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72: What To Do With A Calling You've Heard From God
214 Plays2 years ago
Trisha Welstad began the Leadership Center coaching and consulting organization in 2012. She received a doctorate in Leadership from Portland Seminary in 2020 and is an ordained pastor and coach with over twenty years of experience. Trisha’s background in leadership includes facilitating staff teams as the lead executive, serving as the director for leadership development in organizations in Oregon and Los Angeles, teaching at the collegiate, graduate, and doctoral level in practical leadership, and facilitating the Institute for Pastoral and Congregational Thriving at Portland Seminary as a grant writer and Executive Director, as well as volunteering locally with her family.
Trisha’s vision for the world is for all people to activate their unique identity and calling, welcoming one another to play and work together in mutually honorable, hospitable and generous ways that create healthy and sustainable relationships with God, self, others, and the planet. Laura Fleetwood sat down with Trisha to chat about the vision Trisha has for the world.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jill Devine's Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The normal goes a long way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to Normal Goes a
Finding Life's Purpose with Dr. Tricia Wellstead
00:00:41
Speaker
Long Way. This is Laura Fleetwood and I am here today with Dr. Tricia Wellstead. Welcome, Tricia. Thanks. I'm glad to be here with you. So Tricia and I met through Portland Seminary where I'm currently in a doctoral program of leadership. And Tricia, you are my project faculty. So it's been
00:01:02
Speaker
Really fun getting to know you and have your insights to my studies and I'm really thrilled that you're here today to share a little bit about your story and What God is is doing through you these days? So why don't you take our listeners? through the basics of who you are and What we are going to talk about today regarding finding your purpose in life. Yeah, so I
00:01:29
Speaker
I hail from the West Coast. I'm from Oregon and my faith journey started when I was a kid with my parents wanting to have a good help. They wanted support in being able to raise us and I'm the oldest of three. So probably it was me that was pushing all their boundaries as I'm known to do. And I really felt found
00:01:59
Speaker
like the sense of purpose and hopefulness in my life and around middle school. And that journey kind of propelled me into like while at a church, the one that my parents had started going to, to like seeking and being really curious as to who God was and what it meant for my life to be a disciple of Jesus.
Mentorship and Leadership in Ministry
00:02:28
Speaker
And so then I started following my youth pastors around a bit more and wanting to know a lot more about their life and just got really involved and mostly out of some painful seasons in my own personal life and middle school and such. And I found a lot of hope in that space and also was always kind of a class clown slash sometimes a leader, sometimes an agitator, I guess.
00:02:56
Speaker
And so I ended up doing a lot of leading and I mention all of this because it started when I was really young and I was mentored by this youth pastor couple who really invested in me, mentored me and then I became an intern and then I became the interim youth pastor and then I became the youth pastor. Like it was just this journey with them and
00:03:22
Speaker
And it mattered to me the investment that they made in my life when I was a kid and that they valued me as somebody who could be a leader and wasn't just an agitator or the class clown or just a kid. Like, my voice really mattered. I love that. They saw something in you that they kind of pulled out, it sounds like.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah. And I, I mean, I had a lot of things I was involved in in school with sports and different other extracurriculars. And so I could have just been the public school kid that was really involved in cheerleading and basketball and doing all the other stuff. But, uh, the love that they showed me revealed the love of God to me. And then it made me want to be more invested.
00:04:12
Speaker
into a community of faith. And then the way that they mentored me impacted my life so much that I thought, this is the way that I wanna do this with other people over time. So I felt this sense of calling in high school to be a youth pastor. I didn't really know what that meant. No one in my family was in ministry ever. I was the first one to even graduate college. And so, so yeah, so it was this kind of new journey that no one in my family was leading me on.
00:04:41
Speaker
It was just kind of this faith thing with these people and who my parents had taken me to this church. And so, and my parents kept going. I mean, they found faith at the same time I did really. And so.
Coaching and Discovering Your Calling
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah. So then that, I mean, that's like a long time ago now, but through that, there's been a lot of different iterations of what I've done in the way of doing youth ministry and church planting and discipleship ministry and leadership development. All of those iterations look a lot like me either mentoring or coaching people.
00:05:18
Speaker
a bit alongside in some small group, in some large group, or really leading the leaders of the small group kind of things, opacity.
00:05:29
Speaker
and helping people to really get clear on who are they? Who did God make them to be? What's the unique stuff that's in them that's from God, from their personality to their experiences, to their family, to their giftings, all the things that make them them that God has given them as really as gifts to the world.
