Giving it all You've Got: How Daily Self‐Sacrifice and Self‐Esteem Regulate the Double‐Edged Effects of Callings

Abstract Occupational callings are a combination of passion and enjoyment with a sense of duty and destiny. Pursuing a calling is a double‐edged sword, sometimes beneficial and sometimes detrimental, but it is unclear why it has contradictory effects. We show how daily self‐sacrifice behaviour explains these effects and reveals how workers regulate their callings on a daily basis. We argue that people with intense callings use self‐sacrifice to attain daily calling goals. However, this has a cost to their wellbeing in terms of daily emotional exhaustion. Diary data from church ministers and chaplains reveals that daily self‐sacrifice behaviour mediates the positive effects of calling intensity, via felt obligations, on both daily calling goal attainment and emotional exhaustion. Within‐person, we show how state self‐esteem further regulates this double‐edged process both within a day and from one day to the next. Low morning state self‐esteem promotes daily self‐sacrifice and is indirectly related to higher calling goal attainment and emotional exhaustion via daily self‐sacrifice. But morning self‐esteem is itself predicted positively by the previous days’ goal attainment and negatively by emotional exhaustion. Therefore, state self‐esteem in conjunction with daily self‐sacrifice behaviour and its double‐edged effects represents a daily regulation mechanism for self‐sacrifice in callings.