Why Most People Hate Their Jobs (And What to Do About It)

What if the biggest drain on your energy, your mood, and your sense of purpose wasn’t your schedule, your health, or your relationships? What if it was your work?

According to a 2025 Gallup poll, only 21% of American workers are truly engaged in their jobs. That means nearly four out of five people are either sleepwalking through their workdays or actively working against the teams around them. And according to Professor Michael Marmot at the Institute of Health Equity in London, the worst of these workers face something much darker: work that is “monotonous, boring, and soul-destroying,” where they die a little each day because their work touches no part of who they actually are.

On this episode, hosts Dave Rodriguez and Dimitri Snowden sit down with Heather Fisher, executive coach, leadership development consultant, and founder of Thrive Vista Coaching, to unpack why so many people feel stuck in their work and what they can actually do to change it.

The Difference Between a Job, a Career, and a Calling

Before we can solve vocational disengagement, we have to understand what vocation actually is, and how it’s different from a job or a career.

As Dave Rodriguez puts it:

“Vocation is what you do with your life. Your career is what you do with your life. Your job is what you do with your life. But your calling is who you are as you do your life.”

A job is transactional. A career is directional. But a calling is foundational. It’s the thing that drives everything else, the invisible thread that gives meaning to how you spend your time. And here’s the important part: your vocation and your job don’t have to be the same thing. Some people are paid to operate in their calling. Others find their calling outside of their professional work. Both are valid.

The problem is that most people never stop long enough to identify the thread at all.

Why So Many People Feel “Meh” at Work

Heather Fisher sees this daily in her coaching practice. People who, on paper, should feel satisfied: decent pay, a title, some stability. And yet they walk in each morning with a low-grade fog of disconnection they can’t quite name.

According to Heather, two root causes drive most vocational disengagement.

The first is internal: misalignment with personal values. Most people have never sat down and clearly identified what they value most. So when their daily work doesn’t align with those values, they feel the friction without understanding its source. As Heather explains it: “If I’m going in and I’m feeling ‘meh,’ I might not know why. But it’s often because the very thing I’m doing doesn’t align to the values I hold.”

The second is external: poor working conditions. A manager who doesn’t know your strengths, a culture that offers no room for growth, and a system built entirely around output and not people. Three out of four American employees, per current research, believe their employer doesn’t care about their wellbeing. That’s not just disengaging. It’s demoralizing.

Key Insights from the Episode

1. Engagement is a body experience, not just a mindset. Heather encourages listeners to check in physically when they hear the stats: “How do you feel in your body right now?” If something tightens or deflates, that’s data. Where you fall in that 21-62-17% breakdown is the starting line for change.
2. Values clarification is the first and most powerful step. Heather’s go-to method: ask someone to describe their best possible day. Don’t give them a list of 50 words. Just listen. Listen to how they choose to spend their time, who they spend it with, and what they include without thinking twice. Themes emerge. Those themes are values. And values clarification is something anyone can begin on their own.
3. You don’t have to quit your job to honor your values. Heather is direct: “I’m not suggesting you radically change everything. I’m rather saying: here’s my value, and I’m doing nothing to honor it. What would 10 minutes a day look like?” Intentionality, not revolution, is where change begins.
4. Leaders are often the single most important variable. As Heather’s client told her just the morning of the recording: “The culture starts at the top. And that starts with me.” If leadership doesn’t believe in developing people, the system won’t support it, regardless of how much effort individual contributors put in.
5. Psychological safety is not a perk. It’s a foundation. Being seen, being heard, and feeling safe enough to bring your whole self to work are not extras. They are core conditions for sustained engagement. As Heather puts it, “It’s not enough to have a seat at the table. I need to know that I can say something and you will hear me.”

Practical Application: Where to Start

You don’t need to overhaul your career to improve your vocational health. Start here.