00:05:58
Speaker
So all of that kind of goes into some of the other stuff that I think about with vocational work and leadership and purpose, all of it.
00:06:07
Speaker
So here's the question that I've been ruminating on and maybe because I have a high school senior daughter and a sophomore and they're constantly thinking about where they're going to go to school and what career they want. And there's that age old question, you know, what is my calling? Like, what is my purpose in life?
00:06:30
Speaker
And what I love about what you do at the Leadership Center is you really take people through a process that helps them answer that question. So tell us, like, how did that come to be that you help people discover their calling and what does that journey look like when you work with them?
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah. So I always thought, I'm like, I'm just going to work with people. So I was like, I, when I entered college as a high school student into my freshman year of college, I was like, well, I'll either be a youth pastor or a counselor or a teacher. I just like people. And so those were kind of my options. And I, and I quickly ruled out two of them. Uh, partially one of them, the education one was simply because there was a lot of tests I had to take and I was not into it.
00:07:18
Speaker
But here I am, I work at a university, so full circle. Anyway, what I have seen is that we tend to think, whether young or old, it really doesn't matter, but especially I think when we're younger, that
00:07:35
Speaker
we have one thing that we're supposed to do and we have to figure it out. Kind of like how people think, oh, I have a soulmate out there and I have to find them. And so it's like, okay, what am I going to do with this one precious life that I have? I don't want to waste my time, but I also don't want to get it wrong. And, and I like to disprove that a little bit. And I've taught at the undergraduate level quite a bit now.
00:08:03
Speaker
with freshmen in particular, usually on this vocation topic, because so many people feel this sense of calling, just like I did. I'm like, I think I'm called to be a youth pastor. I'm called to do this thing. And they feel this kind of like on high thing from God, if they're Christians, that they need to do this one path. And it usually looks like a job. And I try to break it down for them a little bit
00:08:30
Speaker
but like gently because there's also the potential that they may not get that job or they may not be great at that. That might just be something that they've idealized because they've seen someone else in their life. And so then they're trying to conform to that other human that they valued. And so what I do is
00:08:54
Speaker
the process that I go through. And I've learned this a bit from a good friend and mentor, Deborah Lloyd, who wrote, uh, your vocational credo. And it's just a method. There are many methods, but she has one and I really like it because it takes into account people's stories and their history and also their future. And so, um, what it does is you essentially
00:09:20
Speaker
You go back through people's lives and you invite them to tell some themes from their life. Themes of a first instance of pain that they remember. Also a story. I try to hone in with people or focus in on their favorite childhood book.
00:09:46
Speaker
that they loved or read was either read to them or they read often or a type of genre even. Sometimes it's a movie for people, but a lot of times it's a book. And so then we pull out themes from that. We pull out emotions from the, the first wounding that they had. And then we talk about how, how do you feel like in your guts, if you could heal the world in any way?
00:10:10
Speaker
what would you do? Or who would you be? What would happen if money was not an object, time was not an object? What would you do? And so with all of that, it helps them to start to think bigger and deeper, like bigger about their life, deeper, it helps them to dream. And it also helps them to see the connections between their past, present and future, and how that innocent story even drops in values. And
00:10:39
Speaker
And it's not everything those I mean, it's not a magic little triangle, but it does help to communicate in ways that gets them out of what they typically think. And then from there, we look at
00:10:53
Speaker
like this credo statement, so that's the year vocational credo, on God put me on earth to do these things from these values in this way that I see that I want to heal the world for this group of people. We talk about demographics in different ways. Like maybe that's people who get marginalized or maybe that's people who are in a particular age range or maybe that's just people who feel defeated or rejected or maybe it's people who haven't had this particular opportunity. So all of that kind of stuff.
00:11:23
Speaker
And then for the purpose of or so that this bigger thing would happen. And it's almost always tied to relationships, uh, these credo statements, uh, because in the end that's what we have. It's not just about work, even if it's a relationship to the earth, to creation in some way, uh,
00:11:43
Speaker
Humans affect humans. It's really an impacting thing. And so there's a lot of that and not usually. I have not seen this not be true. So I'll say it that way with the double negative. The way we want to heal the world comes through our life. It can't not. And so then it also comes through a bit of redemption from our own pain in our story. It may not be totally direct, but sometimes it is, especially with a lot of deep wounding.
