The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do

by Jeff Goins

What I’ve come to understand is that finding your purpose is more of a path than a plan: it involves twists and turns that you never expected. Ultimately these surprises lead you to your destiny. And once you arrive at what you thought was the destination, you realize it’s only another leg in the journey.

This is not a book about miracles. It is a book about finding your calling, about how you discover what you were born to do. A calling is that thing that you can’t not do, an answer to the age-old question, “What should I do with my life?”

The Art of Work is a book about vocation, a word that has come to mean something very different from the original definition. The word vocation comes from the Latin root vocare, which means “to call.”

In this book, I will try to recapture that ancient understanding of vocation as something more than a job.

The journey described in this book is an ancient path. It’s the way of master craftsmen and artisans, a centuries-old road that requires both perseverance and dedication—the narrow path that few find.

At times you will have to trust your gut, and at others you will need to do what is uncomfortable and even painful. But as you go, there will be signs along the way, markers ensuring that you are headed in the right direction.

The path described here is not a manual for life. It’s a piece

There is a process to finding your life’s work.

pining for what could have been only holds people back from living their lives now. Life is full of surprises, and it doesn’t help us to fixate on regrets or try to recover what has been lost.

I promise you: your life matters, your life is significant, and things are happening that you don’t even fully understand yourself.”

acknowledge that whatever is happening in their lives now, as difficult as it might be, is important. To not hold out for the right opportunity or wait for things to get better, but to make the most of life now. The question that Garrett Rush-Miller’s life answers is the same one many of us are afraid to ask: What happens when the life you end up living doesn’t look like the one you planned?

Maybe we all have the power to turn our lives into significant stories if we start to see our difficulties as opportunities.

We can’t control what life throws our way, but we can control how we react to it. As we do, maybe we come closer to a meaningful life than any plan could ever take us. To do this, though, we have to let go of what we think we deserve and embrace what is, which just might lead to something better than we ever could have imagined.

“One way of knowing our gifting,” Jody told me, “is when something that seems easy to us doesn’t seem easy to others.

Maybe the worst way to be happy is to try to be happy. The work of acclaimed Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl supports this idea. A Holocaust survivor, Frankl had intimate experience with suffering, and it taught him an important lesson. Human beings, he argued, are not hardwired for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. They want meaning. In spite of what we say, we don’t want happiness. It’s simply not enough to satisfy our deepest longings. We are looking for something more, something transcendent—a reason to be happy.

Frankl learned there are three things that give meaning to life: first, a project; second, a significant relationship; and third, a redemptive view of suffering.

What we often don’t realize is that making our story about us, even about our pain, is the wrong approach. Dwelling on the past or fixating on the future won’t help you find fulfillment. The way you beat a feeling of purposelessness, according to Frankl, isn’t to focus on the problem. It’s to find a better distraction.

What we all want is to know our time on earth has meant something. We can distract ourselves with pleasure for only so long before beginning to wonder what the point is. This means if we want true satisfaction, we have to rise above the pettiness of our own desires and do what is required of us. A calling comes when we embrace the pain, not avoid it.

Pain and suffering, though intimidating obstacles, are not strong enough to keep us from our purpose. In fact, they can sometimes be the very catalysts for such discoveries.

In any great narrative, there is a moment when a character must decide to become more than a bystander. It’s an important moment that always seems to happen in the mind before it unfolds in real life. This choice, though, is always preceded by something deeper, a nagging feeling that there must be more.

A calling may be many things, but it is not fair. Still, you must answer it.

Before you begin your life’s work, you need to prepare. Chances come to us all, but only those who are ready recognize them. You don’t need some big plan. You just need to be a little dissatisfied. You need to have some vague premonition that the world is not completely right. That’s what awareness is: a sense that something more is possible.

You don’t need a lucky break or a golden opportunity; you don’t even need to “just know.” What you do need is the desire and willingness to begin. Only then can you dedicate yourself to the work that is required of you, and only then will you know what it’s worth. Without awareness, you won’t be able to recognize the opportunities that come. And they always come to those with open eyes.

Most people waste the best years of their life waiting for an adventure to come to them instead of going out and finding one. They succumb to the status quo and dream of life being different someday.

You already have some sense of what you’re supposed to do with your life, even if you aren’t sure what it is. The trick is to find your vocation hidden in your life.

Those “lucky” few who find their callings testify to this. They knew there was a purpose out there, and they were determined to find it. The way that they did this was by taking the first step, by overcoming the myth that “you just know” and deciding to act anyway. And they learned, as you might, an important lesson: clarity comes with action.

calling is what you have when you look back at your life and make sense of what it’s been trying to teach you all along.

