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

purpose, and a nation may have never been born.
Every calling is marked by a season of insignificance, a
period when nothing seems to make sense. This is a time of
wandering in the wilderness, when you feel alone and
misunderstood. To the outsider, such a time looks like
failure, as if you are grasping at air or simply wasting time.
But the reality is this is the most important experience a
person can have if they make the most of it.
As many do, you may be wondering what you’re
supposed to do with your life. Everything seems confusing
and overwhelming. Your parents told you one thing, while
your peers say something different. Who do you trust?
Where do you focus? Traditional advice says to have a plan,
but as we have seen, plans don’t always work. When
pursuing your life’s work, your calling can be hard to see.
Sometimes it has to be revealed, and the way this often
happens is through failure.
When Matt McWilliams told me his story, I heard pieces
of my own journey. I recalled those seven years of working
for a nonprofit and the previous year of travel. I never felt
like I had found my place but had a nagging suspicion that I
was headed somewhere. By the end of the conversation, we
both learned something. When we feel farthest from our
purpose, we are actually already on the path, headed in the
right direction. This means that when you are confused and
failing, when all seems lost and you are just about to give
up, you are closer to your destiny than you realize. The
message of the pivot is that what looks like failure now is