This is a two-part post. It’s about finding your calling and building a business around it. If you like this post, look for the second one on Peyton Manning and me.

Let’s begin with the Peyton Manning question. Back around 2001, I was feeling uneasy about my work, my job. I earned a lot of money, worked with great and good people, and more often than not participated in projects that were unique and meaningful. Not bad, right?

True enough. The problem was this nagging feeling that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. Call it what you want–my conscience, my soul, my gut. Those of you who know me will understand that I regard it as a God-planted feeling.

So, what to do?

I began to ask myself the Peyton Manning Question (what the heck, we’ll dub it PMQ). It’s this–what am I Peyton Manning at doing? And is my answer reflected in what I’m doing at the current moment?

In case you don’t know, Peyton Manning is the quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts in the National Football League. He is destined for the sport’s professional hall of fame and will likely own all or nearly all individual career records for NFL quarterbacks. He is, again in almost every way, the standard by which quarterbacks are measured.

He is also from a football family. His father was a NFL quarterback. One of his brothers is also playing right now as a NFL quarterback. Peyton Manning was a national star at quarterback while in college at the University of Tennessee.

I think you get the picture.

Thus, when I entered into a period of uneasiness over my job and work, I asked myself the PMQ.

I want you to do two things for me right now. First, ask yourself the PMQ. Second, and I think very revealingly, I want you to step back and then ask yourself what assumptions do you embed in your instinctive understanding of the PMQ. It is this second question that I’ll address in the next blog post on PMQ.