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

acknowledging how they got lucky. It sounds like how we
often describe falling in love. You just know. The problem is
that it isn’t true.
Falling in love may be a mysterious process, but it is also
an intentional one. He asked you out, you said yes, you
kissed on the first date even though that was something you
never did, and you started seeing each other exclusively.
There is a process. And every single step of the way is
marked by trust. This was what Eric Miller told me, what
Jody Noland emphasized, and what Ginny Phang kept
saying over and over—they all had no idea what they were
doing. There was no plan. But they acted anyway. They
didn’t just know. They chose.
Maybe some people do just know what they’re supposed
to do with their lives. Maybe they’re born with a sixth sense
that allows them to intuitively understand they were meant
to be a seamstress or a bullfighter, that they were born to
make movies or build skyscrapers. But most people, the
normal people you and I encounter on a daily basis, seem to
have no clue. And telling these folks “you just know” when
most of us clearly do not seems cruel.
We rarely hear this side of the story in interviews and
documentaries about famous people. Why is this? Maybe
because it sells. Because we’d rather believe the fairy tale
that says some people are just special. That way, we don’t
have any responsibility to act.
This lack of honesty has produced a mythology in the
world of work. The myth goes like this: Your calling, if it