We All Have a Second Calling

Today's post is about your second calling in life. It's longer because it's all four posts I did this week on the topic as one article. If you missed one or all of them, you can catch up here.

Advance to Go

Life isn't really like Monopoly. Except when it is.

Sometimes you do get to start over. To "advance to GO." That’s what this post is about.

I want to talk about life callings — and how we all have multiple ones throughout our lifetime.

We tell several full stories. We get second chances. We take unexpected turns.

What I Mean By Calling

When I started Called For Adventure, I was a little hesitant to even use the word calling. But I’ve never found a truer word for what I mean.

I don’t mean it in a religious sense.

I mean it in a story sense.

In every great story, a regular person is invited into something bigger. Sometimes the call comes as an offer from someone else. Sometimes as a flash of insight. Sometimes as a slow, growing pull you can’t shake.

But wherever it comes from, the real moment of calling happens inside.

It’s that moment when something deep in you says:

"This is what I’m supposed to do next."

That’s what I mean by calling.

Because somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up the idea that we only get one calling. One big purpose. One thing we're supposed to do with our lives.

But that’s not how real life works.

Where That Story Comes From

Some of us picked it up through religion.

God has “a plan for your life.” A single perfect path.

Some of us got it from culture.

Find your passion. Live your dream. Do what you love and never work a day in your life.

Some of us got it from our families.

Be a doctor. Be a teacher. Take over the business. Do the thing you were “made for.”

And honestly? At first, it often sort of works.

When you’re young and just starting out, it’s easy to believe there’s one big thing you're meant to do.

It feels good. It feels heroic.

Until it doesn’t.

What Nobody Tells You

Here’s what almost no one tells you in your 20s:

Calling is rarely a one-time thing.

Most of us will have multiple callings across a lifetime.

Your “life’s work” at 25 may have nothing to do with what you’re called to at 45.

Not because you failed. Because you grew.

My Story

If you had asked 22-year-old me, I would have told you I found my calling.

I was a pastor. I was going to preach and lead churches for the rest of my life. That was the thing.

But along the way:

My beliefs evolved.

My skills shifted.

My desires changed.

My life took turns I never expected.

And now? I do something different.

I help people tell their stories. I speak. I coach. I write. And honestly, I feel more called to what I do now than I ever have.

Not because my first calling was wrong. Because it was a chapter. It served its purpose. And then it was time for Act Two.

The Truth

The lie says:

There’s one calling, and you either find it or you don’t.

The truth is:

There are many callings, but you only discover the next one by faithfully living the current one.

And when it’s time to move on, it might feel like failure at first.

But on the other side of that grief is freedom.

And a new adventure!

Signs It’s Time for Act Two

When we talk about callings, a lot of us imagine some big, dramatic moment.

The burning bush. The audible voice. The undeniable sign.

You know — something so obvious that you couldn’t possibly miss it.

And because we expect that, many of us stay stuck for years.

We wait. We analyze. We tell ourselves:

"If God (or the universe, or fate, or whatever) wants me to do something else, I’ll know."

But real life doesn’t usually work like that.

The Myth of the Burning Bush

In the actual Moses story, yes — there was a burning bush.

But even that moment wasn’t portrayed as magical as we often think.

The bush was burning long before Moses noticed it. What made it “miraculous” wasn’t that it was on fire.

It was that it just kept burning and burning without going out.

A literal “slow burn” miracle. Moses paid attention.

That’s how he noticed it.

That’s where most callings actually start: The decision to stop, turn aside, and notice.

The Whisper Before the Shout

Most second callings begin long before we name them.

They show up as:

• A low-grade restlessness.

• A sense that the work you’re doing doesn’t fit like it used to.

• A quiet ache that gratitude can’t resolve.

• A tug toward something you can’t quite define.

• Moments where you wonder, "Is this really it?"

You’re not miserable. You’re not failing. You’re just feeling the early signs that Act One might be wrapping up.

