Meaningful Work: A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul

meeting your sorrows head-on,

He and the others admonished me: “Don’t talk to your dad about death. It is a sign of weakness and Jesus won’t heal him if you have such doubt.” So we didn’t discuss it. My dad would try to talk to me, but I would say, “Dad we can’t talk about it or you won’t be healed.”

Askinosie Chocolate is my vocation and it’s the only reason we’re able to do what we do.

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me a

A dentist wrote me recently after reading a commencement speech I gave at Mizzou.

Kahlil Gibran wrote, “Our greatest joy is sorrow unmasked.” It took me twenty-five years to figure that out. Gibran understood that joy can be found, and if not found then cultivated, via a deep acknowledgment of our sorrows. He knew that the exploration of heartbreak—our own, and the world’s—leads to an expansive understanding of our true self. He

My exploration of my deepest sorrow allowed me to uncover passions I didn’t know I had.

Before we’ve looked it in the eye, our own sorrow is like the dragon hiding in the cave. Think of yourself as on the hero’s journey to face the dragon. It takes hard work to locate it, and courage to enter its cave.

Direct trade is about relationships. It’s a practice, and a way of being.