If you’ve been reading along in my explorations of Finding Your Calling, you know that I’m a big proponent of finding clues — all the descriptors of your ideal life, all the qualities of what you want to do in the world, all the lessons you’ve learned from things not working out, how you’d describe your values, what you’re passionate about.

So maybe you’ve got a nice big pile of clues. Now what?

First, collect your clues

Get all of those clues in the same place, a place where you can see all of them at the same time.

Me, I like writing each clue on its own post-it in Sharpie marker and then posting them all on a blank wall, in a big cloud. That way I can see them, but I can also interact with them.

But that’s not the only way. You can write them all in a cloud, you can make slips of paper, you can have lists, you can draw cartoons. However you get them all together is up to you.

Next, play with their relationships

How do all of these clues go together? What do they have in common? Are there themes?

Group the clues together in ways that make sense to you — and see what you learn.

Maybe you discover that, despite the fact that you adore people, many of your clues suggest that your calling involves solitude. Or maybe you discover that your calling must, absolutely, no exceptions, involve people. Lots of people.

The themes you see are going to call out the deeper qualities of your calling.

Finally, we call on Metaphor Mouse!

Metaphor Mouse is a technique Havi Brooks adapted from Suzette Haden Elgin, and it enables us to take all of the themes we’ve found and put them together into a coherent whole — a whole we can then use as a north star to orient the compass of our next steps. (Her version is about reimagining the things we want to do but have resistance to.)

Here’s how it works. List out all of your themes, one after another. List as well as of the clues that seem absolutely, totally, and unmistakably central to your calling.

Then ask, what do all of these themes, qualities, and clues remind you of?

Describe it in as much detail as you can — is all of this like throwing the coolest party in the world for the people you love most? Is it like diving deep into the sea to discover the fish that have no eyes? Is it like building a very precise scale model of the universe?

Once you’ve got a description, ask yourself, Is there a metaphor here?

For Havi, the central metaphor for her business is a pirate ship — which reinvents the standard way one might go about having a business.

Yours might be being the hostess with the mostest, or being an undersea explorer, or being an architect of the stars.

Oh, the places you’ll go!

It’s going to sound counterintuitive, but figuring out the metaphor of your calling is going to get you much farther — and much more likely to actually living into your calling — than being “practical” or “analytical.”

That’s because our callings aren’t head-centered. They’re more about the totality of who we are, our uniqueness. And that uniqueness can be manifested in lots and lots of different ways. The more we can center ourselves in a felt sense of that calling, the more we can imagine manifesting our calling in ways we might not have even thought of before.

And what does that give us? That’s right — options.

I don’t know about you, but I really like options, especially when it comes to things like finding a job or a career or a next step. Options mean that if one path doesn’t work out (and let’s face it — so much isn’t under our control), there are other paths. Options means it’s not this-or-nothing. Not black-or-white. Not if-you-don’t-win-you-are-screwed.

So get creative. Get intuitive. Get playful. Get exploratory. See where your metaphor can take you.