Speaker 1: The really hard to understand reality for many people is
Speaker 1: that a job container is probably not the right path
Speaker 1: for you. But if you are going to opt into that,
Speaker 1: you need to be fully aware of the trade offs
Speaker 1: you're making and understand what are the principles that really
Speaker 1: matter to you and how do you prioritize those principles
Speaker 1: given the path you're on or what you're choosing to
Speaker 1: enter into.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great tinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Paul Millard,
Speaker 2: an independent writer freelancer, coach, and digital creator. He's written
Speaker 2: online for many years and has built a growing audience
Speaker 2: of curious humans from around the world. Paul spent several
Speaker 2: years working in strategy consulting before deciding to walk away
Speaker 2: and embrace a pathless path. Today, Paul and Eric discuss
Speaker 2: his book The Pathless Path, Imagining a news story for
Speaker 2: work and Life.
Speaker 3: Hi, Paul, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Eric, excited to be here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 3: be discussing your book, The Pathless Path, Imagining a new
Speaker 3: story for work in Life. I came across you on Twitter,
Speaker 3: I think, and you're good friends with Johnny Miller, who
Speaker 3: was a guest on the show, and I just kind
Speaker 3: of kept seeing your stuff for a little while and
Speaker 3: I was like, I really want to talk to this guy.
Speaker 3: So on read the book. I'm really glad I did.
Speaker 3: So we're gonna be talking about it. But let's start
Speaker 3: like we always do with the parable. In the Parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops think about it
Speaker 3: for a second and look up at their grandparent. They say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins, And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you and your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was reflecting on it before this call, and
Speaker 1: I've listened to a number of your interviews, and I
Speaker 1: love this framing. It's such a good jumping off point
Speaker 1: for a conversation. I think early in my life I
Speaker 1: didn't feed either of them. And I guess you could
Speaker 1: say I fed fear a little in the form of
Speaker 1: sort of just fitting in and going along with things.
Speaker 1: But I just didn't have the role models to be
Speaker 1: sort of an emotionally connected man in the world. And
Speaker 1: I think when I entered young adulthood, I sort of
Speaker 1: just drifted along, and I don't think I was hyper
Speaker 1: aware of what was driving me. I just kept making
Speaker 1: impulsive decisions, jumping from company to company, chasing the next
Speaker 1: impressive accomplishment. But I didn't have much self awareness of
Speaker 1: why I was doing that or what really mattered to me.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until my mid twenties in which I
Speaker 1: started to actually get more in touch with those and
Speaker 1: then eventually leaving the corporate world. I think my journey
Speaker 1: has been a journey of really figuring out how to
Speaker 1: have a relationship with fear, love, bravery, courage, creativity, all
Speaker 1: those things, and I think, to me, that's really what
Speaker 1: life's all about.
Speaker 3: That's a really interesting framing to say that you don't
Speaker 3: know that you were feeding either wolf, right, or you
Speaker 3: weren't conscious of which wolf you were feeding. You were
Speaker 3: kind of just feeding the wolf that was laid out
Speaker 3: in front of you as the next thing to do.
Speaker 3: You were accepting culture's values. And I don't mean culture broadly,
Speaker 3: although perhaps, but I also mean the culture that you
Speaker 3: were in, you know, which said here's the next thing
Speaker 3: you do. Right. In the book, you refer to it
Speaker 3: a lot as the default path. Right, It's just you
Speaker 3: kind of follow what's laid out in front of you.
Speaker 3: Let's talk for a minute about the title of the book,
Speaker 3: which is called The Pathless Path. What drove that and
Speaker 3: what does that mean to you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I discovered the phrase in a David White book.
Speaker 1: Have you read any of David White.
Speaker 3: I have, Yep. I've read him and he's been a
Speaker 3: guest on the show, and he's a remark man.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you interviewed him. I'm definitely listening to
Speaker 1: that right after this.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's written about work, and I think his language
Speaker 1: helped me transcend an understanding I had of the world,
Speaker 1: which there's like prior to reading David White and after
Speaker 1: reading David White. Prior to reading David White, I just
Speaker 1: thought work was part of life. Right after reading David White,
Speaker 1: I had this whole new interpretation, which is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there is like work to fit in and do what
Speaker 1: other people are doing, and then there's work. There's work
Speaker 1: that is deeply connected to who you are, what matters
Speaker 1: in the world, and something that can give you sustainable
Speaker 1: energy throughout life. And he talks about his own journey,
Speaker 1: and he talks about this phrase, the pathless path, and
Speaker 1: I remember it. The book actually came to me via
Speaker 1: a gift from another person you mentioned earlier, Johnny Miller.
Speaker 1: He handed me the book. He's like, you need this.
Speaker 1: This is a year after I quit my job. He's like,
Speaker 1: read this book. I was like, okay, read the book
Speaker 1: over the next couple of weeks, and this phrase the
Speaker 1: pathless path just jumps off the page and just like
Speaker 1: sort of took over my life. And he said something like,
Speaker 1: when you first discovered the phrase the pathless path, you're
Speaker 1: not meant to know what it means. But for me,
Speaker 1: I had the opposite reaction. And that's what he said.
Speaker 1: But to me, it was like, oh, this was such
Speaker 1: a release. It's like, I'm not supposed to know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I spent my whole life always trying to
Speaker 1: orchestrate the next step, and it was that orchestration of
Speaker 1: life that sucked the joy out of life, right, And
Speaker 1: it was really that that guided me over the next
Speaker 1: several years of contemplating what if I just released the tiller,
Speaker 1: what if I don't orchestrate and I just try to
Speaker 1: lean away from any active planning in life, which a
Speaker 1: lot of people at first glance so like, you can't
Speaker 1: just do that. Well, it turns out you can. You
Speaker 1: will still do things, you will react to things, You're
Speaker 1: going to react if you're in danger and need all
Speaker 1: these things. And what I discovered is that I got
Speaker 1: to know myself. I started feeding my good wolf and
Speaker 1: I think I started feeding the bad wolf at the
Speaker 1: same time, which was I started to get in touch
Speaker 1: with like, oh, I have passion for life, I care
Speaker 1: about things, and also I have these fears. I'm scared
Speaker 1: of going broke, what's that about. I'm scared of people
Speaker 1: not loving me? What's that about? And learning to kind
Speaker 1: of coexist with all that. And over the next few years,
Speaker 1: I didn't really think about writing a book, and then
Speaker 1: eventually a bunch of people just kept asking me, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I think I'm going to write
Speaker 1: a book. And that name was just so obvious to me.
Speaker 1: It had to be called the pathless path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such a Taoist Zen phrase. In Zen, we
Speaker 3: talk about the gateless gate, right, you know, which is
Speaker 3: there's a gate you passed through, but it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no thing that's blocking gate, the same
Speaker 3: as you. When I heard that phrase, I was like,
Speaker 3: that's such a great phrase. So you were kind of
Speaker 3: on what you would consider the pathless path now, but
Speaker 3: before that, let's talk about your life on what was
Speaker 3: kind of the default path. You know, give us a
Speaker 3: couple minute version of kind of what you did and
Speaker 3: where you were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for contexts I grew up. My parents didn't
Speaker 1: go to college. They were very much on the default path.