The problem is so few of our lives look anything like what we want them to be. What prevents us from living the life we long for is fear. We fear the unknown and what we might lose—our security, our reputation, our lives. This is what keeps us from our life’s work and what numbs our awareness to the call—mystery.

a calling takes work. Finding yours will require a fear-facing journey that will last a lifetime. And where does it begin? With awareness. With discovering what your life is already saying to you. And as you attempt to uncover this mystery, consider one more question, a much more constructive one: What happens if you don’t do this?

Buechner was saying is that awareness doesn’t just happen; it must be cultivated.

Each person is responsible to not only do what she is capable of but also what she is meant to do. In the words of author and activist Parker Palmer, don’t just tell your life what you want to do with it; listen to what it wants to do with you.

Look at the major events in your life and write them down on a piece of paper. Note everything significant you can remember, even the things that seem silly or irrelevant but come to mind for some reason. Don’t try to decode the meaning; just put down everything you can think of. As you reach the end of the list, look for a common thread, some recurring theme.

When your time comes, what will you regret not doing? What will you wish you had more time to do, and what will have seemed trivial? Think of what you fear losing—those are the things that matter most.

One way to deepen this awareness is to watch other people. Pay attention to those who love their lives and see what they do. What do they have that you don’t? We can learn a lot from what initially looks like envy—namely, what you are missing. You might have to see someone else love their life before you can love your own. Love, after all, is what holds this all together, what sustains a calling when nothing else will. This is not petty jealousy, not if we take it one step further and do something with those feelings.

In a way, we must become children again, watching and listening to others, mimicking the behavior we admire so that we can grow. Observing everyday examples of those who did not compromise their calling but pers...

when we don’t give ourselves fully to the work we were born to do, we do the world—and ourselves—a disservice. Commitment is necessary. It teaches us to exchange instant gratification for long-term reward and shows us that some change takes time. In learning this discipline of staying the course, our character grows. This is the payoff of patience, the joy of watching something grow that wouldn’t have been had you not spent all those years sticking with it.

it’s not just about commitment; it’s also about perseverance. You can’t find your passion if you don’t push through pain.

discovery comes with dedication. We must seek to understand our suffering with a redemptive worldview, choosing to see the greater good in spite of the evil in this world. Otherwise, the challenges we encounter will threate...

There will, of course, be failure, but with that come lessons to be learned. At times, you may commit to the wrong thing, which is fine, because it’s better than the alternative—nothing.

The risk of not committing is greater than the cost of making the wrong choice. Because when you fail, you learn. But what happens when you don’t commit, when you choose to not act? Well, nothing. When you pause without intent, when you stall due to fear, you don’t learn a thing. Each wrong choice grows your character and strengthens your resilience, readying you for what comes next. Failure is a friend dressed up like an enemy.

As you avail yourself to how your life may be speaking, you too must decide. Will you wallow in regret, wondering why such a thing has befallen you, or will you choose to act, making the most of your obstacle, and allow it to evolve into an opportunity?

In modern times, the responsibility for reaching your potential is often left up to the individual. This is more than a challenge; it’s a cruel taunt. How can a person be all she’s supposed to be if she doesn’t know who she is, if she doesn’t have some example to aspire to? Pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps can only take us so far, and despite what we’ve heard, there is no such thing as a self-made man.

The truth, in spite of what we might believe about remarkable people, is that you cannot master a skill on your own. Finding your calling will not happen without the aid and assistance of others.

We all have our own issues, and one of the reasons it can be so hard to find a good mentor these days is that so few people have been mentored. We have believed the myth of the self-made man and have given in to the illusion of self-reliance. What we need is something to pull us out of our own independence and arrogance. Which means the mentor that comes might not be the one we were expecting.

A teacher who challenges you, who doesn’t meet your expectations, who forces you to think and act differently, is exactly what you need. That is, after all, the job of an educator.

Throughout this process of finding your life’s work, you must be willing to look for mentors in unexpected places. Your friends, long-lost relatives, even old relationships that have dwindled down may become the sources of inspiration you need.

How do you find these people? Where do they come from? It’s hard to tell. Likely they’ll surprise you, appearing seemingly out of nowhere at just the right time. The whole thing will look like an accident or a mystery but, of course, it is far from it. As Paulo Coelho writes, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

When you pursue a calling, you will find a community of supporters to champion you along the way. It’s not up to you where these people come from or even how to locate them. You just need to keep your eyes open. Accidental apprenticeships are all around you, and if you listen to your life you’ll be able to recognize them.

An accidental apprenticeship begins with listening to your life and paying attention to the ways in which you’re already being prepared for your life’s work.

Apprenticeship, then, isn’t a class you take or a mentor you meet—it’s a choice you make. And in that case, an accidental apprenticeship isn’t much of an accident at all; it’s the intentional process of choosing the opportunities you need to create your life’s work.