The Tension of Success

One of the hardest parts is that by the time this restlessness shows up, you’ve often built a good life.

You’re successful. You’re stable. People count on you.

Which makes the tension worse.

Because now you’re torn between:

The comfort of what’s known.

The pull toward what’s unknown.

And that’s scary.

The Truth About Clarity

We think clarity comes first. But most of the time, clarity comes after movement.

You don’t get the full blueprint. You get the next step.

The coffee meeting. The side project. The book you finally admit you want to write. The class you sign up for. The phone call you make.

It rarely feels like a leap. It usually feels like a nudge.

You’re Not Broken. You’re Growing.

When people reach out to me in this tension, they almost always say some version of:

"I don’t want to seem ungrateful."
"Other people would love to have what I have."
"Maybe I’m just restless."

No. You’re growing.

The story that served you for years may have run its course. It wasn’t wrong. It was right — for a season.

It just needs to adjust.

Yes/And

We tend to think of second callings as career changes. Sometimes they are. (It was for me.)

But often, they aren’t about changing your work at all. They’re about changing your focus.

Sometimes the second calling exists right alongside the first. You keep doing the work you’ve done — but you start investing energy into something else that matters deeply to you.

You become a mentor. You start a neighborhood project. You step into parenting or grandparenting with fresh eyes. You help build something in your community that has nothing to do with your career.

Some of the greatest callings don’t pay you a dime. In fact, they may cost you money.

Because vocation and calling aren’t always the same thing. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they run parallel.

But they both change and evolve as you do.

And yes — it can feel unsettling when you sense you’re being called into something new. In fact, it should feel a little scary. That’s how you know it’s big enough to be worth your next chapter.

The fear isn’t a sign to stop.

It’s a sign you’re standing at the edge of something meaningful.

Maybe you’ve been staring at the bush long enough to know it should have extinguished by now.

It might be time to walk toward it to see what it has to say.

The Concorde Fallacy

In the 1960s, two of the world’s great powers — Britain and France — got together to build something that felt like the future.

The Concorde.

A supersonic passenger jet that could fly from New York to London in under 3.5 hours. Twice the speed of sound. Faster than anything commercially flown before or since.

It was sleek. Iconic. Visionary. And, economically speaking, an absolute disaster.

How It Happened

The original cost projections were ambitious but manageable: about $70 million.

But the deeper they got, the more complicated it became. Engineering challenges. Safety concerns. Fuel costs. Political negotiations. All of it piled up.

By the time it was done, the cost had ballooned to more than $1.3 billion. In today’s dollars? Roughly $12–15 billion.

Only 20 Concordes were ever built. It never became commercially viable. It lost money every year it operated.

But even when it was obvious that the program was doomed, Britain and France kept pouring more money into it.

Why?

Because they had already poured so much money into it.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Economists call this the sunk cost fallacy — the human tendency to keep investing in something simply because we’ve already invested so much.

We think:

"I’ve already put too much into this to quit now."

Even if quitting would actually be the smartest thing to do.

It Shows Up Everywhere

This isn't just about supersonic airplanes.

The U.S. kept escalating Vietnam, even when victory was no longer realistic.

Blockbuster clung to physical stores long after streaming had already changed the game.

And gamblers keep playing — not because they believe they’ll win, but because they’ve already lost too much to quit.

Where It Gets Personal

You don’t have to be running a government or sitting at a blackjack table to get trapped by sunk costs.

The older we get, the more vulnerable we are to it.

You build a career. A reputation. A life. You invest years — sometimes decades — into a role, a company, a cause, a business, a relationship, a community.

And even when something inside you starts whispering that it may be time for change — you stay.

You double down.

Not because you love it. But because you’ve already given so much to it.

The Concorde Question

At some point in the second half of life, it’s worth asking:

Am I trapped in my own Concorde Fallacy?

Am I still pouring time, energy, money, and years into something that no longer fits — simply because I’ve already invested so much?