Speaker 1: And I write my book, I think in previous generations
Speaker 1: there just weren't alternatives as there are now, right, and
Speaker 1: so they did well on the default path, and their
Speaker 1: goal was to make sure their kids have everything they need.
Speaker 1: We went to public schools. We didn't have a fancy upbringing,
Speaker 1: but we had enough, and we had love, and they
Speaker 1: just wanted us to go to college. And I think
Speaker 1: also part of that was, I think the expectation that
Speaker 1: the goal in the US is just to make a
Speaker 1: lot of money. I didn't realize there was that implicit expectation,
Speaker 1: but I followed that path. I was always good at school.
Speaker 1: So if you're good at school, the opportunities just eventually
Speaker 1: show up. You're good at school, you do good in tests,
Speaker 1: you get into the honors program at college. I went
Speaker 1: on a full scholarship to undergrad which was the only
Speaker 1: college I considered because I just did not want to
Speaker 1: go into debt. Went to University of Connecticut. Surrounded by
Speaker 1: all these high achievers. They're like, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: to Harvard Law School. I'm going to get into med school.
Speaker 1: I want to work for these impressive companies. And suddenly
Speaker 1: you start to figure out, Oh, there's like a ranking, right.
Speaker 1: I'm in the business school, and I'm realizing ge is
Speaker 1: the best company to work for. Everyone who gets hired there.
Speaker 1: People pay attention to those people. Oh wow, that person
Speaker 1: got this offer right, So you just start competing. It
Speaker 1: was not that hard for me to be good at
Speaker 1: these things. I just had to like figure out the
Speaker 1: steps and then execute. But by doing that for so long,
Speaker 1: I think I was short circuiting my own curiosity, my
Speaker 1: curiosity for life and all these other things. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, I would get in these companies and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't fully absorb the identity of like a high achiever.
Speaker 1: I'd always be slightly skeptical. I eventually broke into strategy
Speaker 1: consulting one of the top firms in the world, Mackinsey
Speaker 1: and Company, and I would work less than other people.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, why are you guys working so much?
Speaker 1: They said, we could go home at five or six,
Speaker 1: so why not? And everyone would say till eight or nine.
Speaker 1: And what I realized eventually is a lot of people
Speaker 1: in these worlds like their whole identity is work, right,
Speaker 1: and by work, it's they identified with a career narrative
Speaker 1: about their life, which is their life, and the whole
Speaker 1: point is to get to the next steps and keep
Speaker 1: going and build wealth and sort of live out what
Speaker 1: the previous generations did. I didn't really have that example
Speaker 1: though growing up, so I was always a bit lost.
Speaker 1: I never fully understood like the elite codes of talking
Speaker 1: and what people were angling about, how people had all
Speaker 1: these political opinions. I was always so confused, sort of
Speaker 1: an outsider in these worlds, and eventually, like, you just
Speaker 1: can't last in these worlds if you're not like of
Speaker 1: that source material. And I think my questions just eventually
Speaker 1: got to me. It's like, well, we're making enough, and
Speaker 1: everyone around me thinks we're broke. I don't understand what
Speaker 1: we're doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, so your default path was a
Speaker 3: very successful path in the traditional sense, and that you
Speaker 3: went to a really good school, you got a full scholarship,
Speaker 3: you were able to go work for some of the
Speaker 3: top companies in the world. Your career was off to
Speaker 3: a really strong and good start. You know, I think
Speaker 3: It's interesting you talk about prestige in the book and
Speaker 3: you just referenced it a little bit here, which is
Speaker 3: you start to realize there's a ranking, oh, going to
Speaker 3: Harvard Business schools better than going to Ohio State's business school.
Speaker 3: You know, going to McKinsey is better than going to
Speaker 3: I don't know, what's a lower tier consulting company. Right,
Speaker 3: So that there's all these rankings and that this prestige
Speaker 3: is you use a quote in the book, a powerful
Speaker 3: magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy.
Speaker 3: And I love that idea because what you're talking about
Speaker 3: is mimetic desire. Right. We had a guy on the show,
Speaker 3: Luke Burgess, who writes about this, which.
Speaker 1: Is, yeah, I love Luke's book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you start to want what the people around you want,
Speaker 3: and it's a really interesting idea that we all do,
Speaker 3: which speaks to thinking about who you're around and what
Speaker 3: they want and whether you have these values. So you
Speaker 3: started to, as you said, question whether this was really
Speaker 3: the right fit for you, because you weren't all in
Speaker 3: in the same way that everybody else was, and you
Speaker 3: were sort of a as you called in the book, a
Speaker 3: hoop jumper, and yet there's something else going on inside
Speaker 3: of you. Tell me a little bit about the process
Speaker 3: of going from I'm on this path and I'm just
Speaker 3: jumping through hoops to going, huh, maybe this isn't the
Speaker 3: right place for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I always had those doubts. In my first internship,
Speaker 1: I read about this in the book. I'm looking around
Speaker 1: and seeing all these men not really doing anything, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, why are people doing this. I remember talking
Speaker 1: to one of my aunts or uncles and I was like,
Speaker 1: nobody seems to be really doing anything. It's like you'll
Speaker 1: learn once you're in the real world. You'll figure out,
Speaker 1: like you gotta just work, that's what you do. So
Speaker 1: I always had these questions. But it's more confusing for
Speaker 1: other people that I left than me, Like it makes
Speaker 1: so much sense that I left. It's just that I
Speaker 1: was good at the game that the vast majority of
Speaker 1: people think is the point of life. But I was
Speaker 1: good at a life that wasn't mine, and the only
Speaker 1: thing that kept me in it was my stunted self awareness.
Speaker 1: And I think the first thing that really opened me
Speaker 1: up was the loss of my grandfather. This was about
Speaker 1: a month before I started business school, and it really
Speaker 1: just broke me open. Like I started crying a lot more.
Speaker 1: I don't even know the last time I cried before that,
Speaker 1: But like I just became a lot more in touch
Speaker 1: with what I was actually feeling in life, and I
Speaker 1: started to introspect a little more. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I was still a top business school. You can't just
Speaker 1: intros back fully there, Like you got to get a job,
Speaker 1: You're going into debt. I was like seventy grand in
Speaker 1: debt at twenty seven years old, so like I needed
Speaker 1: a job to pay that off. But over the next
Speaker 1: five years, there were all these tiny little moments of
Speaker 1: starting to write a little more, getting interested in coaching
Speaker 1: on the side, going on a personal development retreat, going
Speaker 1: on a solo travel trip up the California coast, and
Speaker 1: the spaciousness and wonder of life started to creep in.
Speaker 1: And once that happens slowly, it became very easy for
Speaker 1: me to walk away. Like people asked me, was it
Speaker 1: hard to watch walk away? Not really. I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I had any move left, Like I felt hopeless
Speaker 1: for the future. I was surrounded by people that were
Speaker 1: cynically going through the motions I struggled to find role models,
Speaker 1: and wandering around without a plan seemed way better than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it's really interesting. I'd love to
Speaker 3: ask you a question about life now because right now,
Speaker 3: and this is hypothetical, you may not even be able
Speaker 3: to put yourself in the mindset that this question would
Speaker 3: even make sense. But your son to a ten week
Speaker 3: old baby, and you know a lot of people who
Speaker 3: don't walk away from the default path even when it
Speaker 3: feels like it's not the right place to be. And
Speaker 3: I did this for years is because of what feel
Speaker 3: like responsibilities around children and family and things like that.
