Sacred Work: Find and Share Your God-Given Talent
A week ago, I received a call from one of my closest friends at 6:45 in the morning.
He knows I am up that early, but he never calls then. Typically, I do not even have my phone with me first thing in the morning. I like taking some time for myself away from electronics while I watch the sunrise and get my pushups in.But this morning was different. I had been on an early coaching call with a swim buddy in another time zone. No sooner had I finished with my client than my buddy called.
“Yo, what’s up, buttercup?”
I love saying that to him because no one would ever describe him as a “buttercup.” It makes me laugh just writing it.
But I could hear something in his voice. He was shaken. He was speaking quickly, using short sentences, and completely skipped over my buttercup quip.
“Alden, I need to ask you some questions,” he said, barely waiting for me to respond.
“Okay. Fire away.”
“Did you have a dream about me last night?”
There was not a shred of sarcasm in his voice.
I tried to inject a little humor. “Let me think about that for a moment.”
I paused before answering flatly, “No.”
He gave me just enough time to ask, “Tell me about your dream.”
Every once in a while, maybe once a year, we share really odd dreams with each other.
“I have to tell you about my dream before I ask you a really serious question,” he said.
The Dream
He described a bleak scene that I pictured in different shades of gray and black. He was wandering through a cemetery and could not find an exit. There were no paths. Other people seemed to be wandering around, but they appeared soulless. They were not speaking to him, and they did not seem to have any particular purpose.
As he described the place, I could tell how unsettled he was. That was unusual for him. He is normally highly in control of his environment.
“Then you showed up,” he said. “It was like you popped out from behind a large headstone. I’m not exactly sure where you came from, but you walked right up to me and said, ‘Brother, you need to start doing your Sacred Work, or you are going to be stuck here. I’ve written you a letter about your Sacred Work.’”
He continued, “You handed me the letter and disappeared. I opened it, but I couldn’t read it.”
He stopped. Almost frantically, he asked me again, “Are you sure you didn’t have this dream last night?”
I promised him, in a serious tone, that I had not.
Satisfied, he asked his real question.
“I need to know. What did you write in that letter? What is the Sacred Work you were talking about?”
We talked for a few more minutes and tried to dissect the dream. I thanked him for sharing it with me, and then I proceeded to spend countless hours asking myself one question:
What would I have written to him?
It was a powerful dream, certainly the most powerful one he has ever shared with me. For that matter, it may be the most powerful dream anyone has ever offered up to my ears.
I am no dream specialist. I have studied a little of Carl Jung and his insights about dreams. Sometimes, I use ChatGPT to help decipher a dream, if for no other reason than to pass the time on a flight.
Usually, I do not spend much time searching for deep meaning in dreams. But this one stayed with me, particularly the term “Sacred Work.”
I decided to begin writing that letter to my buddy and offer my thoughts on how we find our Sacred Work.
This blog is my first attempt at writing that letter. I suspect it will never truly be finished.
What Is Sacred Work?
In my humble opinion, Sacred Work is the work we are meant to do.
By “meant to do,” I mean the work connected to our God-given talent. Each of us has something, some kind of raw gift that, when practiced over time, can become our highest-use talent.
When we use that talent, it does not always feel like work. It feels good to us. We may enter what some people call a heightened state of flow.
Why, then, do I call it “work” and not simply “talent”? Because shifting from talent to Sacred Work requires one more critical ingredient:
Sharing it.
To share our talent is to do the work. It means giving the best of ourselves to others with one expectation and one expectation only: that we may be of service to them.
That, to me, is the definition of Sacred Work:
Giving our time, talent, and energy with the intention of helping someone else.
Give the Best of Yourself
You can find past blogs of mine about karma, making the universe work for you, and creating your own luck. These ideas all trace back to the roots of Sacred Work.
Watch what happens when you give the best of yourself to someone else.
At first, you may only receive a few moments of satisfaction from knowing you did your best. But when you do that over and over again, something magical begins to happen.
It may not be perceptible at first. You might simply say to yourself, “Sweet, today is my day for the lucky parking spot,” or, “Wow, what a great business opportunity.”
Over time, those seemingly lucky one-offs may become more consistent, almost as if luck is attracted to you.
I want to be clear, though. The greatest reward of Sacred Work is not accolades or compensation. It is the understanding, deep inside you, that you gave your best in that moment to help someone else.
You gave your three greatest gifts:
- Your time
- Your talent
- Your energy
You gave them in the selfless pursuit of helping another person.
When I say you gave your best, I mean that, in that moment, you had nothing more to give. You gave all of yourself.
When I commit to coaching someone or speaking to an audience, that is exactly how I approach my work. I give it everything I have.
Let Go to Give Your Best
Giving your best requires you to let go.
Let go of your inhibitions.
Let go of your ego.
Let go of the fear of failing.
You have one focus and one focus only: giving the very best of yourself in that moment so you can be of service to others. It has taken me more than 40 years to reach this point.
Through rowing, I learned how to let go of physical pain. In the SEAL Teams, I learned to move through fear and endure mental and physical pain. As a CEO, I learned to let go of the ego-driven need to always be right.
Those experiences, and many others, helped bring me to a place where I could perform my own Sacred Work.
The funny thing is that we are all built for Sacred Work. It is available to every one of us.
Here is the challenge: Our Sacred Work is different for each of us, and we must have the courage to do it.
The Decision We Face Every Day
If you enter my buddy’s dream into ChatGPT and ask it to analyze the dream through the lens of Carl Jung, the response will likely suggest that he is facing a major decision.
I believe that is right.
I also believe we are all facing an important decision every day:
Are you giving your best to help others?
After some deep reflection on how I came to this point in my own Sacred Work, I shared a book recommendation with my buddy: Aspire by Kevin Hall.
That book helped me along my own path of discovering Sacred Work. My swim buddy is reading it now, so I will not ruin the punchline yet.
Stay tuned. There is more to discuss about Sacred Work.
In the meantime, if you feel stuck, do your best work.
Empty your tank.
Good things happen when you work hard to help others.
CHARLIE MIKE.
Alden
