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

with having all that savings: I wasn’t motivated to work.
After seeing work as a means of making a paycheck for
so many years, I didn’t have a good reason to go to work
when money was no longer an issue. For a couple of
months, I really struggled with motivation, with knowing
why I should be working. This lack of motivation turned
into laziness, which devolved into depression. If I didn’t
need to work, what did I need to do, and why?
Eventually, I did go back to work, but with different
intentions. During my two-month funk, I called my friend
Stu, who owns a successful software company, to ask how
he dealt with motivation. “Jeff,” he said, “I live in a small
town, and my standard of living hasn’t really changed since
I started working for myself.” At a time when he was
starting to make more money than he would ever need, Stu
went on a trip to Africa and his eyes were opened to a whole
new world of possibility. In Kenya, he saw how much of a
difference opportunity and a good education could make in
a person’s life. He realized that instead of feeling guilty, he
could use the gifts he was born with, some of which he
didn’t earn or deserve, to help other people. “After that, I
realized I was good at making money and didn’t need to
feel bad about that. I could do what I do best and use it for
good. When I returned home, I started working not for
myself but for all those people I met in Africa.”
A few years later, I had a similar experience, having
raised enough money through my blog to help build an
income-generating workshop for women living in a leper