Speaker 3: Do you think it would have been harder for you
Speaker 3: today as a parent to walk away and make that
Speaker 3: decision then it was for you in a relatively sort
Speaker 3: of independent place in your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. But I probably would have married the
Speaker 1: wrong person and been in the wrong life, so it
Speaker 1: would have been way more disastrous.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I wouldn't have met and married my wife.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't be with me unless I was actually chasing
Speaker 1: what was true to me. Yeah, it's hard to answer, right,
Speaker 1: And part of what drove me is I did have
Speaker 1: a sense that I wanted kids in the future, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to build the kind of life so I
Speaker 1: could be present and have time flexibility. And I'm so
Speaker 1: rich right now because I have that time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't have a return to work plan. I'm like fitting
Speaker 1: work in. I have two hours of stuff I'm doing
Speaker 1: today and the rest of the day I'm hanging with
Speaker 1: my daughter. It's awesome. I love it. And this is
Speaker 1: like the whole point. This is why I tried to
Speaker 1: get more time instead of more money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's certainly a useful reframe, right. Like I was
Speaker 3: telling you before the call about my son who's twenty four,
Speaker 3: and I raised him largely at sort of the peak
Speaker 3: of trying to succeed in my career, Right, my path
Speaker 3: is different than yours. Instead of sort of blindly following
Speaker 3: the default path, I just blindly drove my life off
Speaker 3: a cliff, you know. And by the time I was
Speaker 3: twenty four, I was homeless and had a drug addiction,
Speaker 3: so things were not going well. So then I was
Speaker 3: sort of frantically trying to climb on some sort of
Speaker 3: path that felt like it was going, you know, somewhere,
Speaker 3: and I think I overcorrected. I went like, oh god,
Speaker 3: I've been way over here time to buy into all
Speaker 3: these ideals around career and responsibility and all that, and
Speaker 3: then it took me years to sort of find my
Speaker 3: way what for me felt like a middle ground of
Speaker 3: actually my own path. And so when my son was little,
Speaker 3: I was right in that thick of you know, trying
Speaker 3: to make up for lost time. You talked in the
Speaker 3: book about your father who always felt like he had
Speaker 3: to work harder because he didn't have a college degree.
Speaker 3: Like that was me. I was in these worlds where
Speaker 3: everybody had degrees and MBAs and all this other stuff
Speaker 3: and I had nothing, and so I was always like,
Speaker 3: I can outwork these people, but I missed time with
Speaker 3: him that I trade to have back today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard, And I write something also in the book,
Speaker 1: the longer you're on the wrong path, the longer it
Speaker 1: takes to find the one that is the right path. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's taken me a really long time to find
Speaker 1: my footing on this path. This will be my sixth
Speaker 1: year in like two weeks, and only in the last
Speaker 1: year or two I feel like I have like my footing,
Speaker 1: but it's constantly going to shift. My first few years,
Speaker 1: I think I overcorrected in terms of like going full
Speaker 1: wandering vagabond, avoiding employment, not trying to make money. I
Speaker 1: was living on like five hundred and two one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a month in Agia really just like I was sacrificing,
Speaker 1: Like I wouldn't even like eat food out. It was
Speaker 1: and I sort of stifled my own imagination for possibilities
Speaker 1: and creativity. But then you come back and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: do I lean more new ambition? Then you try to
Speaker 1: find the middle ground, and you're always searching for the
Speaker 1: right path.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the mistake with a lot of legible paths,
Speaker 1: paths that we can see, oh, I'm going to become
Speaker 1: a data scientist and a manager than a VP, is
Speaker 1: that it tricks you into that is the path that
Speaker 1: is right for you. And the really hard to understand
Speaker 1: reality for many people is that a job container is
Speaker 1: probably not the right path for you. But if you
Speaker 1: are going to opt into that, you need to be
Speaker 1: fully aware of the trade offs you're making and understand
Speaker 1: what are the principles that really matter to you and
Speaker 1: how do you prioritize those principles given the path you're
Speaker 1: on or what you're choosing to enter into.
Speaker 3: Right, I sort of avoid binaries in general, and so
Speaker 3: I think there is a way to be on something
Speaker 3: that resembles a default path that is valuable and meaningful.
Speaker 3: I mean, the first years in my career I was
Speaker 3: in software startup companies and I loved that work. I
Speaker 3: was ambitious and there was a certain, you know, path there,
Speaker 3: but it was also very exciting and I loved it
Speaker 3: and I was challenged. And you know, throughout my whole career,
Speaker 3: even as I moved into consulting for big organizations, I
Speaker 3: always felt like I had a job that I liked,
Speaker 3: you know. In that like, I was like, I'm intellectually
Speaker 3: challenged and I'm around people. As I got older, I
Speaker 3: got more and more into meaning. And I think you
Speaker 3: can make meaning in any role. Right. We read books about,
Speaker 3: you know, janitors at hospitals who their meaning is making
Speaker 3: a beautiful and clean place for the patients, and they
Speaker 3: make meaning out of it. So I think we can
Speaker 3: make it anywhere. But it's at least for me easier
Speaker 3: to find it in certain places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it all comes down to self awareness, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: understanding those two wolves as you say it, and you
Speaker 1: could have said, I am a software salesperson, right, and
Speaker 1: then defined yourself as that. But I imagine that was
Speaker 1: not it. It was probably something around curiosity for people
Speaker 1: and connecting things, making things happen, and without knowing yourself. Like,
Speaker 1: if you define yourself as a software salesperson, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be hosting a podcast right, right, And you probably kept
Speaker 1: going deeper with a curiosity, and then you get to
Speaker 1: this raw just curiosity for the world. No one starts
Speaker 1: a podcast to make money.
Speaker 3: Not if you have an IQ above forty. No, you don't.
Speaker 1: And so you figure out, oh, there's these things worth
Speaker 1: doing in the world, right, And then as you're hosting
Speaker 1: a podcast, you're paying a cost monetary cost, right, because
Speaker 1: you could be doing other things with your time, you
Speaker 1: could be selling software, right. But eventually you realize there's
Speaker 1: certain upsides to life, and in today's world, many people
Speaker 1: are blind to those upsides. So you have to pay
Speaker 1: the tax of other people not understanding what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And as long as you're okay with that, you can
Speaker 1: find a path in which you can thrive.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 5: As women, as humans, really the world can trick us
Speaker 5: into believing we're doing life wrong, which keeps us small
Speaker 5: and separated, but we don't have to play along. Let's
Speaker 5: make a plan together, shall we.
Speaker 6: I'm Jenny Gay and I'm Brandy Lust, and we host
Speaker 6: a podcast called Something to Normalize. As best friends and
Speaker 6: experts in mindfulness and adult learning, we've done the hard
Speaker 6: work of courageously engaging and self exploration, healing, and self expression.