1. Describe your best day. Write it out or say it out loud to someone you trust. Don’t edit yourself. What made the cut? What did you include automatically? Start listening for themes.
2. Name your values. From that exercise, try to identify three to five words that show up across your description. These are likely your core values. Write them down somewhere you’ll see them.
3. Compare your values to your day. Look at how you actually spend your time at work. Where is there alignment? Where is there a gap? The gap is where your “meh” lives.
4. Make one intentional shift. You don’t need to leave your job. Find one 10-minute window in your week where you can honor a value. A short mentoring conversation. A project that uses a skill you love. One small act of intentionality.
5. Have the conversation. Once you have some clarity and confidence, consider talking to a trusted colleague, a spouse, a friend, or a coach. External perspective accelerates internal change.

The Calling Question No One Is Asking

Near the close of the episode, Dave Rodriguez brings the conversation to its most essential point: the calling.

“Your calling is the most ancient thing about you,” he says. “It existed before you did. And it’s the most eternal thing about you, because when you operate in your calling, you leave a legacy that goes on for generations.”

There are three ways your calling can relate to your career:

Unrelated: Your job funds your life. Your calling fulfills you outside of work. This is more common than people think, and it’s completely valid. Knowing your calling actually makes your job easier to bear, because your job no longer has to carry the full weight of your meaning.

Integrated: Your calling is woven into your career without being identical to it. Heather Fisher is a coach, but her calling is to see people thrive. She does that through her work and through her broader life.

Identical: You’ve built a career directly around your calling. Dimitri Snowden’s calling to serve the underserved is the engine of everything he does professionally.

Knowing which of these categories fits you is an enormous relief. Because it means there’s no single right answer.

What to Do Next

“Most people don’t even take the time to have awareness that something is going on that they wish they could change or do differently. So you’ve already taken the first step.” — Heather Fisher

Hold onto that awareness. Listen to this episode again. Pick one thing and act on it. One small thing leads to another.

And if you’re ready to go deeper, Destiny Works offers The Calling Quilt™ coaching experience: a one-on-one and workshop process designed to help you uncover your calling and understand exactly how it intersects with your vocation.

Learn more about The Calling Quilt™ coaching today.

---

Full Transcript

File Name: The Vitality Journey Podcast – Episode with Heather Fisher

Dave: What if your career made you healthier instead of exhausted? What if you walked into your job thinking, “I can’t believe they pay me to do this?” On this episode, we’re going to take a deep dive into vocational health and discuss how work can give you joy and, more importantly, a deep sense of meaning. Welcome back to The Vitality Journey.

Dave: So on this episode of The Vitality Journey, we’re going to talk about vocational health. As you can see, there’s not just Dimitri and me here in the studio. We have a guest, and she’s not so much a guest. She’s a partner with us, which we’ll explain in a minute. This is Heather Fisher. Let me tell you a little about her.

She’s a leadership development consultant, executive coach, and business transformation expert with over 20 years of experience in corporate leadership. She’s the founder and CEO of Thrive Vista Coaching. She specializes in equipping leaders and organizations with the tools to navigate growth, change, and conflict effectively. Heather’s career spans senior leadership roles in strategy, transformation, operations, sales, and marketing within a Fortune 100 company. And I’m really thrilled that she’s one of our Destiny Works coaches.

Heather: Thank you. I’m doing great. That’s a great way to start.

Dave: We’re looking forward to this conversation. We wanted Heather here because she has a significant amount of work done in the field of vocation and work relationships and strategy. We’re going to get to that in a moment. But first, let me tell you guys a story.

You both know I’ve talked about Charlie before. Charlie was my mentor. He passed away a couple of years ago, but I think I had coffee with him roughly once a month for about 35 years. The reason I wanted to share this part of his story is that not everyone would know it.

Charlie, when it came to his vocation, was as accomplished and as skilled as you can be. He was a physician, and not just a physician. He was part of the faculty of IU Medical School. He served in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, and he was part of a group of doctors who opened a partnership in East Africa that now provides comprehensive care to millions of people and was on the forefront of the HIV/AIDS intervention in Africa. I’m not positive about this, but I think at one point, one of the doctors, or maybe the whole group, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine.

