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

by Jeff Goins

bigger. The forty-year career is dead. The world demands a fresh approach to vocation, and we need something new—or perhaps, something very old.

The path described here is not a manual for life. It’s a piece of canvas on which to add your own experience.

calling, I’ve identified seven common characteristics, each illustrated in the subsequent chapters.

Awareness 2. Apprenticeship 3. Practice 4. Discovery 5. Profession 6. Mastery 7. Legacy

Letting Go of What Could Have Been

What happens when the life you end up living doesn’t look like the one you planned?

PART ONE Preparation

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. —PARKER PALMER

Jody told me, “is when something that seems easy to us doesn’t seem easy to others. I kept thinking, How hard could it be? Maybe I could help people do this

'W'hat seems easy to us is hard for others. That's how you know your calling.

Happiness Is Overrated

The first path says you can be whatever you want; the second says you have no choice. But perhaps there is a third way. What if there was more to your purpose than getting what you wanted? What if there were some things

Human beings, he argued, are not hardwired for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. They want meaning.

Nazi concentration camp, 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.

Man’s Search for Meaning, became one of

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.

The Good Kind of Fear

made, keeping only one as a keepsake, and she let the grieving begin. A year later, a man called her, looking for a copy of the workbooks she used to have.

What We Learn from Fairy Tales

In any great narrative, there is a moment when a character must decide to become more than a bystander.

Before you know what your calling is, you must believe you are called to something. It doesn’t matter if you know what.

I have always believed this about myself. I don't know why as I have never really had a plan for my career and I was jealous of anyone who did.

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.

The Wrong Kind of Fear

A few times during the conference, I talked about my day job, but that felt boring and unoriginal.

This is exactly how I feel about the sales calls and most of what I do in the staffing world. Any rock from the parking lot could do this. Also, I feel like I am waiting on my dream to find me rather than having a dream. If I have one dream it is to make my living writing. And to be proud of the books I write and to live a few weeks of each year in St. Augustine and to travel abroad once a year. That's it and that's a lot.

it would walk up to me and say hello, greeting me with a smile, and we would start the rest of my life together.

This should be a slide in my presentation. Your rearming walking up to you and saying hello... * what seems common to me about the counseling I do is that people almost never know what their dream is. They always know what their dream isn't.

“But the truth is,” he continued, “you do know what your dream is . . . You’re just afraid to admit it.”

What we want to know is this: “Can you promise me I won’t fail?”

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.

But the truth is you will never have clarity. As Mother Teresa once said, you will only ever have trust.

What I am trying to say here is that a calling takes work. Finding yours will require a fear-facing journey that will last a lifetime.

consider one more question, a much more constructive one: What happens if you don’t do this? That’s what should really scare you.

Your Life Is Speaking

The point isn’t necessarily what the voice says. That’s important, of course, but it’s beyond your control. The point is to listen.

Here’s how it works, practically.

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. Can you see how one event, without any intention or planning on your part, influenced another? How that late-night trip to the diner led to meeting the love of your life? How a series of useless internships influenced your career choice? You will begin to see a theme, a surprisingly obvious thread that ties it all together.

Add this to your PMV. The major events page. What happened and why. * add this to the slides. * add this to the papers you give your next player, target, talent, mark, sponge, protege (they are all my protege) How does protege fit in with the coaching slide deck? What does it mean?

Nothing Is Wasted

After my seven years of working at a nonprofit, I can relate. Nothing is wasted. No job, no task, no obstacle is useless, if we are willing to see how it can fit into our calling.

In a way, we must become children again, watching and listening to others, mimicking the behavior we admire so that we can grow.

When in Doubt, Commit

this is not a passive process.

But it’s not just about commitment; it’s also about perseverance.

Here’s the truth. The risk of not committing is greater than the cost of making the wrong choice.

The Nail in Walt Disney’s Boot

Walt home without any painkillers. He would be bedridden for two weeks.

is that by the time his foot healed and he returned to delivering papers, “he had decided to become a cartoonist.”

TWO Accidental Apprenticeships The Teacher Appears When the Student Least Expects

Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come. —UNKNOWN

Make this my slide. In the coaching deck

Getting pregnant at twenty-three years old was just about the worst thing that could have happened to Ginny Phang.

“It started with me not doing well on my exams,” she told me on a Skype call late one afternoon

It was that look, which I first saw in a TEDx video, that made me respond to her e-mail. “I have a star personality,” she