Speaker 5: In our podcast, You'll be a fly on the wall
Speaker 5: for intimate, safe conversations where we share our life experiences,
Speaker 5: collective wisdom, and research from experts to help you breathe
Speaker 5: that big sigh of relief that comes from feeling seen
Speaker 5: and understood.
Speaker 7: When we join forces and honest conversations, we find the
Speaker 7: very thoughts, experiences, and feelings we often keep to ourselves
Speaker 7: are the very ones that are most likely to connect us.
Speaker 7: This leads to more self trust and greater connection. This
Speaker 7: is the power of normalizing.
Speaker 4: Join us.
Speaker 5: There's nothing off limits. It's all just Something to Normalize.
Speaker 7: You can listen to Something to Normalize wherever you get
Speaker 7: your podcasts.
Speaker 3: My path to where I'm at today was certainly was
Speaker 3: a middle way path between staying in what was secure
Speaker 3: and made a lot of money secure as much as
Speaker 3: anything is today, I mean that's an illusion, right, but
Speaker 3: more secure or doing the podcast where I mean, I
Speaker 3: did the podcast for four and a half years while
Speaker 3: I worked in a career, and after a couple of years,
Speaker 3: I started going, Okay, I know where I want to be.
Speaker 3: Now how do I get there?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: How do I get from this job to doing this
Speaker 3: podcast and the work I do with people full time?
Speaker 3: And you know, I kind of made my way there,
Speaker 3: but there was a point where I had to go, Okay,
Speaker 3: like when you get to be my age as successful
Speaker 3: as you were at your age, Right, this idea of
Speaker 3: golden handcuffs is a real thing, you know, Like I
Speaker 3: had to make a decision at some point, like I'm
Speaker 3: walking away from a substantial amount of money in both
Speaker 3: the short term and the long term in order to
Speaker 3: do this now again, who knows, maybe next week I'll
Speaker 3: be Joe Rogan. Right. I think it's unlikely, But like you,
Speaker 3: I made a decision of meaning and purpose and loving
Speaker 3: what I do over money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I left right as my peak earning years were
Speaker 1: about to begin. Yeah, I did not cash in. I
Speaker 1: am not somebody that got too financial independence and walked away.
Speaker 1: I stupidly lit probably millions of dollars on fire. Like
Speaker 1: the economy went crazy too for the consulting world and
Speaker 1: strategy work, Like, starting in twenty seventeen, salaries just started
Speaker 1: going up like twenty thirty percent a year. It was crazy.
Speaker 1: I didn't get any of that. I lowered my salary
Speaker 1: down to like twenty five thirty two forty grand for
Speaker 1: the next three years. But they were the best years
Speaker 1: of my life. And the challenge is I think people
Speaker 1: think that you can escape the base reality, right, especially
Speaker 1: if you're in the US, if you want to live
Speaker 1: in the US, you can't escape the fact that most
Speaker 1: people see money as one of the most important things
Speaker 1: in the world. If you were going to make a
Speaker 1: decision to say money isn't the most important thing in
Speaker 1: our world, you need to figure out how you're going
Speaker 1: to manage that tension and feeling bad about that being
Speaker 1: in insulted by other people. Many people have said, don't
Speaker 1: you think you're wasting your degrees? It's a really interesting
Speaker 1: way of framing it, right, wasting your degrees, aka the
Speaker 1: whole point of life is to get credentials to trade
Speaker 1: in for money. I disagree. I think the point of
Speaker 1: life is not to maximize financial income, and the point
Speaker 1: of life for me is something I can't fully explain
Speaker 1: to you. I tried to explain it in writing a book,
Speaker 1: but it's a felt sense. It's a deeply felt sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a little crazy for believing it at my age,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to follow that feeling. And I
Speaker 1: ended up meeting a wife who sort of values the
Speaker 1: same things. And it's going to be harder for us
Speaker 1: to build a life because we don't have the payoffs
Speaker 1: that like all my former peers and coworkers have. They're
Speaker 1: all in million dollar houses, living in fans see neighborhoods
Speaker 1: with good schools and like putting their kids solidly in
Speaker 1: like private schools. Cannot afford that. We don't own a home.
Speaker 1: We rent. We don't own a car. We do this
Speaker 1: by design because we live like in a walkable area.
Speaker 1: We bike a lot of places, and we're comfortable using
Speaker 1: like oohers and lifts and stuff like that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's totally worth it because we're thriving. I get to
Speaker 1: write most days, I get to talk to people like
Speaker 1: you who are inspire me. My wife spends a lot
Speaker 1: of days painting and creating, and we both get to
Speaker 1: spend bountiful time with our daughter, which is like that's it.
Speaker 1: That is like the point for me.
Speaker 3: Yep. So let's talk a little bit about the fear
Speaker 3: and uncomfortableness that comes with choosing this different path because
Speaker 3: it's real, right, and what can happen? And I've watched
Speaker 3: this sort of manifest in myself and had to sort
Speaker 3: of work on it, right, which is that you step
Speaker 3: off the default path to do this other thing. But
Speaker 3: the fear of holy crap, how am I going to
Speaker 3: make a living? How am I gonna make money? What
Speaker 3: am I gonna do? My son's in college. I got
Speaker 3: to pay for his car. I mean, all this stuff
Speaker 3: can drive me to turn my pathless path into I
Speaker 3: don't know what the word is, a hugely ambitious and
Speaker 3: stressful pathless path right where I box myself into a
Speaker 3: new corner by letting that anxiety drive me to do
Speaker 3: more and more and more and more and more and more.
Speaker 3: And that's something I've had to kind of work on going,
Speaker 3: all right, and I've gotten better at it, like you,
Speaker 3: it takes. It took me a few years to kind
Speaker 3: of get my foot in I think where I was like, okay, relax,
Speaker 3: you're gonna be okay, relax a little.
Speaker 1: Yeah. A lot of people leave their jobs because they
Speaker 1: don't like their managers, but then they instantly hire a
Speaker 1: manager in their head to control their behavior.
Speaker 3: Yes, who's a tyrant.
Speaker 1: And one good thing about feeling like you're gonna run
Speaker 1: out of money and not making money, especially if you're
Speaker 1: raised in the US, You'll just start freaking out and
Speaker 1: try to make money. And a lot of people have
Speaker 1: not felt this. This is probably one of the most
Speaker 1: useful things that happened to me. I quit my job
Speaker 1: in New York. I think I should have thought more
Speaker 1: deeply about this, but I was spending about six thousand
Speaker 1: a month and I had like fifty thousand in savings,
Speaker 1: and like month one month too, I'm like, oh crap,
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna run out of money, and I just
Speaker 1: started getting really aggressive. I'm like calling everyone, emailing everyone
Speaker 1: I know, applying for all these contract jobs, putting my
Speaker 1: thing on all these talent platforms to hire for consulting gigs.
Speaker 1: One of my first gigs was walking around New York
Speaker 1: City for this investment firm. They needed this last minute
Speaker 1: freelancer to do surveys of people wearing all birds. So
Speaker 1: I just walked around New York City and try to
Speaker 1: spot people wearing all birds. First day, I couldn't really
Speaker 1: find that many people. The second day, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: I need to figure out how to do this better.