I tell you all of this to say that Charlie was highly effective in his vocation. But I’m also going to tell you there was no one more unassuming than Charlie. That’s a vast understatement. If you saw the house he lived in, it was a small ranch. You would never picture a man with that kind of vocational accomplishment being so unassuming.

I think one of the reasons why is that, despite his career accomplishments as a doctor, teacher, researcher, he was compelled by a calling that, unless you knew him well, you might not see. It was like an umbrella over everything in his life.

He just loved mentoring young leaders. Everything he did, all his work in medicine, was in the context of mentoring young leaders. And I was one of those people he mentored.

Here’s a quick story. In his last days, about two or three weeks before he died, he summoned me to his house because he wanted me to meet another even younger leader he had been mentoring. His name was Keith. Charlie called us together and basically handed Keith to me. Keith and I awkwardly walked out of the house together because this was the first time we’d met. As we walked down the driveway, another man pulled up. He was older than me. He introduced himself, and I said, “Yeah, Charlie mentored me. This is Keith, and Charlie mentored Keith too.” And this man, who was 20 years older than me, said, “And Charlie mentored me.”

We found out that Charlie had been mentoring younger leaders for over 50 years.

I say that to say: he had a vocation, but what drove him was his calling. And that calling was to mentor. We’ll come back to that a little later, because I believe a key to vocational health is understanding your calling, what gives you meaning.

So, just for our audience: what is vocation? How is it different from a job versus a career?

Dave: Vocation, to me, is what you do with your life. Your career is what you do with your life. Your job is what you do with your life. But your calling is who you are as you do your life. That’s why it’s an essential part of vocation. Would you agree with that, Heather?

Heather: Yes. Another way I’d put it is: how do I spend my time? For some people, it might look like a traditional job where I go to a building or work virtually. For others, at the stage of life they’re in, they have a vocation but may not be getting paid for it. They’re spending time doing something meaningful. What is that something?

Dave: So your vocation can be different than your job.

Heather: Yes, they don’t have to be the same. It’s great if they are, but it’s not required. I look at vocation as: this is how I conduct my life, this is what’s important to me, and this is where I invest my time. For some people, you get paid for it. For others, it’s a hobby.

Dave: Most people do get paid for what they do. When it comes to vocational health, Heather’s here to help us get everything squared away. But the topic we’ll close this episode on is calling, because I think that’s at the core of it all. It defines meaning within the work environment. And the fact is, most people are not able to identify meaning in their vocation.

On top of that, vocational health, even as it relates to jobs and careers, is deeply suspect right now. A 2025 Gallup poll showed that only 21% of American workers are engaged in their jobs. How would you define “engaged?”

Dimitri: Engaged means I’m bought in. I’m excited. I believe in this. I want to show up and do the thing.

Dave: And less than one in four people feel that way about their work. Now, I think we feel that as consumers. When you call a customer service line and the bananas you ordered are brown, when you go to a restaurant and someone’s short with you, you can feel that disengagement through the service you’re receiving.

That means we’re all in trouble, because 62% of American workers say they’re not engaged. One person defined “not engaged” as sleepwalking through your workday, putting in time but not energy or passion. And startlingly, 17% of American workers are actively disengaged, meaning they’re not just unhappy, but actively acting out their unhappiness, undermining the work of their engaged coworkers.

Dimitri: You’re un-jobbing your job.

Dave: I found an interesting quote from Michael Marmot, a professor at the Institute of Health Equity in London. Here’s how he described his clients: they have to endure work that is monotonous, boring, and soul-destroying, where they die a little when they come to work each day, because their work touches no part of them that is them.

Heather, you’ve spent a lot of time helping organizations deal with exactly this. When a Fortune 100 company sees these kinds of stats, what do they do, or what should they do?