00:12:12
Speaker
There's this this experience I had I want no one else in their whole life to have to have this or I want to help them recover as I've recovered and So then there's those types of themes that can be really strong
00:12:25
Speaker
But then, I went the long way around to answer your question, but what that does is it creates this baseline to where then you go, okay, well, what could you do with that? You don't have to be a social worker with this. You don't have to be a pastor with this. You could be. You could be a pastor. You're welcome to be a social worker. You're welcome to be a teacher. What it does is it breaks open the possibilities because sometimes we think we have this.
00:12:52
Speaker
this thing we have to do for our whole life. Like maybe God told us this thing. We really feel clearly that we've heard from the Holy Spirit, but that might be just seasonal. And so let's make sure that we have something that anchors us when that season's over. So we know that we're not suddenly in a crisis, a midlife crisis potentially. So it can anchor us and evolve and grow throughout our whole life because we're still compiling experiences of like these lived experiences
00:13:22
Speaker
throughout our life, of course. I wonder if there is an example that you can share with us of how somebody has come to you with this question of, what am I called to do in my life? And they've gone through this process. And then what results do you see after people really think about
00:13:48
Speaker
the circumstances God has brought them through and what skills and gifts they have and how they want to heal the world. Help paint us a picture of the outcome that people then are able to incorporate into their life.
Reigniting Passion and Joy
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'm thinking of so many, but I'll just hold one.
00:14:13
Speaker
A lot of times people come to me to have this conversation, not always, but a lot of times in frustration or in the sense of they know that what's happening for them right now isn't working or won't work in the future. So they're looking toward a transition. Sometimes they're in a doctoral program. Sometimes they are in a career where they feel stuck. I had someone call me yesterday that was like, I don't know what to do.
00:14:41
Speaker
Like this, I'm feeling really stuck. And about a year ago, there was somebody that called me or reached out and we set up a conversation and then I started coaching them through this to get clear on their sense of calling because they'd been in a job for, gosh, almost 20 years and they loved it when they started and they felt a lot of life in it. And at this point they feel really, really burnt out or they had.
00:15:12
Speaker
And they just didn't know what to do. And, and I thought, okay, let's talk. So we, we talked through it. We, we talked through their credo and what they realized is that they were really risk averse because they've been so in the position that they were in to where it was like, well, I need to hold onto this because
00:15:38
Speaker
it will affect my family so much if I make any changes, but yet they were dying inside. Like part of our conversation was, you're half dead. And what are you gonna do about that? Because the way you're living affects your kids and you have teenagers who are watching you who are experiencing your half-life that you're living here. And that was,
00:16:05
Speaker
just an observation, but this whole conversation, we realized their passion areas, they weren't feeling like they could, they were so responsible that they couldn't actually live into them well. And by the end of our conversations, the end of our coaching time and solidifying their credo, they had made some really hard decisions that they wouldn't have made without
00:16:29
Speaker
somebody else who was an unbiased party who is just asking a lot of questions and helping them navigate and hear. Like a lot of times I just say back to people what they've said. I know I'm not a therapist, but I'm also like listening. And they, when they hear what they have said, they go, Oh, I said that. And so, uh, so by the end of our conversation, they had made for themselves some decisions on how they wanted to change how they're living. And
00:16:59
Speaker
Part of I'll say this cuz I know I can say this and it's okay. I have permission for this. It's not a confidential thing one of the things this person loved was stock car racing and they love it, but they never did it and they started doing it again, like they felt like that it was what was brought them life and they raced for that whole next season and
00:17:27
Speaker
They won almost every race that they did. They fixed up their car and everything. And their family saw this person, this man, saw him come alive in ways that they hadn't seen. He didn't change jobs. He's in the same job.
00:17:42
Speaker
But he's, the fulfillment that he has by doing the thing he loves that he felt too responsible and too risk averse. Like it was too much of a challenge for him to do that because he felt like it would take away from his family. But yet it wasn't, he wasn't getting the life that he needed from the way that he was wired, the way that God had made him.
00:18:08
Speaker
And that was something from his own childhood. It was one of his favorite moments with his dad was to do that because his dad was a stock car racer. It's so interesting because I have found that to coaching people that the things that used to bring us joy as kids
00:18:23
Speaker
We forget about them, and when we remind ourselves of that, and we incorporate some of that playfulness back in life, it really can change your perspective. Like you said, this guy is still in the same job that he was in, but his bucket is being filled up by an activity
00:18:45
Speaker
that God uniquely wired him to feel joy in. And so going through this kind of coaching or this kind of discovery about how God made you doesn't have to result in some monumental shift in your life. It could, and I'm sure that it does.