Speaker 1: So I held up a sign in Union Square Park
Speaker 1: and said, does anyone own all birds? Right? And then
Speaker 1: I think I got forty people to answer my four
Speaker 1: question survey, and I was like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I could find one hundred. They're like, I have forties. Good.
Speaker 1: But it was my first experience of oh, you just
Speaker 1: made yourself feel more uncomfortable than you did and in
Speaker 1: the entire ten years of your safe knowledge work job, right,
Speaker 1: you look like a fool holding a sign you're desperate
Speaker 1: for money and you only made like a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: doing this over a week. And then analyzing the data
Speaker 1: and all this, and yeah, it made me realize there's
Speaker 1: so many ways to make money. It's just that for
Speaker 1: knowledge workers, what they're really afraid of is can I
Speaker 1: make what I used to make? And I didn't really
Speaker 1: set out to replace my income replacing your income, I
Speaker 1: have no advice on how to do that. It took
Speaker 1: me until my fifth year to actually make a comparable
Speaker 1: amount to my last year of working. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'll match it again. It could go down.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's a really good point about matching
Speaker 3: your income is a hard thing to do, you know.
Speaker 3: I think, like you did, it's a matter of looking
Speaker 3: at everything is trade offs in life, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think you said that earlier. I mean, everything has
Speaker 3: its trade offs, and we just have to find the
Speaker 3: ones that we're willing to live with. You talk in
Speaker 3: the book about this idea of many people on the
Speaker 3: default path will live with certain discomfort and then layer
Speaker 3: coping mechanisms on it rather than face uncertain discomfort. Talk
Speaker 3: to me a little bit about that, you know, knowing
Speaker 3: that you are uncomfortable and then finding ways to cope
Speaker 3: with it so that you can stay where you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you probably have more knowledge about this than me.
Speaker 1: I think. With the addiction, if everyone around you is
Speaker 1: slightly uncomfortable and anxious, it becomes normal to feel slightly
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and anxious, right. And then if everyone's coping in
Speaker 1: similar ways, namely drinking a lot on weekends like me
Speaker 1: and all my friends. One hundred percent of my friends
Speaker 1: did then that's just life. Right. But now looking back,
Speaker 1: I don't drink anymore. And it's really weird to look
Speaker 1: back because I didn't have trouble drinking. I don't think
Speaker 1: I was addicted, but it sort of fell out of
Speaker 1: my life in a weird way in which I look
Speaker 1: back and say, oh, I did have a drinking problem.
Speaker 1: And when you say that, it triggers a lot of people,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people get defensive. Drinking in the
Speaker 1: US especially is one of these things that's just part
Speaker 1: of life for people, and to bring this up makes
Speaker 1: people feel really uncomfortable. But I think for a lot
Speaker 1: of young people, especially living in cities, binge drinking on
Speaker 1: the weekends is the bomb for the discomfort of the
Speaker 1: work week, right, And as long as everyone's doing it
Speaker 1: and it seems fun, you don't notice that it's a problem.
Speaker 1: But I wasted so many days being hungover and recovering
Speaker 1: from drinking and probably stifling my curiosity and actual passion
Speaker 1: for life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think this is a really interesting point, which is
Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of the work that I do,
Speaker 3: I would say, is about people increasing their healthy coping strategies, right,
Speaker 3: So I think we could probably all go, you know what,
Speaker 3: if you've got a life that's bad and you escape
Speaker 3: it by drinking or doing drugs or whatever your thing is,
Speaker 3: your addiction, that's very problematic. We would all go, well,
Speaker 3: you know what, there are much better ways to cope
Speaker 3: with that, right, And I think part of what we
Speaker 3: do here is help teach people those mechanisms. Part of
Speaker 3: what I occasionally am uncomfortable with and that I wonder
Speaker 3: about is the point that you're making that even healthy
Speaker 3: coping mechanism oftentimes is keeping you in a place that
Speaker 3: may not be the right place for you. And that's
Speaker 3: a fundamental question that I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are later in their career, who've been on the
Speaker 3: default path for a while, who are going, I'm not
Speaker 3: really comfortable here, or I'm not happy or I'm not fulfilled,
Speaker 3: and their question that they spend a lot of time
Speaker 3: on is do I just accept that this part of
Speaker 3: my life is this way and build everything else around
Speaker 3: it in a really meaningful and purposeful way, or do
Speaker 3: I sort of blow the whole thing up. I don't
Speaker 3: think there's easy answers, and I think depending on the
Speaker 3: person and the situation and all that those are both
Speaker 3: reasonable approaches, but it does get to there are other
Speaker 3: ways of coping with situations that maybe we shouldn't be
Speaker 3: coping with, even if we're doing it in a healthy way.
Speaker 1: So to connect this to the previous point, I think
Speaker 1: the equation and I the book is certain discomfort from
Speaker 1: plus coping mechanism is better for many people than uncertain
Speaker 1: discomfort of blowing up your life and taking that new path.
Speaker 3: YEA.
Speaker 1: The thing that tips the scales over and over and
Speaker 1: you can identify this and the way people talk about
Speaker 1: the future is a sense of wonder and possibility. They say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I might blow up my life, but there might be
Speaker 1: something interesting worth finding. And Johnny Miller has been a
Speaker 1: huge influence on me. I've lived with him in three
Speaker 1: different countries and he's helped me think about this in
Speaker 1: terms of nervous system regulation and connecting with your body.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing to ask is how do
Speaker 1: I experience different states of being? Right, you're coping because
Speaker 1: you're in an uncomfortable state of being. But if you
Speaker 1: talk to enough people, you read history, you read poetry,
Speaker 1: you read literature, you start to discover there are states
Speaker 1: of being where people feel at and given that knowledge.
Speaker 1: We should all sort of be freaking out figuring out
Speaker 1: how to try to get there, and there are many
Speaker 1: ways to get there. I think sabbatical, taking one month
Speaker 1: disconnected from work can be very powerful for people. Breath
Speaker 1: work can be very powerful for people. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are experimenting with psychedelics. I haven't used those, Yoga,
Speaker 1: tai chi, chiekong, all these practices. There are different practices
Speaker 1: which let you participate in the world in a different way.
Speaker 1: And John Varvaki is really good around this. He talks
Speaker 1: about it in terms of participatory knowing right, how do
Speaker 1: we experience the world in a different state of being
Speaker 1: such that we can sort of come to a different
Speaker 1: state of knowing right? And in the West and in
Speaker 1: knowledge work jobs, hardcore career jobs, we're not at the
Speaker 1: participatory level. We're at the propositional level of like concepts,
Speaker 1: abstract ideas and all these things. So we're existing up here,
Speaker 1: but we're not down here. We're not in the heart,
Speaker 1: we're not in the body, we're not in a state
Speaker 1: of flow. We're not experiencing the magic of deep leisure
Speaker 1: of this connected contemplative state. Because if you've never experienced
Speaker 1: that you're going to just keep going on what you're doing.
Speaker 1: But the thing I love about podcasts is you have
Speaker 1: people in your ears telling you different things are possible.
