Stop being average and start being extraordinary

Is it possible that there's one job you were meant to do? According to experts, many of us spend too much time doing several professions with modest results rather than excelling in our true calling.

"I tell people stop being average at a lot of things or pretty good at a lot of things and start being extraordinary at one thing," said Phil Cooke, author of the book "One Big Thing: Discovering What You Were Born to Do." "Look at the Olympics. You won't find a track guy also swimming and skiing. To get to a higher and higher level you need to let go of the peripheral things and cut through the clutter to get noticed."

Cooke said start by asking yourself, "What comes easy to me?" And "What do other people tell me that I do well?" Be sure to pose the questions to those who can give you an honest answer rather than people who only tell you what you want to hear, Cooke said.

"There's a huge denial factor in the country where people don't have a shred of talent in the things they think they're really, really good at," Cooke said. "I think we all need to have a moment of brutal honesty in our own lives."

Leadership coach Ginny Clarke, president and CEO of the consulting firm Talent Optimization Partners, said one of the keys to unlocking our optimal career path is to ask ourselves what we loved doing when we were 10 years old.

"This is an age when you are free and you allow yourselves to imagine," she said. "Whenever I pose this question to a client, I see a sense of discovery and joy in their face. If you allow yourself to explore this, then your search stays closer to what speaks to you. If more people could get back to that I think they would allow themselves to align their work with what they actually like doing."

But while thinking back to when you were 10 can be eye-opening, Clarke said you have to be realistic.

Here are some tips to help you focus on that one true calling:

Stop focusing on your flaws.

"I'm not a numbers person and I spent months trying to get better at balancing my checkbook and I really worked hard on it," Cooke said. "I realized I wasn't wired to do this. If, on a scale of 1-10 you are a 3 or 4 for balancing your checkbook, nobody pays for a 3 or a 4. They pay for a 9 or 10. What are the areas of your life where you can be a 9 or a 10? Decide what they are and work on those."

Don't let others tell you what you should do.

"I had a woman come in and she said 'My passion has always been to be in the gourmet food business but I don't think I should be doing that,'" Clarke said. "Just because you took a certain direction or have a certain job history doesn't mean you have to limit yourself. Get rid of the 'shoulds.' This is your journey and nobody else's."

Embrace change.

"When I was 36 ... out of the blue I got fired and I thought it was the end of the world," Cooke said. "But looking back 20 years later I realize it was the best thing that ever happened to me. We get sucked in to that regular paycheck, sucked in to the health benefits and sucked in to this comfort zone. We need that push to think differently and explore our talents -- I certainly did and it made a huge difference for me."

Don't burn bridges.