Joanne (Jo)'s Key Ideas from The Art of Work
by Jeff Goins

We are blaming ourselves for not having already born with a clear calling in our minds.

Is the calling just a natural fact that appears suddenly?

You don’t ‘just know’ what your calling is. You must listen for clues along the way, discovering what your life can tell you. Awareness comes with practice.

Opportunities to learn and grow are available, if we’re willing to look in the right places and humbly accept what we find.

Discovering your calling is not an epiphany but a series of intentional decisions.

To find out which is your calling it takes time. Usually the entire time of your life.

Your calling is not a job. It is your entire life.  We look at seven stages to finding your life’s work that serves as a model to us.

Awareness is a sense that something more is possible. Our job is to realize that life is more than what beats the eye and there are clear hints along the path of discovering our true self.

It is not an easy road, we have to be willing to step out of the box and see the bigger picture and start acting.

In the past, apprenticeship meant working with a mentor for several years and learning the skills from a mentor. Nowadays that situation is completely different and the individual is left by himself to find his calling.

Accidental apprenticeships are everywhere you look. You may find it in different stages from your life, and they can help you find your calling, simply by serving as a model, or by giving you an advice at the right place and at the right moment.

Practice is significant in our journey because it can teach you what you are and are not meant to do.

By practicing you will find what you want to do in life. If you failed at something, it means that you were not meant for that type of activity.

The journey continues with discovery.

“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.”

In order to discover our vocation, we need to keep in mind that it may take longer than we first assumed. But that does not mean that it will not happen. So be sure to take the hints that life presents and seize every opportunity as if you will not come across it twice.

A profession is seen as the result of different tries that we achieve after a long and strenuous practice. It can be considered a form of mastery.

True mastery is about greatness, about doing something that pushes the limitations of what others think is possible or even sensible.

True mastery means greatness and breaking the limitations boundaries of what others think is possible or even sensible.

It is relatively easier to attain mastery in something you like doing.

What lies at the end of the road is a prize that money can’t buy and a legacy the world won’t forget.

These views on work and life itself are quite practical in our daily lives.

You have found your own calling if it’s something really familiar to you, you are very good at it, and other people recognize this in you.