Heather: Before I answer that, I’d love for anyone listening to ask yourself how you feel in your body right now when you hear those numbers. Do you go, “I’m part of that number?” Because I think this awareness piece matters. Where do you fall? Are you in the 21% who are engaged? Are you in the 17% who are sabotaging everyone else? Or are you in the 62% of “meh?”

Which means you might be the customer who gets brown bananas delivered, because no one took the time to look at them.

This could be the first time, as you’re listening, that someone pauses and realizes, “Oh, I’m actually in this part of that.” We’ll talk later about assessment and awareness, because knowing where you’re at is the first step.

Dave: Keep listening, because we’re going to work through all of this. But let me ask, Heather: why is such a small percentage of people engaged in their work? Why?

Heather: I see a couple of things. I coach a lot of people who identify with being in the “meh” zone, just going to work, punching the clock, and coming home. One cause is internal. We have to look inward, which means: who am I, and what are my values? Values are my deeply held beliefs, the things that are core to me. So when I show up to a job and spend my time there, how well does it align to what I actually value?

Dave: Do people even think that way?

Heather: No. Usually not. And that’s the point. If I’m doing work and feeling “meh,” I might not even know why. On the outside, I may look like I should be happy. I may be making decent money, I may have some prestige, a title. So why do I still feel “meh?” It’s often because the very thing I’m doing doesn’t align to the values I hold deep down.

Dave: Interesting.

Heather: The second cause I see is external: the conditions around you. If I show up to a job where my manager doesn’t really know who I am, doesn’t know my strengths, hasn’t taken the time to individualize their leadership to me, I’m showing up every day feeling like, “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I bring.” So I see a mix of both: inwardly, what are your values and does your work align? And outwardly, am I in a culture where people are learning, growing, and there’s a path for development? Because if I show up every day and feel stagnant, over time, I feel “meh.”

Dimitri: That brings me to a question: are the systems themselves built to support that? I think about technology and how organizations can implement AI and automation to reduce repetitive human labor so that people can be placed on higher-value tasks and decisions. Do corporate environments and systems actually support that kind of thinking? Even if we have a good manager and I’m aligned with my job, if the structure itself doesn’t promote personal growth or spirit-aligned work, is that a factor?

Heather: It’s definitely a factor. When we look at organizations, there’s typically a heavy emphasis on results and performance, which makes sense. But the system, if you look at the whole of it, is missing something. Who’s creating those results? Where does performance come from? The people. And when we don’t focus on the people proportionally to our focus on results, we’re in a gap. One of the great ironies is that if you ask the average corporate leader, “What’s your greatest resource?” they’ll say, “Our people.” But the evidence doesn’t always reflect that as a priority.

Dave: Do organizations think about creating systems that genuinely build up their people?

Heather: Some do. I work with a lot of clients whose organizations are doing exactly that. But there are just as many, probably more, that aren’t. In my experience, it’s the first thing that gets cut. Times are tough, results are down, so we eliminate growth and development because those are “nice to haves.” We don’t have time to focus on the people. We just need them to do more of the thing.

Dimitri: It’s almost disenfranchising. You stamp widgets every day, and all they care about is your output number, not the person behind the number. And the system is almost entirely set up that way. How do you get around it?

Heather: I think it starts at the top. I met with a client just this morning who said, “Heather, the culture starts with me.” He’s the president of a division within a larger corporation. If you don’t have that mindset at the top, if the person with the authority doesn’t believe in developing their people, it probably won’t happen.

Dave: So there are people listening going, “Yeah, that’s my company. They don’t seem to care.” And by the way, three out of four American employees say their employer does not care about their wellbeing. That’s startling. They have a sense that you don’t really care about any part of me as a person.

So let’s say someone’s listening, they’re paying attention, and they’re in the 62%. They want to improve. They want their work to touch who they are, as Marmot described it. What would you say to those people?

