“The longer you spend on a path that isn’t yours, the longer it takes to find a path that is.” – Paul Millerd
Yesterday, we spoke about the first step in developing your Life Strategy from age 18 – 35:
Figuring out what the hell you want.
In other words:
What actually matters to you?
The most honest answer, in most cases, is:
“I have no idea.”
Which brings us to our second principle:
- Cast a wide net.
“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.” – Steven Pressfield
What you have right now is energy and freedom, what you need is wisdom and self-understanding, which can only be earned through life experience.
Here’s how to get it:
- Travel, ideally a lot…
…Not to check destinations off your bucket list, but to learn about the world and about yourself, by your reflection in it.
(and, to figure out where you actually want to live, instead of settling for where you were born)
- Have a variety of relationships with a variety of partners to learn what you’re looking for, and not looking for…
…And, to develop the critical relationship skills necessary for making a long-term partnership work.
- Expand your social life and maximize opportunities to meet new people, while deepening your connection with your current social circle.
- Satisfy your lower desires (responsibly) — party, chase girls, spend money on dumb sh*t if you’re so inclined, even seek status and validation if you absolutely must.
If it’s in your system, burn through it so you can comfortably move on to higher purposes later on, without regrets.
(also; wear condoms, pull out, don’t get addicted to anything, and stay out of jail — being not-stupid is more important than being smart)
- Collect data on what you like, what you don’t like, and especially, and what you love.
- As you learn more about yourself, slowly narrow your focus until your life is full of things you love and (mostly) free of things you don’t.
Meanwhile…
- Develop your skill set.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
Sounds obvious, I know — but what’s not so obvious is what you’ll realize ten years from now:
Learning new skills is vastly easier when you’re young.
Your mind is far more flexible, more adaptable, and more willing to suck for extended periods of time until you get good — which is critical to the learning process, because everyone sucks at everything, at first.
The trick, of course, is knowing which skills to focus on.
(think of the poor bastards who spent four years and tens of thousands of dollars learning HTML, only to be wiped out by modern no-code software and instant-code AI…)
Here are some reliable guidelines…
- Master your communication skills, both through study and a sh*tton of real-world interactions.
(we’ll be doing a deep dive on communication at the retreat this year — recording coming to The Path soon…)
- Sharpen your thinking skills. Make a study of biases and self-deceptions, and observe them at work within your own mind. Build a network of reliable mental models to run your thinking through; turn your mind into a precision tool.
(this will be another retreat deep dive — Path members get ready…)
- Study human behaviour, persuasion, and marketing — this is a skill set that can produce income in any business environment.
- Learn to write and/or speak, and find your unique voice.
- Start building — the business, the product, the idea in your head. You’ll learn much more, much faster, through doing than through study.
- Make it your mission to tackle challenges you don’t know how to overcome. Then, overcome them.
- Optimize for learning and growth over short-term gain; this will lead to much larger gains over the long-term.
- Keep a keen eye out for skills you feel naturally gifted at, and work you feel naturally inspired towards. Nature leaves clues.
Finito.
Three more tomorrow…
- T
P.S. Here’s Part 1, if you missed it.