The Call of the Calling

In this blog I’ve discussed public issues and also personal ones. Today’s blog is a personal one. I have touched on this topic before, but I am finding I need to discuss it again as I’m curious about other people’s experience with it. Here goes…

I have been thinking a lot lately about callings, intuition and where creative ideas come from. Is intuition to be trusted? Can we rely on our gut alone?

As Thomas Edison once observed, creativity is two percent illumination and the rest love and discipline. Although I am a huge believer and user of my own intuition, I am beginning to see Mr. Edison’s point.

Before I started my business, I was a teacher. I had been working in a teaching job that didn’t feel quite right for some time. There was a voice inside of me saying that I needed to leave. It got to a point where I no longer could fight the inner voice. In June 2007 I left the job.

As most of us know it is no easy thing to give up the security of a paycheck, health insurance and a supportive community. On the other hand, it can be even more difficult to suffer with the truth of what you know inside and not act on it.

I felt pretty confident that I was doing the right thing as life had shown me before that if I took a leap of faith by responding to my inner guide I would end up in a good place. However, I was finding it difficult to explain to other people what in the world I was doing with my life. As those who have gone through this know, there is usually a window of time where there is a ton of unknown. Even though I am someone who is dedicated to personal growth and have gone through a lot of transitions, this mystery stage doesn’t seem get any easier to explain. Especially when I had NO idea of what was next.

And then comes that one day or one moment when the spirit moves through you and you have that incredible “aha” moment that you never could have imagined because your brain would have never put that possibility together on its own. Usually, at least in my experience, these callings are not very rational, and in many cases, seem out of left field.

The one that came to me on that July day qualified as out of left field. Start a clothing line? What? I hadn’t worked in retail since I was 17, never designed a stitch and never wrote “run a clothing business” on my goal list! But when a calling calls, I have always been one to listen and get right on it. As Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, said recently, “Creativity does not always function rationally and can feel downright paranormal.” I think this applies to creating a business too.

For me one of the biggest lessons this time around has been about coupling intuition with good old-fashioned hard work, consistency and follow-through just like Edison suggested.

I am curious to know how does intuition play a part in your life? And how is it for you explaining an intuitive choice to someone who may not think that way?

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Tabby Biddle is a writer and editor specializing in helping women entrepreneurs and emerging authors get their message out. Additionally she is the founder of Lotus Blossom Style, a yoga lifestyle company created to support women in their personal transformation. She lives in Santa Monica, CA.

Seeking Clarity

photo by Lee Schneider

Last week as I went to wash my face before bedtime, I noticed that my right eye was bloodshot. Tired? Maybe. Too much computer time? Probably. But, I looked a little more closely and saw that along with the red, I also had a little white dot on the white part (sclera) of my eye. It looked like a pimple! This is something I had never seen or experienced before. I tried not to freak out, and immediately thought that it must be from the stress I was experiencing lately. A bit disturbed by this hopefully harmless growth in my eye, I decided I would wait until morning to see if there were any changes and if I needed to do anything.

I awoke to find the bloodshot and dot still there. My husband suggested that I call our doctor. In the past I have waited to call a doctor. I usually think that whatever I have will pass and that it’s best to let things run their natural course. Additionally, I would rather avoid the unplanned expenditure.

As I wrestled with what to do, it dawned on me that in my meditations over the past few days, I had been asking for clarity. Clarity with a capital C. I was asking for the ability to see my purpose clearly so that I could take my next steps forward. It occurred to me that with this eye development, my body might be trying to tell me something. But what?

As a yoga teacher and all-around kinesthetic/experiential learner, I have often found that my greatest lessons and insights have come through the wisdom of my body. When I was in my 20s, I had incredible back pain that made it impossible for me to sit for more than 10 minutes at a time. The pain grew so excruciating that I eventually had to leave a desk job (that I actually adored) and many loved ones behind and went on the road to travel. Movement. Ahhhhh…

That single trip completely changed my perspective and outlook on life. It allowed me to move from a fairly small lens where I saw mostly what was right in front of me, to viewing with a much grander perspective where I started to glimpse not only the global, but the interconnectivity of all life. A pretty big shift that my soul must have been calling for because as soon as I stepped foot on the airplane to head out on my journey, my back pain dissipated and I have not experienced anything like it ever since!

So I wonder with my eye condition… Am I being asked to reflect even more deeply than I already am about what I am not seeing? Must I somehow identify my blind spot? Is that possible? One friend thought I may be cleansing out things, metaphorically speaking, that are keeping me from seeing clearly. Like a purification.

Eventually I did go to the doctor and found out that there is a real name (which I can’t spell, pronounce or even remember right now) to what I have and there are special drops for me to take to get rid of it. With a couple days of drops in me, my eye is clearing and I have been breaking through incredible ground in areas that I have been avoiding for months. In some cases, years. While I still may have a little ways to go, my eyes are clearing physically and it feels to me, symbolically.

When you get symptoms of any kind, do you ever wonder if there is anything that may lie beneath the symptoms? Do you ever let them be a door to open you to something bigger?

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Tabby Biddle is a writer and editor specializing in helping women entrepreneurs and emerging authors get their message out. Additionally she is the founder of Lotus Blossom Style, a yoga lifestyle company created to support women in their personal transformation. She lives in Santa Monica, CA.