Heather: This is a piece of work that individuals can do outside of their organization. You asked earlier whether most people know what their values are. The answer is: usually not. But you can start there. In terms of how to do that, an easy and non-intimidating approach is this: don’t throw a list of 50 words in front of someone and say, “Pick five.” Instead, ask: “Tell me about your best day. If you could design tomorrow as your most favorite day, what would it look like?” And then just listen. Listen to how they choose to spend their time. What makes the cut? I’m quietly taking notes and listening for themes.

You could do this with someone in your life, a spouse or a best friend. They could help you identify what they see in you, what you gravitate toward, what lights you up. This is an easy way to start identifying your values.

Dave: When you coach people that way, what are some of the things they say that you then translate into a value?

Heather: I’m listening for how they choose to spend their time and who they spend it with. If someone says, “I get up, I pour a cup of coffee, I take time to journal,” I’m picking up on things that likely hold value for them. Someone else might say, “I get up, I immediately head out the door, I’ve got a two-hour workout today.” Different values signal entirely. I’m just listening to what they say they’re doing and who they’re doing it with.

Dave: So the average person can do this. It’d be great to have a coach like Heather Fisher. But you could absolutely do this on your own. It’s a values clarification exercise.

Heather: Absolutely. It’s foundational. When people come to me saying, “I feel disconnected, I feel ‘meh,’ I’m not sure what I’m doing here,” I ask: “What is important to you? What are your values?” And usually there’s a blank stare. Starting there is a great first step.

Dave: And then how do you translate that? If I give you a list of values that don’t align with my current job, what do I do? Do I quit? Transfer departments?

Heather: The first step, once someone has a values list, is to look at how they’re spending their time and start making the connection. Are you spending 95% of your time doing something that doesn’t align to the values we’ve identified? Then it becomes about being intentional. I’m not suggesting you radically change everything. Rather: here’s my value, and I’m doing nothing to honor it right now. What would it look like to make 10 minutes a day where I honor that value? What would that look like?

Dave: When you help a person figure out their values, do you encourage them to have that conversation with their supervisor?

Heather: Some people do, but I never start there. It can feel intimidating. You have to try it on a little bit, get comfortable with it yourself before you’re comfortable speaking to others about it. So I start with the individual, then encourage them to talk to a spouse, a friend, a safe community. Once they gain clarity and confidence, then we can talk about having that conversation at work.

Dave: Sounds like the first step is: know yourself. It starts with you.

Heather: It always starts with you.

[Mid-Roll Sponsorship]

Dave: Let’s take a minute and check in. Ever catch yourself wondering, “Why am I here? What’s my real purpose?” At Destiny Works, we help you discover exactly that and bring it to life. Through personal coaching, group experiences, or The Vitality Journey, you’ll explore what makes you thrive and create a life full of clarity, energy, and impact. Are you ready to step into your purpose and live fully? Head over to destiny-works.com and start your journey today. Now back to the conversation.

Heather: So I talked about two things: the inward piece of knowing yourself and your values, and the external conditions. There are going to be some conditions at your workplace that you can’t change. Maybe you can’t change your manager. So where can you make moves? It goes back to what you know to be your strengths. Maybe you’re really good at planning, but you’re stuck doing spreadsheets all day when you’d thrive in something more experiential. What would it look like to go to your manager and say, “Hey, I have an idea. I’d really like to take on this kind of work?” Looking for those opportunities to leverage your strengths can be difficult when you’re in the “meh,” I want to name that. But the mindset to bring is: I’m trying to honor my strengths and my values by bringing them to my workplace.

Dave: And the whole approach of The Vitality Journey depends on that shift: not sitting around and waiting for someone else to fix it. You’ve got to make some decisions. And you’re saying there are decisions you can make about your vocational health, even if you can’t change everything.

