Putting an activity through painful practice is a great way to determine your direction in life. If you can do something when it’s not fun, even when you’re exhausted and bored and want to give up, then it just might be your calling.

clarity comes with action.

“I couldn’t see myself living this way for the rest of my life.”

Life has a funny way of teaching us that sometimes the most important stuff is the ordinary stuff. The smallest moments, the ones we think are insignificant, are the ones we will cherish the most.

“More people are watching your life and . . . are gaining strength in their own lives and in their own challenges because of what you’re going through. I promise you: your life matters, your life is significant, and things are happening that you don’t even fully understand yourself.”

When we see someone who has succeeded in spite of tremendous odds, we are tempted to proclaim this person a “self-made” man or woman. When we do this, though, we ignore an important fact, one that is essential to anyone’s success—they didn’t do it alone.

When a person is determined to not just succeed but to do work that matters, the world makes room for such ambition.

What happens when the life you end up living doesn’t look like the one you planned?

A calling is what you have when you look back at your life and make sense of what it’s been trying to teach you all along.