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Input: If youâre at a crossroads in your life  not knowing which path to pursue or where your true passion lies  have you ever stopped doing and started listening? Jeff Goins  author of Real Artists Donât Starve  argues that instead of trying to figure out what it is weâre good at  we should take time to figure who we are as people. In a blog post he wrote in 2015   Goins  offered this paraphrase of Parker Palmer: âDonât just tell your life what you want to do with it; listen to what it wants to do with you.â
âYou have to listen to the voices beyond those of the people in your life â  Goins  explained. âListen to your inner voice  your intuition  wherever that comes from. Ask not just what can I do  but who am I really? We all have this tension between who we really are and who everybody says we should be and listening to your life is the first step in not just doing work that makes you successful but doing work we believe matters.â
To begin the process of listening to yourself   Goins  recommends asking yourself three questions. The first question is about passion. Take out a piece of paper and draw a circle. Write the word âpassionâ in that circle  and underneath it  write what you love to do. What do you have an affinity for  or what have you always enjoyed? This doesnât have to be something specific  like writing or cooking. It could be a general interest.
âI didnât know what I wanted to do with my life  but Iâve always been creative â  Goins  revealed. âThat was always true about me. Iâve always loved art  music  writing  and reading. In my first circle  I would have written creativity or art in there.â
âWhen you find something that you love  that youâre skilled at  and that other people want from you  youâve got a short list â  Goins  said. âIt may not be one thing  but itâs a handful of things that you can begin to explore to find out if itâs your calling. It is not the end of this journey. You havenât filled out these three circles and thatâs what youâre supposed to do. This exercise is a starting point for you to explore the options.â
As evidenced by his latest book title   Goins  is not a fan of the âstarving artistâ mentality. Living in Nashville  heâs surrounded by musicians who suffer for their art. Some assume that suffering makes their art nobler  when in  Goins â mind  the starving artist is suffering unnecessarily. They havenât given themselves permission to profit and flourish. Instead  they falsely believe they have to stay at the level theyâre at until they go broke.
âI think artists of all types need to give themselves permission to value the work that they do and take it more seriously â  Goins  said. âThat way  they donât starve. They can keep creating this important work and we can keep seeing it. My dad ran a restaurant for years and struggled through that. It was a great restaurant that served this small community. People loved it  but from a business standpoint  it didnât work well. He had to close and sell it for the cost of the equipment. It breaks my heart that artists of all types cannot figure out the business side of things and become a thriving artist.â
In his book   Goins  lays out 12 rules for how to become a thriving artist. One is that artists should apprentice under a master. In reading over 100 books on historyâs greatest artists  entrepreneurs and creative minds   Goins  discovered that almost all of them had an apprenticeship. This meant doing boring  tedious work for somebody else and using that experience to become great at something. In todayâs work environment  an apprenticeship gets confused with terms that donât mean the same thing.
âThis is not an internship or a summer job at the high rise in the city where you get everybody donuts in the morning â  Goins  clarified. âIt was seven to ten years of doing work  usually in exchange for room and board. Hopefully by the end of that time  you knew what you were doing. I think we should take the same approach to our art and certainly to our business. Iâm tired of seeing people become thought leaders and asking people to pay them for their expertise when they havenât spent a decade acquiring experience and expertise. They donât have the right to teach anybody else.â

Before Your Quit Your Job To Pursue Your Passion Ask Yourself These Three Questions