Heather: Nobody’s going to fix this for you. And that’s not an easy message. But sometimes a client will get that “aha.” A woman a few weeks ago said, “Wait, I can change this?” And she could. It has to be an intentional decision.

Dave: In the same way you’ve got to do the push-ups, in the same way you’ve got to choose what you eat, in the same way you’ve got to be an illuminator instead of a diminisher in relationships: it starts with you on the inside.

So some of our audience are business owners or they hold high-value roles in organizations. If they’re hearing that 62% of their people don’t want to be there, or 17% are actively undoing what everyone else is building, what can they start thinking about so their people don’t feel that way?

Heather: A simple question to start asking is: how much energy and focus do I spend on results and performance versus the energy and focus I spend on my people? When you get on a town hall, a quarterly update, any gathering where you’re leading, where do you spend your time? My guess is most of it is on results and performance. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the consideration is: are you also spending time on your people? Do you know who they are? Do you know the individual strengths each person brings? Because when you become a leader who knows that about each individual, you can leverage your team in an entirely different way, and that’s what ultimately drives performance.

Dimitri: And this goes back to tools like the Enneagram. Organizationally, that’s a powerful way to say, “Now I see how my people think and operate.” Even the five languages of appreciation in the workplace: there’s a book on exactly that, operating on the assumption that the people who work for you have different languages of appreciation. Some people want a handshake. Some people want you to spend time with them. Those five languages are crucial, and leaders often overlook them entirely.

Dave: If you’re leading a team of three or a team of five, there are approaches that can move people from the 62% to the 21%. What if you approached your team with the goal, “I’m going to raise everyone’s engagement level?” And for business owners, what can be done about the system itself?

Dimitri: Because this is universal. It doesn’t matter if you own a lawn care business. It’s agnostic to industry and vertical. There’s something structurally broken in how employment systems are designed. I’ve always imagined: if I were a car manufacturer, every one of my employees would drive one of my cars. For brand equity, for taking care of your people. Remember the CEO who reduced his own salary so that everyone made at least $70,000 a year? Employee satisfaction went through the roof. Nobody was quitting that job. When you offer free daycare, when you provide lunch: sometimes it’s the smallest things. So systematically, what needs to change? Because it’s not just about having a great leader. The whole system can still be broken. I can be a great leader in my department, but my company still has a terrible PTO policy.

Heather: The word that comes to my mind is “systemic.” I can be a great leader at the top, which is a great start. But what am I doing to grow and develop everyone in the organization so that the mindset is open to consider what we’re talking about? Because when I think about working, leading, being an employee, there’s the being and the doing. I need to do things. But if my being, my mindset, isn’t open or available to consider other things, none of this will land.

Dave: Let me switch gears. Vocational health has to be dependent on team relationships, correct?

Heather: Absolutely. It’s obvious, and it’s important.

Dave: Any ideas on how to improve working relationships, the relationship with supervisors, the relationship with coworkers?

Heather: There’s a phrase that’s become more prominent in the last few years: psychological safety. What does it mean? It means I can show up to work with my whole self. We often talk about work and life as separate, but we are whole people wherever we go. Building relationships with a team is about being able to show up, know who you are, know what’s important to you, and feel like you can be seen and heard.

This is a big driver of disengagement. It’s not enough to have a seat at the table. I need to know that when I say something, you actually hear it. And I need to be able to genuinely hear you. That’s what creating conditions of psychological safety looks like: everyone can show up, have a voice, and feel valued. It doesn’t mean every idea gets implemented, but it’s considered, discussed, and respected.

Dave: And that’s bigger than just making everyone go to the corporate picnic or doing the trust fall exercise.

Heather: Much bigger. And I’m sure someone listening right now is thinking, “I don’t feel psychologically safe where I work. No one seems to see anything in me. I’m always worried about getting laid off.”

Dave: What about work-life balance? The perennial topic. Some people say there’s no such thing. Some people say it’s everything. What’s your take?

