Dick Leider believes in calling cards. On the one side of his is the usual calling card info - name, title, company, phone and e-mail. But the other side is where he explains his more important calling - the purpose he sees himself called to in life. Two simple words: discovering callings.

Because, as a writer and lecturer about careers and potentials, that's what he does -- help people tune in to the inner voice that tells them what they could do, and who they could be, that would make them happiest.

Leider has a story, from one of his travels to Africa, that illustrates the principle.

In a valley south of the Serengeti Plain lives a tribe of hunter gatherers called the Hazda. They are tiny-sized hunters who use a big bow with very poison arrows. Leider went with a band of these hunters on a honey hunt.

Out in the bush, they spied a plain but very vocal bird, dancing and yelping. The bird flew ahead to another tree, the hunters pursued, and then the bird would fly ahead again, until it arrived at a place where there was honey.

The warrior would set a handful of twigs afire and plunge it into the hive. The bees would flee, and the hunter would withdraw the honey, comb, and larvae. But the first offering would go to the honey guide, the bird, who led them to their find.

(Pretty much like a career counselor's fee.)

"I believe," Said leider, "that there are all kinds of signals guiding us to our callings, like the honey guide."

But they are often indirect - we must be looking for them with our peripheral vision. They do not always come up to us and slap us in the face. "What we want" can be a secret we keep from ourselves.

One in three of us are afflicted with what Leider calls "hurry sickness" - a sense of disconnection from ourselves and our world, and the feeling that "what we want" is not a matter to consider seriously. Midlife finds many of us without a sense of purpose and really, without a clue what we should do.

Thus his theme of purpose has two parts. The first is that we own up to our inner promptings that we need to get, before our time is run, a life. The second is that that life have meaning for us.

Leider's been fascinated by callings for almost 40 years. In 1973 he conducted research under a Bush Foundation fellowship, studying the adult work life cycle. The big question: If you got to live your life all over again, what would you do?

First, people said they would be more reflective -- step back to see the big picture. As the saying goes, no one on their deathbed regrets not spending more time at the office.

What we do regret is that we did not find ways to express ourselves and our talents more in our work. And that we did not make more of the heart of our lives, the relationships with those we hold dear.

The longer you live, the faster life goes -- so identify the parts you treasure, and get treasuring.

Second, people said they would take more risks. Not involving bungee cords -- but risks of the inner self, requiring commitment and courage.

Third is Leider's issue of purpose. Why do we get up in the morning? What do we really want to do?

Leider's research left no room for wiggle. Get with it, people told him. Pay now in courage and commitment, or pay later in emptiness.

But even before this research project, Leider was fortunate to come in contact with people who had visions about how life could be more than just a job.

In 1969 he was a counselor at First Bank, and trying out a few fledgling ideas about purpose and callings. One day at lunch a man plopped a manuscript in front of him and asked him to take a look. Leider scanned a few pages and looked up with awe in his eyes.

"This material is fantastic," he said.

"Thanks. I just wish I find get a publisher for it."

The man did eventually find a publisher, Ten Speed Press, which went on to sell the book by the hundreds of thousands -- What Color Is Your Parachute?, by Richard Bolles, the greatest career book ever, which posited that people should be creating meaningful situations, not just answering ads in the classifieds.

Bolles -- an Episcopal priest, in case you didn't know -- would serve as mentor to Leider for many years.

Leider went on to be one of the pioneers of adventure learning -- using nature and wilderness to stimulate personal growth and teambuilding. Along the way, he discovered three immutable truths about callings:

1. Everyone has gifts.

Everyone has something unique and special to offer. And there is nothing wrong with celebrating the gift. He cited a Hong Kong table tennis player he encountered in his travels, acclaimed as the world's best player. He had the most amazing forehand smash Leider had ever seen, but a less amazing backhand. His teacher bemoaned the fact that he never improved the backhand, but no matter -- he was a champion with what he had. Focus on your strengths, Leider said, and manage your weaknesses.

2. Everyone has something important to say.

Everyone has a voice, and we should not doubt the power of it. He told the story of Bill Payne, a great trainer for many years for Wilson Training. He and Leider once had a tearful heart-to-heart about purpose under the African sun, in which Payne confessed to missing the boat with his own potential. When next they met, Payne was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer.

He told Leider he was going to beat the cancer, and that he believed he lost his voice from stifling his own aspirations all his life. He lived only a few more months, and his physical voice never returned. But in that time he acquired a booming inner voice, from renewed attention to those he loved, and the world around him. In fighting for life, he became more alive than ever -- and because of it left a deeper footprint behind.

3. Everyone has values.

Just as an acorn needs a healthful environment to sprout and grow, so we need people, and values, and direction. Leider says we our lives are properly like speeches by Oscar winners, in which everyone who helped is given credit. If we don't know our values, then our values must not be terribly strong.

And he laid three other insights upon us, which he called "blinding glimpses of the obvious:

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