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this, like different states are
Speaker 1: possible ghos, see if you can find them, and you
Speaker 1: can find them in a weekend, you can find them
Speaker 1: after work. All you need is enough of a window
Speaker 1: to say, ooh, I want to follow that and see
Speaker 1: where it leads.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, totally. And the question underlying this is sort
Speaker 3: of this fundamental one that I think we all wrestle
Speaker 3: with in lots of different aspects of life, which goes
Speaker 3: back to the classic serenity prayer, right, like what situations
Speaker 3: do I need to excit and make the best of
Speaker 3: and that the way that I'm responding is an internal problem.
Speaker 3: The problem is in here, right, and what situations is
Speaker 3: legitimately the problem out there? And there are many situations
Speaker 3: where in certain cases that's very clear. Right. If you're
Speaker 3: in an abusive marriage, for example, it may not feel
Speaker 3: clear to you in the moment, but deeper knowing will
Speaker 3: lead to a clarity that says I'm clearly in the
Speaker 3: wrong spot. The answer is not to learn to tolerate
Speaker 3: my abuse better. The answer is to get out of here, right,
Speaker 3: So there are examples where you can go, oh, that's
Speaker 3: a little bit more obvious, but for most of us
Speaker 3: in life, this figuring that out is really sort of
Speaker 3: the challenge of you know, what does this situation call
Speaker 3: on for me? Do I need a whole new career
Speaker 3: and everything to be different, or are there ways of
Speaker 3: relating to the life that I have very differently that
Speaker 3: will cause me to be in a much greater state
Speaker 3: of peace and calm. And that's sort of the fundamental
Speaker 3: question that's underlying some of this.
Speaker 1: That's why I liked being on my current path. My
Speaker 1: current path is not a path, and you probably experienced
Speaker 1: this as well. Every week is different, every month is different,
Speaker 1: every year has been different. So I've had all these
Speaker 1: mini lives in these last six years. Whereas I look
Speaker 1: at the previous ten years, it was very predictable. I
Speaker 1: did the same kind of work on the same times
Speaker 1: of most days of the week for ten years, around
Speaker 1: the same kind of people, thinking in the same way,
Speaker 1: showing up in the same way, coping in the same way.
Speaker 1: Now my life is just weirder, and there's more possibility
Speaker 1: for people to tap into this, Like I've challenged a
Speaker 1: lot of people do a freelance year. Do one year
Speaker 1: where you just go try to make money on your own.
Speaker 1: It's going to be scary, it's going to be hard,
Speaker 1: it's going to be uncomfortable. But you might discover that
Speaker 1: you have more courage than you thought. You might discover
Speaker 1: there's more people out there willing to help you than
Speaker 1: you thought. And you might discover you're curious about things
Speaker 1: you forgot about. Right And that's been the magic of
Speaker 1: this path is we touched on this before, but I
Speaker 1: still have fear, Like I'm really leaning into being a
Speaker 1: parent right now and I'm dropping the ball on a lot,
Speaker 1: and I'm just wondering, like, if I keep leaning into this,
Speaker 1: am I going to not make money? Am I going
Speaker 1: to not plant the seeds of the next thing that
Speaker 1: might take off. I've had four or five different things
Speaker 1: that have gone like up and down and dissipated, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I've been on this path long
Speaker 1: enough to say, Okay, I'm going to have a mini
Speaker 1: existential crisis every few weeks. But it's just there. It's
Speaker 1: always going to be there. The fear doesn't leave, right,
Speaker 1: And maybe this is the point of the parable is
Speaker 1: like you're always feeding the bad wolf, right, but you
Speaker 1: learn to just accept it. It's part of life. Fear
Speaker 1: is part of life totally, but is existing with that
Speaker 1: fear in a more relational way, more comfortable way, more like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, you're afraid for the future. But the
Speaker 1: other side of that fear is love. Right, You're afraid
Speaker 1: for that future because you love the people in your life.
Speaker 1: You desire to show up with your full self. And
Speaker 1: it's all related, I.
Speaker 3: Think, depending on our makeup, we all live with different
Speaker 3: degrees of fear. You can be in the default path
Speaker 3: and be terrified, right, I mean, so fear can come
Speaker 3: from any but there is when you're on sort of
Speaker 3: this pathless path, there is more opportunity because uncertainty is
Speaker 3: not a state that we naturally do well in. And
Speaker 3: I agree with you. What I think I've gotten better
Speaker 3: at doing is just going Okay, there's the twinge of
Speaker 3: fear going on over there. I can't make it go away,
Speaker 3: but I'm also not going to react to it. I'm
Speaker 3: going to respond to it and hopefully a wise way,
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to allow it to sort of
Speaker 3: jerk my chain, and it's just funny over. I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe it's been four or five years now that you know,
Speaker 3: since I left my software world. I mean the first year.
Speaker 3: I mean I remember it as clear as day. I
Speaker 3: don't know, it was maybe nine months into it, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the coaching work that I've been
Speaker 3: relying on just hit a dry patch, and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: that's it. I'm doomed. You know, everybody who wants to
Speaker 3: work with me has already done it. You know, they've
Speaker 3: heard the podcast. They don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 3: And you know, now when any part of the business
Speaker 3: sort of quote unquote dries up a little bit, I'm like,
Speaker 3: that happens, let's move this way. I don't freak out.
Speaker 3: In the same way. I've just gotten better at handling
Speaker 3: the uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uncertainty is not a problem to be solved, and
Speaker 1: I think the great delusion of the modern world is
Speaker 1: that we can solve uncertainty. Paycheck life sort of promises
Speaker 1: you that a steady paycheck solves uncertainty, but all it
Speaker 1: does is enter you into a vast conspiracy with all
Speaker 1: the other people with a paycheck to not mention it right,
Speaker 1: and then working on your own it just punches you
Speaker 1: in the face and eventually you're like, oh, we're dancing
Speaker 1: with uncertainty, right, This whole path is just about dancing
Speaker 1: with uncertainty, and it's just an ongoing dance. You can't
Speaker 1: leave the dance, and it just keeps going. But eventually
Speaker 1: you start to see, oh, there's some fun in it.
Speaker 3: Totally. I mean, the last ten years of my sort
Speaker 3: of software career, I was doing consulting work for very
Speaker 3: long large organizations on really big, complex software development projects,
Speaker 3: and the whole time, my mother and my father, to
Speaker 3: some degree but not to the same extent, just kept saying, well,
Speaker 3: why don't you get a job there, right, Like it's
Speaker 3: so uncertain being a consultant, Like, just get a job.
Speaker 3: And I was like, Mom, I don't think you quite understand,
Speaker 3: Like getting a W two from them does not mean
Speaker 3: they're going to keep paying.
Speaker 1: Me forever their generation it does.
Speaker 3: And you know, for me, I just was like, you
Speaker 3: know what, the fact that this is like a six
Speaker 3: month consulting gig at a time that just sort of
Speaker 3: keeps going on some level for me was like Okay,
Speaker 3: I have to sort of keep my skills sharp, right,
Speaker 3: I have to stay connected in this world. And to
Speaker 3: me that was the better hedge against uncertainty was my
Speaker 3: own ability, my own confidence in myself to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: if this thing doesn't work, there are other things that will,
Speaker 3: you know, And so I just think that that certainty
Speaker 3: question is different for everybody. I interviewed a guy recently.