Heather: There’s such a reaction to those words. Here’s what I know from my own life: there are seasons where more time is going to be spent in certain areas, and that’s natural. If you zoom out and look at the macro view of your life, there was probably a time when you were heavily weighted on work. Then you had young kids, and it looked different. Now the kids are older, and it looks different again. The willingness to accept that ebb and flow, and to be okay with it, is key.

The word I always come back to is “intentional.” Where I see people get into trouble is when there’s no ebb and flow at all: either maxed out on both sides, or stuck in one weighting past its season, which prevents them from giving proper attention to the other.

Dave: So we have to be aware of what season we’re in.

Heather: And give ourselves some grace. I talk to people who have little kids and need to miss a day of work because a child is sick, and they’re beating themselves up. You are a parent and you have a job, and that’s okay.

Dave: And especially in a marriage, there needs to be a conversation with your spouse about the season you’re in.

Heather: Yes. There’s the big conversation about the season, and then there’s the day to day. My husband and I used to do this when our kids were little: we’d come in from work in the evening and immediately share with each other where we were on a scale of one to ten. “I’m coming in at a four today.” And he’d go, “Okay, I can dial up to a seven.” Or if we were both at a two: order pizza, no questions asked. That immediate, non-judgmental check-in of, “Let me share where I’m at, how do we tackle this together?” Just five seconds of communication can set the whole evening in a different direction.

Dave: Can you do something like that at work? Within reason, can you share where you’re at with coworkers or even a supervisor?

Heather: In a healthy work environment where you’re seen as a whole person and where there’s care both for your performance and for you as a person, yes, that fits. It may look a little different than what I described at home. But if you have a coworker with whom you’ve built trust, and you say, “Hey, I’m running on zero today,” that context helps them understand what they’re seeing from you rather than assuming you just don’t care about your work.

Dimitri: It does give context. And it reduces friction in the relationship, which matters.

Heather: Exactly. And we recognize that varying levels of relationship exist at work. You might have someone with very high trust in your professional community, and someone you haven’t built trust with yet. The level of information you share is going to look different. But the takeaway is that the whole idea of work-life balance has ebbs and flows. And the word I always come back to is “intentional.” Where I see people hit shaky ground is when it’s not intentional. They get swept up, find themselves approaching burnout, and feel like they’re failing at everything.

Dave: Back to the 17% who are actively disengaged: for the person who’s kind of just being there and sabotaging their job, what would you say to them? What can they do?

Heather: There are things you can do yourself. But I would also say this is a great opportunity to talk about leadership. Often, the 17% exist because courageous conversations aren’t being had. Maybe by themselves, maybe by their leaders. It’s really difficult for a leader to step into a hard conversation if they’ve never been given the skills to do so. The 17% often develop in cultures where someone is clearly not performing, but they’ve been getting away with it because the manager doesn’t know how to address it. A lot of this goes back to having both individual and leadership skills to tackle these things before the culture turns toxic.

Dave: Let’s shift gears and talk about meaning. This is at the core of what Destiny Works was founded on: the idea that there is something about you that is a calling and a destiny. When a person can’t identify the thing that moves them most, the thing they’re put on this earth to do, and they can’t connect that to their work, there’s a disconnect. And they struggle.

Here’s a quote I love from Dallas Willard: “You were built to count as water is made to run downhill. You were placed in a context to count in ways that no one else does. That is your destiny.” I love that quote because it implies that there were unseen hands that formed you as you are. I believe that’s God. And it also implies that your calling sets you apart from everybody else. I believe the calling is the most ancient thing about you. It existed before you did, before your body did, before your personality did. Your calling existed. And it’s the most eternal thing about you, because when you operate in your calling, you leave a legacy that goes on for generations. Ancient and eternal makes it pretty important.

Dimitri, do you have an idea of what your calling is?