00:19:02
Speaker
But sometimes we just need to be reminded that it's okay to be who we are, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I see that a lot with people. One of the main things that ends up happening and people don't always expect this, but in these conversations, I'll just point out to people, that sounds like a limiting belief to me. It sounds like when you say I have to do this or I need to do this or I can't do that, that sounds like there's something else happening there.
00:19:31
Speaker
And so then we start talking about those things. And most of the time, I mean, every single client that I've had, and there's been a lot of them at this point, there, there are these limitations that they've self-imposed from what they or someone around them has said to them at some point in their life that they just hold. And then they lack the confidence to choose to move forward in a way that is freedom for them.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yeah.
Navigating Key Life Transitions
00:20:00
Speaker
I'm thinking of just times in someone's life that it might be helpful to do something like what you do for people when you coach. And I'm thinking of like the traditional time seasons, which is like at the end of high school when you're trying to figure out what you want to do with your life or if you have a transition in life, um, you know, death of a loved one or a divorce or something that's causing you to rethink
00:20:29
Speaker
life in general, but are there other kind of particular circumstances or times of life that you've found it's been particularly helpful for people to do this kind of discovery work about themselves? Yeah, yes, you definitely named
00:20:48
Speaker
one major one or two really, but the like the transition to independence from being within your family unit typically. So from
00:21:00
Speaker
from being in high school, into college, or into the workforce. And then mid-career, a lot of times people are working through, they've either not done the thing they've always wanted to, and they feel a lot of regret, or they've done all the things, and they're like, what's next?
00:21:20
Speaker
or they're somewhere in between where they're just they're stuck they people get stuck or they have i think that's a good point that experiencing loss those are real but a lot of times people have unrealized dreams they just don't know how to access them because
00:21:36
Speaker
they've been sitting on the table for a long time and they feel a little bit dusty and maybe antiquated, different things happen. And then another time that people don't often think of or maybe not readily think of is as people near retirement because they think, well, now what kind of value will my life bring if I'm not producing in this particular way? What do I do? Do I just vacation forever? I mean, that's not one of the people that I'm working with currently
00:22:06
Speaker
They just want to retire and they're burnt out. That's what's going on for them is they're burnt out and like, yeah, but what do you want? If you want to retire, what do you want? Because there's a lot more underneath the surface with, um, with what people want. And even in the retirement phase, it's like, it's not just about sitting around in your chair all day or being able to
00:22:29
Speaker
I don't know, cruise the world or something. Although that sounds lovely to me. I mean, when working hard and a lot, it does sound lovely. But that usually speaks to the fact that you probably just want some more rest or some more leisure, right? And so it's like, oh, I actually just need some life balance. But I mean, I think about that with retirement. So that's just a whole other zone. So people kind of in all phases of life, I think mostly what it is is that people, we just get
00:22:59
Speaker
busy and then we tend to forget about the thing that most aligns us with our purpose and or how to stay aligned with our purpose because because we're doing the stuff and so
00:23:13
Speaker
Without an anchor point or without anchor points and people as I call like tent pigs, the people who surround me and hold me up and keep me standing in the way that is healthy and viable, that they speak truth back to me or they help me to keep from being blown away by the wind to keep going with that metaphor. I will tend to
00:23:37
Speaker
either collapse in on myself or drift away. I feel like a credo statement, it does help to do that. It's an anchor point. Yeah, it's like we get so busy just surviving that we forget we were made to thrive. Yeah, that's right. I think that it's just an important reminder. I love this conversation because it's just important to check in with yourself every so often and ask like, is this?
00:24:06
Speaker
the life that God created me for because when, while we think that we don't have choices, sometimes we actually do have a lot of choices in, in, in how we live our lives. And, um, and like you said, the alignment with what we are made to be and made to do and how, and how we spend our time. So how do you, when let's say somebody
00:24:34
Speaker
wants to pursue this and learn more about themselves and develop their own credo. How long does that process usually take when they work with you? Well, that depends. So I have a class that you could take online and do it at your own pace. And then when I do it with people one on one, then I usually it's a minimum of four sessions.