Speaker 3: Have you seen a recent book by a guy named
Speaker 3: Bruce Feiler called The Search?
Speaker 1: I haven't seen Search, but I read Life is in
Speaker 1: the Transitions right here.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, he's got a new book that you would
Speaker 3: be fascinated by because it's sort of life is in
Speaker 3: the Transitions for work specific.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it's my wheelhouse.
Speaker 3: It's totally your wheelhouse. He basically goes through and he
Speaker 3: comes to a lot of the conclusions that you do.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of them is this fundamental idea though
Speaker 3: you think there's a path, but you're not on a path,
Speaker 3: Like life isn't certain enough. The world isn't certain enough
Speaker 3: that your path is assured. You know, there are some
Speaker 3: that are better trod than others, right that we can
Speaker 3: sort of see. But if you really understand the nature
Speaker 3: of the world. You realize that your path is unfolding
Speaker 3: as you go and there's gonna be things in that
Speaker 3: path that you just don't expect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this so much and it ties to
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Right. One of the features of being
Speaker 1: a consultant it's hard for people to understand is that
Speaker 1: you can't delude yourself about what you're doing because you
Speaker 1: need to opt in and take responsibility for your path right.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If you're in a job, it's such a subtle shift,
Speaker 1: but people just start talking themselves into like, well, this
Speaker 1: is what I do. Right. And there's a motivation question.
Speaker 1: If you're working as a contractor, they can't tell you
Speaker 1: to do anything technically, of course they can. But when
Speaker 1: you're working for a job, there's just stuff you have
Speaker 1: to do, so you can do stuff you're like, actually
Speaker 1: two out of ten motivated by. If you're working for yourself, suddenly,
Speaker 1: if you try to get me to do stuff I'm
Speaker 1: actually two out of ten excited by, it will never
Speaker 1: get done. Yeah, So it's sharp your focus to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to search for stuff that's at least eight
Speaker 1: out of ten excited by. And that's why it was
Speaker 1: very easy for me to write a book because that
Speaker 1: was like a ten out of ten. I was like pumped,
Speaker 1: powering through that. And that's beautiful, right, And it ties
Speaker 1: back to what Bruce Faylor writes about is life is
Speaker 1: just disruptions, one after another. Life Is in the Transitions
Speaker 1: is such a good book because it brings alive so
Speaker 1: many stories. It's like this person thought they had a
Speaker 1: path and like boom, disruption, disruption, disruption, disruption. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: basically constant in everyone's life. And I looked at my
Speaker 1: life and it's like, oh, I wasn't on a steady path.
Speaker 1: I had a health crisis, I lost my grandfather, I
Speaker 1: moved cities, I moved companies five times. Just constant disruptions.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should check out his new book. You'll absolutely
Speaker 3: love it. If you like Life Is in the Transitions.
Speaker 3: And I know, given your love of exploring this different
Speaker 3: way of thinking about work, read these two books in
Speaker 3: somewhat close proximity.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: What Bruce does is interview hundreds and hundreds of people
Speaker 3: and sort of compile that data and put it together,
Speaker 3: and after doing so, he arrives at the same place
Speaker 3: that eighty percent of your book is at. Also like,
Speaker 3: it's just a different way into what are very similar
Speaker 3: conclusions about the way things are in today's reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just I think with my book, I just
Speaker 1: don't like those books where they interview a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I just want to hear like people's personal stories. So
Speaker 1: I just trusted my intuition, and mine's fueled by I
Speaker 1: had probably four hundred conversations with random strangers on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I've injected a lot of the lessons from them, and
Speaker 1: it was very an emergent book from those conversations, which
Speaker 1: spiked during COVID. Suddenly everyone was like, oh, wait, what
Speaker 1: are we doing?
Speaker 3: Yep? When did your book come out?
Speaker 1: Two thousand and twenty two January?
Speaker 3: Okay, I thought it was a little bit early that.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about a couple other ideas here. Talk
Speaker 3: to me about the idea of the ought to self
Speaker 3: versus the ideal self.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This was Davidovich, the psychologist at Cornell. I think
Speaker 1: it's this idea, like we think leaving the default path,
Speaker 1: for example, leaving your job is just going to destroy
Speaker 1: your life. That is how our brain works. We imagine
Speaker 1: all terrible things because we're scared. That's our fear talking right,
Speaker 1: But they argue that our ought to self is so
Speaker 1: powerful that we're still going to take care of our
Speaker 1: responsibilities and obligations, Like I'm scared of leaving my job
Speaker 1: because what about taking care of my family? Well, in
Speaker 1: that statement, I'm scared of taking care of my family.
Speaker 1: You're actually going to take care of your family, like
Speaker 1: you will figure it out because it matters to you, right,
Speaker 1: And we don't pay attention or trust this ought to self.
Speaker 1: I'm not and we sort of neglect our ideal self.
Speaker 1: And this is for many people the whole point of life.
Speaker 1: Becoming the person you want to be, right, That drives
Speaker 1: a large percentage of people. And if you neglect that,
Speaker 1: pursuit the aspiration to become your ideal self really just growth.
Speaker 1: There doesn't even have to be anything to aim at,
Speaker 1: just growing evolving as a person. If we neglect that,
Speaker 1: we're going to have regrets. So the takeaway is trust
Speaker 1: your aught to self. And this is why I don't
Speaker 1: really stress with having kids. It actually I think will
Speaker 1: make it easier because there's no way in hell I'm
Speaker 1: going to drop the ball and taking care of my
Speaker 1: daughter's needs. Maybe I'll skimp on some of my needs,
Speaker 1: like I'll drop the ball on my needs, not buy
Speaker 1: new clothes or whatever to keep my path going and
Speaker 1: protect my creative work. But I won't do that with
Speaker 1: my daughter and just trusting that I'll pay attention to that.
Speaker 3: Yep, that ought to and ideal self is a really
Speaker 3: interesting idea because on one hand, you know, we hear
Speaker 3: this idea ought to self and we think that's a
Speaker 3: bad thing, right, Like that whole phrase, like you know,
Speaker 3: if you're saying the word should, you know, don't should
Speaker 3: on yourself, as if the word should is always a
Speaker 3: bad thing. I mean sometimes it is. Sometimes it's taking
Speaker 3: on values and ideas from other people that aren't your own.
Speaker 3: But sometimes it's just a simple shorthand for what matters
Speaker 3: to me right and ought to is the same thing.
Speaker 3: Like it could be bad. It could be me neglecting
Speaker 3: and only taking on the values of others, but it
Speaker 3: could be my inner self saying here is what you
Speaker 3: ought to do to be the person you want to be,
Speaker 3: So it's not all bad. And also that ideal self,
Speaker 3: it's having both of those things being in some sort
Speaker 3: of balance.
Speaker 1: Also, it's all about self awareness, right. If you think
Speaker 1: something matters to you and you're living in concordance with that.
