send me a message. That might be the easiest way to reach out to me. And we can see what is that next best action step for you to take today, so you can start to get that clarity and start to take those steps. So you're ready when opportunity knocks on your door. 

00:16:04 Sheri: All right, my friends, as always, thank you for listening to this podcast. If you found something in this episode insightful, reach out to me and just let me know. Even if you're not ready to take that action step, what insight did you gain from this?

00:16:22 Sheri: And also, is there somebody in your life who needs to hear this episode? Can you do me a favor and just share it? Do her a favor or him a favor and just share this episode with them. All right, my friends, we'll see you back here next week.

00:16:40 Sheri: Thank you, friends, for spending this time with me. My hope is something you heard today inspires you to take action towards Discovering Your Calling. But before you sign off, just two more quick things. One, if you found value and enjoyed this episode, can you do me a huge favor and leave a review or share this with a friend? Help us grow the podcast to make a bigger impact on the world.

00:17:02 Sheri: And second of all, if you haven't yet, don't forget to check the show notes to grab your Five to Thrive guide. It's my gift to you. It's a guide to help you intentionally invest in your natural talent, so you can turn them into strengths. Think of it as your personal navigational guide on your journey to a fulfilling life. And until next episode, remember, you've been created to live a life of fulfillment, purpose, success, and joy.