Jennifer Tosti-Kharas

So there does seem to be something about strong callings.

And it would be very easy to say, well, why is this a bad thing?

Shouldn't we have a sense that we are like, I want to do this and nothing's going to stop me and no one or nothing can dissuade me.

In fact, a lot of these archetypal calling stories like we shared earlier, Steve Jobs, et cetera, it's about overcoming these odds, right?

Despite...

Everything stacked against me.

I persevered and I broke through and I made it.

And I think that can be true to a point.

Obviously, having some self-confidence or even maybe a little bit of an overinflated self-perception might be helpful or might be adaptive or might help with resilience.

But it's hard not to think that there comes a point when an inability to listen to people that have our best interests at heart, who are telling us, giving us

real feedback that the inability to listen to this might harm us in some way.

yeah so you're absolutely right that the more prototypical calling oriented professions whether it's non-profit work helping work um you know international aid work uh etc tend to not be well paid so already

many people to pursue their callings or meaningful work in general are being asked implicitly to accept a pay cut relative to I'm going to go work for that big bank and

not ask too many questions, right?

Or I'm going to go work for, you know, I'm going to work in a big law firm and not ask too many questions about who my clients are, things like that.

So already we have some sense that we ask people in society to take their love for what they're doing or the meaning they get from the work they do and substitute it for pay.

But actually, we have found this in my own research and the research of others that people with stronger callings will actually make financial sacrifices to do the work that they love doing.

So suddenly the question becomes, is this potentially overwork and that basically sets people up to be taken advantage of?

Absolutely.

And so that's something that I teach my students about and that I would really caution people about because we've already said that these are the good workers and that these are people that organizations really want to attract and really want to retain.