Is there something new I’m being invited to focus on?

What Happened After the Concorde?

The Concorde officially retired in 2003.

But the technology, the research, and the ambition that went into it didn’t go to waste:

Its work on aerodynamics advanced future aircraft designs.

Its fly-by-wire systems laid the groundwork for modern flight control.

Its safety challenges pushed the entire industry to improve long-term passenger safety.

And the international partnership behind it helped lead to the rise of Airbus as a major global manufacturer.

The Concorde didn’t give us faster planes. It gave us safer, more efficient, and more sustainable air travel. It helped focus the future on what actually mattered.

The Second Calling

The same is true for us.

Letting go of something that no longer serves you doesn’t mean it was a waste. You carry it forward.

The skills. The experience. The wisdom. The lessons.

Even what didn’t “work” shapes who you are for what comes next.

Or, to borrow from one of the most famous gamblers of all:

"You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run."

And that’s where some of us are.

We know it’s time to walk away — but we ante up for the next hand over and over again.

The Thing You Thought Was the Destination

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush stood aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln under a huge banner that read:

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

The U.S. had just completed its initial invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s regime had fallen. The war — at least as it was originally imagined — seemed won.

It made for a powerful image. Victory had been achieved. The mission was complete.

Except it wasn’t.

What followed wasn’t peace. It was years of insurgency, violence, instability, and complexity that would far outlast that early declaration of success.

The mission that had been "accomplished" was real — but it was only Act One. The far harder work was still ahead.

We All Do This

You don’t need to be a president standing on an aircraft carrier to live some version of this.

A lot of us hit certain moments in life that feel like arrival.

The promotion.

The degree.

The business launch.

The marriage.

The financial milestone.

The dream job.

We work hard. We push through. We sacrifice. And when we finally get there, we feel like:

"I’ve made it."

But sometimes, that moment isn’t the destination. It’s the setup.

It Doesn’t Mean You Got It Wrong

This is where people often get stuck.

They assume that if they’re restless now, they must have made a mistake before. That they misread their calling. That they chased the wrong thing.

But that’s not how stories work.

Act One was real. It mattered. It shaped you.

You learned things. You built relationships. You gained experience.

You couldn't have gotten to Act Two without Act One.

This Is How Most Stories Work

And it’s not just your story — this is how most great stories unfold:

Lewis & Clark thought they’d find a water route west — they found mountains instead, and mapped a continent no one fully understood.

Darwin went to the Galapagos collecting birds — and accidentally built the foundation for modern evolutionary theory.

The Wright Brothers thought getting off the ground was the goal — but it was really just the starting point for modern aviation.

The thing they thought they were doing turned out to be the setup for something much bigger.

The Lie of Arrival

We’re conditioned to chase arrival.

The house. The job. The title. The financial freedom. The accomplishment.

But life rarely works like that.

Every time you arrive somewhere, it eventually becomes your new starting point.

Act One doesn’t cancel Act Two. Act Two builds on it.

Second Callings Work Like This

Second callings aren’t about undoing your past. They’re about expanding your future.

The danger isn’t outgrowing Act One. The danger is pretending you haven’t.

You don’t honor your story by staying stuck inside the same chapter. You honor it by carrying the wisdom forward and telling a new story.

The Questions

If any of this resonates, here’s the questions I’d invite you to sit with:

• What if the thing you worked so hard to build… wasn’t your landing place?

• What if it was the training ground for what’s still ahead?

• And what’s really holding you back from facing Act Two?

Keep Walking

If you feel that pull — that tension between gratitude for what you’ve built and curiosity for what might be next — trust it. You’re not broken. You’re not lost. You’re standing at the threshold of your next chapter.

This is how real stories work.

Keep walking.

P.S.

If you’re facing a transition and want help seeing your next chapter more clearly, I do a limited number of one-on-one Story Coaching sessions each month. Email me at joe@joeboyd.net to learn more.