Leap Before You Look

In our American culture it has been taught for a long time that the important things are outside of us … that we are meant to compete, achieve and bring home more goodies than our neighbor. This outlook on living has been going on for so long that it has actually become considered a bold and daring move to ask ourselves how we feel and what we truly need. With things unraveling as they are, it might be time to try something different.

Most of us waiver between the need for structure and the desire for our life to be exciting, unpredictable and exhilarating. In our culture it seems that most decisions are made from logic … I’m going to make more money at this job, so I will take it; I’m going to…, so I will… But what about decisions that are made based not on the head as director, but on hunches, feeling, and dare I say … intuition?

I have lived my adult life as an intuitive decision-maker. At age 26 I left the perfect job, boyfriend, friends, family and lifestyle to travel through Asia on a hunch. Coming from the background of being a super-planner, type A personality, competitive and Miss Calendar Girl who had her datebook filled to the gills with activities for the upcoming six months, I wanted to see what life would be like to live from my gut, live in the moment and make decisions based not on logic, but on intuition. Quite an experiment it was and continues to be!

It seems that as things are changing before us, the fiber of what we knew (or at least thought) American culture to be … there is a lot of questioning about our next steps. Should we try and rebuild what he had? Should we start fresh? Is there some hybrid of what was and what could be?

Battened down and frazzled with our To-Do lists, pushed and pulled by the “shoulds” and obsessively trying to be all things to all people, it seems that many of us have abandoned one of our greatest powers and resources … our very own inner-wisdom.

So as we move forward onto this new stage, how will you make decisions? What will guide you? Will you look before you leap or leap before you look?

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Tabby Biddle is a writer and editor specializing in helping women entrepreneurs and emerging authors get their message out. Additionally she is the founder of Lotus Blossom Style, a yoga lifestyle company created to support women in their personal transformation. She lives in Santa Monica, CA.

A Life of Service: For Love, Money or Both?

The recession may not only be changing household budgets and habits, but also challenging longstanding gender roles.

The New York Times reported that 82 percent of the job losses in the recent months have befallen men. For many households this means that women who once were full-time homemakers are now switching to be full-time career-women as their husbands are getting laid off.

Although not thrilled that their husband has lost his job and the family income has taken a nose-dive, women are finding opportunity in the situation, fulfilling personal desires and career goals. Others however are not entirely sold on the idea that they will be both the main breadwinner and caregiver in the family. And of course there are the many women who have been doing the balancing act between motherhood and career woman for plenty of years. For most, there has been a battle between guilt for leaving their child for a job, or guilt for choosing to stay with their child instead of taking a job. With more layoffs, comes even more pressure.

Last week in The New York Times Sunday business section there was an article and graph that caught my eye entitled “Why is Her Paycheck Smaller?” As an obvious advocate for parity of pay between women and men, I stopped my page flipping to check it out.

I knew already from government stats that women in full-time jobs make 80 cents to the man’s dollar. But I was not prepared to see this set out before me in a graph … the visual cold hard facts. What I saw was not okay.

In jobs such as education administrators, marketing and sales managers, real estate brokers and retail sales, women actually earn 30% less than their male counterparts (70 cents to the man’s dollar)! In other industries such as advertising, finance and food service, women are earning 20% less. Teaching, bookkeeping and waiting tables, 10% less. The only areas where the graph showed parity of pay? Postal service and shipping clerks, data entry keyers, ticket agents and special education teachers.

The graph showed me that in most industries, women are earning between 10 to 35% less than men. Oooh la, la. This was shocking.

Fortunately, in its first week, the new Administration made pay equity and fairness to women in the workplace a priority. On January 29 President Obama signed a bill, the very first bill of the new Administration, expanding a worker’s right to sue for wage inequalities to push employers to reduce gender discrimination. “It stiffens penalties for employers who discriminate based on gender and it protects employees from retaliation for sharing salary information,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut and chief sponsor of the bill.

While the bill helps women move toward salary equity in the workplace, it does not address a bigger question on my mind: What are we going to do about the service sector jobs that pay incredibly lower rates than management and business positions?

I bring this up because the current reality is that more women work in the service sector where wages are low and more men work in management and business where wages are higher. Pre-recession, a family could have been earning $200,000 from the husband’s management position combined with his wife’s work as a full-time teacher, for example. Now that same family is living off of $35,000. Another family that was earning $300,000 from the husband’s financial services job is now living off $30,000 without any health insurance or unemployment insurance from the wife’s two part-time jobs as a medical assistant and bookkeeper.

I suppose I am digging into a few issues here, but it all concerns me. Let’s look at it this way: Numbers show that most women are working in the areas of education, health care and other service industries. How about we place a higher value on service work? What I mean by that is more take-home dollars for the teachers of your children and the nurses who help us heal.

What are your thoughts?

How can we do this?

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Tabby Biddle is a writer and editor specializing in helping women entrepreneurs and emerging authors get their message out. Additionally she is the founder of Lotus Blossom Style, a yoga lifestyle company created to support women in their personal transformation. She lives in Santa Monica, CA.