Foreword

Few categories of our lives define us and grow us spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and as people. Our work is one of those powerful defining areas. Sadly, a j-o-b is what most people settle for, but as Dan Miller so powerfully points out in the coming chapters, a calling lights up your life.

Dan’s insight and actual hands-on implementation of discovering and developing a calling has influenced thousands of lives, including mine and many of my team members’. You see, implementation is the key. In the last few years I have been very inspired to be “wild at heart” and to have a “purpose-driven life” and am a huge fan of those culture-impacting books (by John Eldredge and Rick Warren, respectively). I am even more excited by 48 Days to the Work You Love because it puts clothes on the concepts. You may be like me; I sometimes need someone to help me put the concepts into action. Knowledge without action is personified in the overeducated broke and broken who wander listlessly among us.

The following pages lead you to implement a step-by-step plan to show the world your purpose and your heart in a way that is most satisfying. It is satisfying not because you will never face adversity or make mistakes in the process—nor because your career will zoom ahead and never falter. You will fall, you will err, and your career will not take a perfect path. No, this material is satisfying and life-changing because you will have the tools to discover a key part of the plan God has for your life. This material is satisfying because when you begin discovering and implementing this plan, you will have a sense of God-given power that will propel you through adversity and errors. This new God-given power will give you the energy to recognize that even wrong turns can benefit the end result.

In the last several years, while meeting and spending time with people who have become inordinately successful, I have observed several common traits among them. Two of those traits stand out. One is they have a calling, which they have discovered and are implementing. The other is they have made mountains of mistakes in the process of becoming “successful.” The gleaming mountain of success is actually a pile of trash—a pile of the mistakes we have made. The difference between the successful and the troubled is not error-free living; it is that by discovering and implementing a life calling, the successful stand on their pile of trash while the troubled sit under theirs.

Most of us spend too much of our lives in paralyzing fear, shame, guilt, and dread when it comes to our work. Work has become the daily grind instead of the great adventure it should be. The beauty of this material is that as you implement it, you will gradually process your negative emotions and move into a thriving work life. As someone who lives this material everyday, I know you will still experience doubt, fear, and mistakes. However, by finding and functioning in your calling, you will increasingly grow in confidence that you were put here to win in spite of those things, not without them.

I am excited for you because by opening these next few pages you are lighting a fire. The wood may be old and wet, but it has the capacity to become a raging bonfire! This is a book about implementation, so do it!

DAVE RAMSEY

Nationally Syndicated Radio Host