Only the connected bulb shines: four questions for a purposeful career
Dr Vicki Otaruyina starts from a row of bulbs, only one lit, and puts four questions to your work: the change it creates, who it is for, how it gets done and what it leaves.
A bulb stays dark if nothing connects it to power. That was the picture Dr Vicki Otaruyina, a purpose and leadership coach known as the Elevation Coach, put in front of a GEPA leadership workshop: a row of bulbs, only one of them lit. The room saw why: it was the only one connected to the power source.
Her frame is explicitly Christian. The source, in Otaruyina's account, is God, and a professional cut off from it works without clarity, direction or impact. Reading GEPA's own statement back to the room, which treats energy work as a calling to serve God and humanity, she asked whether each person was working at the capacity they were created for.
The parts of a lit purpose
She asked the room to write down one question. If God created light to solve darkness, what problem were you created to solve? A power source means nothing without something to power, and gifts, skills, careers and businesses likewise exist to meet a need.
She defines purpose as the reason for which you exist, drawn from passions, skills, calling, talents, abilities, experience and education. Then she maps it onto an incandescent bulb. The electricity is God. The filament is your unique calling and gifts, and she asked people to list childhood gifts their work has never used. The circuit is where your passions meet the industry problems you are meant to solve. The switch is action, because purpose stays dormant until you move.
That gives her three separate states: knowing your purpose, acting in it, and shining at full capacity. Her question to the room was about the third.
Four questions, and the one that is easy to skip
Beyond the bulb, Otaruyina sets out four questions she calls God's agenda for your life:
- What change are you called to create?
- Who are you called to, meaning the actual people you serve?
- How are you called to fulfil it, and by what strategy?
- What lasting impact will you leave?
She points out how easily people answer the first without ever asking the second. Someone may know they are called to fix unreliable electricity in Africa without knowing who they serve. Saying you are called to Nigeria or to Africa, she adds, names a place rather than a people. Her energy example pushes further: is the change the power connection itself, or the young people who can now study well because the power problem was solved?
Her own answer came through loss. Working as a marketer and certified technical translator, she lost a child to stillbirth and went through anxiety and fear. Coming out of it, she says, is how she came to know her source, and it settled her who: women carrying brokenness who are called to greatness but do not know how to reach it.
What blocks the how
The routes God used in her case included the workplace, business, books, teaching, seminars and webinars. For others it may be education or mentorship. Words can block a route, Otaruyina argues: things said, and done, to us. A former class monitor who led university course groups may have left leadership behind because one person asked whether they could really lead.
Her closing instructions were practical. Treat your career as a platform for God's work rather than a pay cheque, and pray over it. Ask what unmet needs exist in your field and who your skills could serve. Then take bold steps: start the project, apply for the leadership role, or pivot within the business in a way that fits your purpose.
Time and nerve
One question followed, in two parts: not feeling bold enough, and not having time. On time, Otaruyina said to prioritise, set goals by the quarter or month across family and business, and share the load with volunteers, interns, automated systems and virtual assistants. On confidence, she described a period of prayer and fasting to see herself as God sees her, which meant dealing with hurts and with things said over her. It did not happen overnight. The host added that no one performs beyond who they believe they are.
The full course, taught from the workshop recording, is in the catalogue.
