Jeff Goins the Art of Work a Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do

The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You lot Were Meant to Practice by Jeff Goins. Thomas Nelson. 240 pages. 2015. Audiobook read past Jeff Goins.
*** ½

This book is an excellent introduction to the field of study of calling. It is well-written, easy to read, interesting and practical. The book is organized into three major sections: Preparation, Action and Completion. In those sections he covers seven overlapping stages of calling. The stages are: Awareness, Apprenticeship, Practice, Discovery, Profession, Mastery and Legacy. In each phase he uses ordinary stories of people to illustrate the phase. Being a graduate of my hometown Illinois State University, I enjoyed the story of Jody Mayberry from ISU about his calling equally a Park Ranger.

Goins tells u.s.a. that finding your calling is a path, rather than a plan. He refers to a calling equally the reason you were built-in. I wouldn't quite go that far, believing for example that the reason I was born was to worship God and tell others about Him. Yet, I would apply what Goins writes as to say that our calling is the piece of work that we were born to do. He too refers to your calling as that thing you just cannot not do. He states that your calling is non a destination, but a journey that doesn't end until y'all dice.

Goins introduces us to Viktor Frankl's three things that give meaning to life. Frankl said "When a person can't detect a deep sense of significant, they distract themselves with pleasure." Goins tells us that a calling comes when we embrace the pain and that a calling is non necessarily fair. Finding your calling is not a passive process. Yous must persevere and commit to the path.

I enjoyed the department of the book in which Goins wrote about accidental apprenticeships and the role of mentors in helping the states to find our calling. He writes that we never find our calling on our ain.

He refers to deliberate practise as that practice that leads to expert functioning. That section reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell'due south discussion in his book Outliers of roughly ten,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. Goins talks about practice being painful.

Goins tells us that finding our calling is a journey and that nosotros must encounter the journeying as one of building bridges, non as leaping off of bridges. Information technology is a process and information technology takes fourth dimension. Finding our calling is a series of intentional decisions.

I savor great quotes and one he shares is from Frederick Buechner, a favorite author. Buechner wrote "The identify God calls yous to is the identify where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

Goins writes that a calling is a journey, a mystery, merely besides intentional. He writes about how failure plays into our calling, how we can run into failure equally our friend, and what he refers to as pivot points.

He writes about seeing our calling equally a portfolio. I found this department to be particularly interesting. He states that our calling is more than our career. Instead he states that there are a diverseness of things you lot practise (work, home, play/hobbies, etc.) that make up your calling portfolio.

Goins writes that calling is a souvenir to be given away. He states that success isn't the goal, but legacy is. Your life, when lived well, becomes your calling. Goins writes that nosotros take to understand that there will be some work that we will not end. We volition all die as unfinished symphonies. Success isn't so much what you do but leaving a legacy that matters. We should be careful of the price of pursuing our calling. No corporeality of success is worth losing your family, for example. We should also be careful to master the arts and crafts but not let it master us.

An appendix is included which features a summary of the seven stages, 7 signs you've found your calling and too vii exercises to consummate. He likewise includes questions for discussions that would be helpful when reading and discussing the book with others.

Overall I found this book enjoyable, practical and easy to read, featuring many interesting stories illustrating his points. I particularly enjoyed references and stories about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Frederick Buechner, J.R.R. Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers. If you savor audiobooks, Goins reads the audiobook edition as well, and does a practiced very chore.

While I discover the all-time book on calling to be Os Guiness' book The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, I found this to be a very proficient, more secular introduction, directed to a mass audience, on this of import subject area.

You can detect additional resource at www.artofworkbook.com.

The Fine art of Piece of work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You lot Were Meant to Practise by Jeff Goins. Thomas Nelson. 199 pages. 2015
****

This was the 2nd time I've read this excellent book on calling by Jeff Goins.  Information technology'southward a book that I've recommended to many. It'southward a helpful easy read, sprinkled with a number of stories about people and their calling stories. Each chapter tells a different person's story, illustrating a major concept—one of seven stages of a calling.
The writer tells us that this is a book most finding your calling, about how y'all discover what you were born to do. A calling is that thing that yous can't not do, an answer to the age-old question, "What should I do with my life?" He tells us that the journey described in this book is an aboriginal path. It's the manner of chief craftsmen and artisans, a centuries-old route that requires both perseverance and dedication—the narrow path that few find.
The author tells united states that after encountering hundreds of stories from people who found their calling, he identified seven common characteristics, each illustrated in i of the chapters. Each chapter, which tells at least 1 person's story, is based on the following themes or stages:

• Awareness
• Apprenticeship
• Practise
• Discovery
• Profession
• Mastery
• Legacy

Rather than steps, the author states that these are more like overlapping stages that, once begun, keep for the balance of your life.
This is a very helpful book in helping you to discover your life's calling. As I read it, I highlighted a number of passages. Below are 15 great quotes from the book:

1. You don't "just know" what your calling is. You lot must listen for clues along the way, discovering what your life tin can tell y'all. Awareness comes with practice.
2. Earlier you know what your calling is, you must believe you are called to something.
3. A calling goes beyond your abilities and calls into question your potential.
4. You cannot find your calling on your own. Information technology's a process that involves a team of mentors. And everywhere you expect, help is available.
5. Practice is essential not simply to achieve excellence but to clarify the phone call itself.
6. Finding your calling will not happen without the assist and assistance of others.
7. Throughout this procedure of finding your life's work, you must be willing to expect for mentors in unexpected places.
8. Nosotros don't demand more jobs. We demand a better way to equip people for what they're meant to do.
9. An accidental apprenticeship begins with listening to your life and paying attending to the ways in which yous're already being prepared for your life'south piece of work.
10. Sometimes the people who help usa find our calling come up from the to the lowest degree likely of places. It's our job to observe them.
11. Your calling is not e'er like shooting fish in a barrel. It will take work. Practise can teach you what y'all are and are not meant to do.
12. Putting an activity through painful practice is a cracking way to determine your management in life. If y'all can practise something when it's not fun, even when y'all're exhausted and bored and desire to give upward, then it just might be your calling.
13. I don't know where this idea that your calling is supposed to be easy comes from. Rarely practise easy and greatness go together.
14. Discovering your calling is not an epiphany simply a series of intentional decisions. It looks less like a behemothic leap and more like building a span.
15. Find what you dearest and what the world needs, then combine them. Every bit Frederick Buechner wrote, "Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world'due south deep need."

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