Dimitri: I do. I’ll say it out loud: it’s to serve people who are underserved. This theme of serving the overlooked, of confronting the injustices around them and working to reconcile those, fires me up. I cannot walk past it. It doesn’t matter what else is on my plate. If I see it, I have to address it. That’s how I’m built. Other people are built to see and respond to different things. But for me, every person we walk past without helping is a missed responsibility.

Dave: And I love how you leverage that calling into action. You want to reduce the friction that holds people back from the life they could live.

Dimitri: Systematically, I try to build an infrastructure that moves people through social services with less friction. Because the individual might be doing everything right personally, but the system itself is still throttling them. So I have to put a wrench in those gears. I have to redesign the system.

Dave: And the beautiful thing is how your calling and ours work together. You meet someone at the point of their most basic needs, food, shelter, safety, and then hand them off to the work of calling and purpose. It’s a continuum of care. If we can each operate in our own calling, the community wellness factor increases exponentially.

Now, what’s your calling, Heather?

Heather: My calling, in short, is to help others grow and thrive. That’s the core of it. The way I do that is unique to me, even if someone else hears that and says, “Oh, me too.” Because the way I execute on that calling is specific to who I am. I do it through coaching, helping people see something in themselves that maybe they didn’t know was there, understanding where they want to go, and then helping them get there systematically.

And going back to Charlie: he was a doctor, but his calling was mentoring. He loved having med students over for breakfast, doing a Bible study with them. He lived for that. His calling was mentoring, and he did it within the context of being a physician.

Dave: So let me take off on that, because all three of you have done something with your calling. And I want people to hear this. There are three ways your vocation can intersect with your calling.

First, your calling and your job or career can be unrelated. We all know someone who runs a business, maybe a software company, but who, like Charlie, is really a mentor at heart. That’s what lights them up. They’ve got a career that finances their life, but their calling is separate. And that’s okay. It should actually make your job better, because your job no longer has to fulfill everything for you. You have the calling operating alongside it.

Second, your career and your calling can be integrated, like Heather. She’s a coach, but her calling is to see people thrive. And she does that in many ways outside of coaching as well, through community, through relationships. She’s integrated the calling into how she lives and works.

Third, Dimitri, what you’ve done is take your calling and make it identical to your career. You’ve created a career built around your calling.

Dimitri: Yes, and I’ll say I’m still testing the viability of that. Real life is real. The electric bill is still due. Groceries still need to happen. And sometimes that can slow down or reshape what executing on your calling looks like day to day.

Dave: So as we wrap up: at the core of Destiny Works’ coaching, in addition to The Vitality Journey, is what we call The Calling Quilt™. We do it one-on-one and in a workshop format. If you want to know what your calling is and whether it’s unrelated, integrated, or identical with your career, Heather, along with Tawana, Micah, Olivia, and our Destiny Works coaches, would be honored to walk you through that. We’d love to do that for you.

Heather: And what an experience. I’ve been through it myself. You are forever changed after that experience, seeing your life pictorialized, seeing the threads that run through everything, and then being able to say, “This is who and what I am. Now I can create something new with this.” Just knowing that is an act of empowerment.

Dave: Heather, you’re one of the best encouragers I know. Would you give a last word to someone listening who wants to thrive in their vocational health?

Heather: My encouragement is this: most people don’t even take the time to become aware that something is going on that they wish they could change or do differently. You’ve already taken the first step by listening to this. Hold onto that awareness. Listen to this again. Pick one thing from today’s conversation and start reflecting on it. And then be intentional: what do you want to do with it? One small thing. Don’t go crazy. Just pick one small thing, and then pick another small thing. That’s how it starts.

Dave: Awesome. And let me send us out with this. This is from David Brooks and his book “The Second Mountain.” I’ve adapted a blessing from something he wrote.

May you radiate joy. May you glow with an inner light. May you know why you were put on this earth and derive a deep satisfaction from doing what you have been called to do. Life will not be easy for you, but may you have a serenity about you that comes from your deep and settled resolve. We’ll see you next time.