00:24:57
Speaker
for conversations and so then I'll walk people through and I'll have them think through that vocational triangle and then we'll create a working credo, I'll have them test it out, sit with it for a bit and then think about potential careers of somebody that I'm working with now that's in transition. So we've just finished this whole process and they're transitioning from one job, they don't know what their next job is going to be and so then we were talking about all of this and
00:25:27
Speaker
And we met, we met in four sessions and we're going to do a follow up one in about a month after they finished this job, because now they feel way more hopeful, way less bitter. They were feeling a bit bitter and angsty because their job is ending, um, and apathetic. And so now they're, they're in this space of like, Oh yeah, I can do this. And so they're looking forward to it. So usually it's about four sessions to begin with. It depends kind of on the level of change and transition. Sometimes when people are starting something new,
00:25:57
Speaker
or are feeling really, really stuck. I tell them this, this is more than just getting you a credo statement. This is getting you out of your head and this is getting you into your body and getting a bit more strategic. And that, you know, I coach people for 12 weeks when it's something like that, or I'll coach people for six months and we'll just spread it out a little bit more. Sometimes it also depends on like, is this somebody that wants to meet every week that's able to do that? Or are they an executive who needs to meet, you know,
00:26:25
Speaker
biweekly or once a month kind of thing. Can you give an example of a credo statement?
Creating and Living by a Personal Credo
00:26:32
Speaker
Sure, I'll give you mine. So I would say that God put me on earth to nurture people, to own and activate their calling so they can thrive in all they are and do.
00:26:47
Speaker
And so if you were to hear that statement kind of slowed down, God put me on earth. I feel like that's really important beginning to that statement for me because I believe that God is my originator. And then to nurture people, I often will exchange that for coach, but when I think about all the mentoring, all the ways that I've been formed,
00:27:07
Speaker
supported and I'm a mother of two, I think nurturing is actually my best mode. And so I nurture people when I think about people, it is, there's often some particularities for me as to who those people are. A lot of times it's women.
00:27:24
Speaker
because that's my embodied experience, but then it's also women of color because they're the most marginalized. And I know that when we raise their boats, it helps support them to raise their boats. All boats get raised and that's part of my dissertation work that I've done for with my doctorate. And so just wanting to support them in particular, but I say people because I coach a lot of men too. I work with a lot of different people and
00:27:51
Speaker
And so, but then there's an ethos I'm working from on that. And then, um, to own and activate their calling. So this sense of purpose for them, so that way they can thrive. I think about that thrive versus survive. And actually when we were on one of those doctoral trips, Laura, uh, went to the, I think it was the museum of history, the Smithsonian in Washington DC. And I remember seeing the timeline of human history and it had the spectrum of like thriving, surviving extinction.
00:28:18
Speaker
And so I'm like, let's go full opposite. Let's go all the way to the thriving. And I direct two thriving programs with Portland seven area. And so there's a lot that, that whole, that holds a lot of weight for me, what it looks like for people to thrive.
00:28:33
Speaker
and holistically thrive. And then I always say, in all they are, like who you are first, what you do second. I tend to be an achiever. So for me, that's anchoring for me. I want people to know that who they are matters before what they do. I need to own that. I get to support people in owning that as well. So there you go. There's the breakdown of my credo. I love it. I love it. So if somebody wants to develop their own credo or go through this process with you,
00:29:02
Speaker
How would they get in touch with you or learn more? Yeah. So the easiest way is to go to my website. Our website is leadershipcenter.co. So C-O at the end of that. And there's all the information. We're updating our website. We're doing some new changes to it to add a few new things with our team.
00:29:22
Speaker
And that would probably be the easiest way you can schedule a discovery conversation that way. You can find our life calling discovery class. So that's this class that talks about the credo. And those are audio video classes with some workbook type things you can do with it. And then you can schedule coaching through that site too. So leadershipcenter.co is the best way to find out and learn more.
00:29:52
Speaker
Amazing. And I'll mention that I'm currently going through your course. So I'm excited to get my credo established and then I'll be able to share it here on the podcast as well. But I do think it's a useful, a useful tool and a useful experience for people to think about and
00:30:11
Speaker
I just love that through discovering your calling, you are now helping other people discover theirs. It's just a beautiful way to seek out at work in the world.
00:30:24
Speaker
So thank you so much for sharing, for telling us about your story and how God has moved in your life. And to anybody listening, I would highly encourage you to reach out to Tricia. If you're just finding yourself stuck in terms of the question, what do I want to do with my life or what is God calling me to in my life?
00:30:45
Speaker
Trisha is a great resource, and we'll have her contact info linked in the show description below. And thanks again, Trisha, for sharing here on Normal Goes a Long Way. Thanks. It's been really fun to just have this conversation.