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

One day, the two owners approached him, and as nicely
as they could, they asked Matt to leave. He had been
treating people poorly, and without knowing or caring, he
was leaving a lot of “carnage” around the office, which they
had to clean up. That was the second time Matt was fired.
He was twenty-seven years old, and it happened just fifteen
days before his wedding.
Taking six months off to enjoy his marriage and embark
on what he calls “a spiritual journey,” Matt went back to
work in May 2009, joining a company in Nashville that sold
instructional DVDs. The next year, he won the Affiliate
Manager of the Year award at Affiliate Summit and ended
up leading all their online marketing after that. The job
lasted two years. During his second year, Matt had a
nagging thought about starting his own consulting business
and brought it up to his boss, who gave his blessing and
even offered Matt some advice.
In February 2011, he left the company to return to his
first job, the same place from which he had been fired two
and a half years earlier. But his second stint was even
shorter than the first. One Friday night during dinner, after
he had been working there for nine months, Matt was
complaining to his wife about the job, which had become a
usual occurrence. His wife, who’d finally had enough, said
he needed to decide when he was going to quit, which he
agreed to and told her when he went into the office the next
day he would set a date to leave. The next day, a private
detective showed up at the McWilliamses’ front door and