Speaker 1: If somebody gave you advice or more in about how
Speaker 1: to do that better, you would never get offended. You
Speaker 1: would just figure out how to integrate it into your life. Right,
Speaker 1: Instead of we have these ideas sometimes of what we
Speaker 1: should be doing. I should be writing more. I never
Speaker 1: say such things. It's like, I'm either writing more or
Speaker 1: I'm not. Like there's probably a reason for one of
Speaker 1: those or the other. Typically we're doing as much as
Speaker 1: we can.
Speaker 3: Let me dig into that a little bit further though, right, because,
Speaker 3: at least in my case, I find situations where in
Speaker 3: order to be the person I want to be, I'm
Speaker 3: having to push myself sometimes to do things that I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: I don't really feel like doing that. So the word
Speaker 3: should comes into it again. It may not be the
Speaker 3: right word, But I'm wondering how you think about that
Speaker 3: if you're writing or not writing, but part of you
Speaker 3: is like, I really I want to finish this book.
Speaker 3: I mean, how do you think about that question? You know,
Speaker 3: to be the person you really want to be, are
Speaker 3: there situations where you're having to sort of push yourself
Speaker 3: in directions that you don't feel like at the.
Speaker 1: Moment, yeah, I think this is something I need to
Speaker 1: think about more. I don't know if I have the
Speaker 1: best answer to it. Now people come to me for
Speaker 1: advice on how to create stuff online, and I think
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about is a narrow case of somebody
Speaker 1: has been saying, oh, I should write more for like
Speaker 1: a year. After a year, if you're not writing, like
Speaker 1: your sense of what you should be doing is not
Speaker 1: the problem. It's a problem of something else, your environment
Speaker 1: or how you're designing your life right. And that really
Speaker 1: just gets to thinking differently about, Okay, what are the
Speaker 1: pieces in the environment I need to change to actually
Speaker 1: get what I want right? And Tim Ferriss's fear exercise
Speaker 1: has been great for me, which is what are the
Speaker 1: risks in taking this action? How could you mitigate those risks?
Speaker 1: And then flipping it and saying what are the risks
Speaker 1: of inaction? So what are the risks that you're pricing
Speaker 1: into your day to day existence? And then I don't know,
Speaker 1: this is like a really interesting question because I think
Speaker 1: this is something I wrote about in my book, which
Speaker 1: is I can't really pinpoint like a moment. You know
Speaker 1: how everyone asks when's the moment you knew. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there was a moment, rather than like I
Speaker 1: was just on an emergent path, right, yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: really a felt sense. Right. So then the question is
Speaker 1: how do you just know when you're not on the
Speaker 1: right path? And that I think might be everything, which
Speaker 1: is just figure out when you're on the wrong path
Speaker 1: and just keep shaking things up. The answer might literally
Speaker 1: just be do random stuff on your drive home, take
Speaker 1: a different route, go take a walk without a destination,
Speaker 1: Go play an instrument if you've never played an instrument,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Just do random stuff that might shake
Speaker 1: things up for you. And this is the hard thing
Speaker 1: because a lot of people want playbooks, they want how
Speaker 1: to but the truth is there are no how tos
Speaker 1: to find your own true path.
Speaker 3: Amen to that. That is a very very true statement.
Speaker 3: I think that we can listen to podcasts, we can
Speaker 3: read great books, we can get great ideas, and those
Speaker 3: are all very useful things. And learning from others and
Speaker 3: having teachers and all that and mentors has been incredibly
Speaker 3: important for me. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: I had to find my path because I am not
Speaker 3: someone else.
Speaker 2: I am me and my own.
Speaker 3: Set of causes and conditions that make up who I am.
Speaker 3: My path is going to be a little bit different,
Speaker 3: and that's why this sort of ten easy steps for X,
Speaker 3: I'm always like, well, okay, that's probably not Like I
Speaker 3: don't think anything is easy, and we all might need
Speaker 3: prompting in different directions depending on who you are. That's
Speaker 3: the other piece of like one size fits all advice
Speaker 3: is it's like, well, maybe for some people that's the
Speaker 3: right thing, but for other people the exact opposite might
Speaker 3: be the right thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so hard in today's world. I think I
Speaker 1: have a certain psychology which was not able to thrive
Speaker 1: on the default path, and that's meant I had to
Speaker 1: leave that and it's made life harder. Like the truth is,
Speaker 1: my current path is harder. It takes more reflection, it
Speaker 1: takes more introspection. It's frustrating sometimes, but it's also I
Speaker 1: know in terms of just the day to day wonder,
Speaker 1: the joy I have for life, the sense of creativity,
Speaker 1: the contentedness. It's a lot better for me, and it's
Speaker 1: going to continue to be hard. Kids don't make it easier,
Speaker 1: they make it harder, But also the payoffs are much bigger. Too,
Speaker 1: to finding the right path and which not only can
Speaker 1: I thrive? Can my wife thrive? And my child thrive?
Speaker 1: But that's the lifelong question, and I love trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out. And I've just found over and over
Speaker 1: again that thinking about this and trying to find the
Speaker 1: right path is worth it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've come back to the phrase. You've used it
Speaker 3: multiple times in this conversation, which is self awareness, right,
Speaker 3: And I think the important thing, at least for me,
Speaker 3: is in the willingness to continue to ask the questions now.
Speaker 3: Like you, I feel like I have a psychology makeup
Speaker 3: and a life conditioning makeup that makes it almost impossible
Speaker 3: for me not to. You know, if I could just
Speaker 3: shut it off and be like I forget it, I'm
Speaker 3: just going to coast here for a while, I think
Speaker 3: I would do more of it. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 3: I just am not wired up that way. But I
Speaker 3: do think that a meaningful life comes from asking a
Speaker 3: lot what is a meaningful life?
Speaker 4: To me?
Speaker 3: And am I doing it? Like not every ten years
Speaker 3: on some you know retreat, but regularly again and again
Speaker 3: and again. You know what matters? Am I living that way?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 3: To me is how a meaningful life is created. And
Speaker 3: I think that's a big part of what your book
Speaker 3: says to me at the end of it is, you know,
Speaker 3: ask these questions and be willing to look at the
Speaker 3: hard answers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's all about noticing for me and paying deep
Speaker 1: attention to how I'm living my life week to week,
Speaker 1: month to month, year to year. Yeah, this conversation right now,
Speaker 1: me talking with you is somebody that takes these questions seriously.
Speaker 1: It tells me, Oh, I'm in the right place.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ten years ago, I was surrounded by people who mocked
Speaker 1: me for asking deeper questions. Oh, that's ridiculous. You have
Speaker 1: to work. That's a stupid question. Deep cynicism, and I
Speaker 1: was surrounded by that, And it's scary looking back, because
Speaker 1: I almost convinced myself that cynicism was the right orientation
Speaker 1: toward life. Ah, what are you going to do? You
Speaker 1: got to just struggle through life and suffer and do
Speaker 1: these stupid things because money is important and employment is important.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I just kept asking questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad you did too. And I think that
Speaker 3: is a perfect place for us to wrap up. Paul,
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Of
Speaker 3: links in the show notes to your website where people
Speaker 3: can get your book and all the ways to find you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm always happy to give the book to people.
Speaker 1: It's such a joy to connect with people who are
Speaker 1: asking these questions like you. So I appreciate what you're
Speaker 1: doing and this was a beautiful conversation. So thank you.
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