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

by Jeff Goins

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

A recent poll found that only 13 percent of the world’s workers are “engaged” in their jobs. The other 87 percent feel disconnected from work and more frustrated than fulfilled.

Maybe the worst way to be happy is to try to be happy.

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.

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.

This is why when people are called to some great task, they know it. Immediately they recognize the prompting to step up and do something significant, because they have been waiting for it.

That’s what awareness is: a sense that something more is possible.

Most people waste the best years of their life waiting for an adventure to come to them instead of going out and finding one.

And they learned, as you might, an important lesson: clarity comes with action.

We can learn a lot from what initially looks like envy—namely, what you are missing.

And in spite of the evidence pointing to the contrary, we continue to believe in the Myth of Talent, that some people are born a certain way, that we cannot rise above our circumstances and achieve something greater than we’ve ever done before. When we do this, we deceive ourselves.

With the growth mindset, however, potential is unlimited. You can always get better. For this kind of person, the goal is not so much to be the best in the world but to be better than you were yesterday. Regardless of natural talent or the lack thereof, every person has the ability to improve themselves.

Even the most gifted people do not have what it takes to succeed without the right attitude and years of practice.

According to Daniel Coyle, author of a book called The Talent Code, the right kind of practice is a process of repeated tasks that end in failure.

We must listen. But we must also act.

Any great discovery, especially that of your life’s work, is never a single moment. In fact, epiphany is an evolutionary process; it happens in stages.

We get disillusioned and make the worst mistake you can make with a calling: we save all our energy for the leap instead of building a bridge.

The path to your dream is more about following a direction than arriving at a destination.

Every calling is marked by a season of insignificance, a period when nothing seems to make sense. This is a time of wandering in the wilderness, when you feel alone and misunderstood. To the outsider, such a time looks like failure, as if you are grasping at air or simply wasting time. But the reality is this is the most important experience a person can have if they make the most of it.

It’s a mindset. I have met rich people in some of the poorest parts of the planet and I have met bankrupt people living in million-dollar homes.