The Pathless Path: Changing My Views on Success & Life
Intro
Welcome back to another episode of #AJsBookClub where we summarize some of our recent reads & dive in to the take aways to help enhance an aspect of our lives. Specifically, an aspect of our own definitions of success.
If you haven’t already, consider joining the discussion on facebook. We’re a growing community of people who like to share & discuss books that are what I consider to be “Success Focused”. In the mean time, feel to check out other reviews & summaries on the blog page (quick link here to make life easier!)
If you have been following me or this blog for any amount of time (or at a minimum if you read the summary on my main page) you know that I am someone who followed the "traditional" path, but have been left feeling unfulfilled. Am I not successful? Does that make me a failure?
I've been struggling for some time now to really define what this means and how to make a change.
Well, "The Pathless Path" by Paul Millerd proves that apparently I'm not alone.
The Pathless Path
This is really the end of the book, but we'll start here because if youre like me, you probably are wondering what the hell this is.
Millerd describes this as: "A journey of finding yourself, grappling with your insecurities, and daring to seek out a life that is uniquely yours"
It's taking the road less traveled. A life journey toward finding fulfillment while taking an uncertain road that is not the "Default Path".
The Default Path
What I call the "traditional path", Millerd refers to as the "Default Path".
It's the thing that schools, teachers, and hell, even parents shove down our throat our whole lives
Go to school
Get good grades
Get a good job
Work hard
Life will be great!
This "life script" seems all well and good, but the problem with this default path is that the path really ends in your mid 30s. We mindlessly get put on this path, but then are stuck wondering, "now what?"
This way of life can seem promising too, it has many traps.
Millerd highlights 2 in his book
Certainty trap
The default path offers a bit of a safety net. There are so many options of things we COULD go out in to the world and do, but that would be hard. The default path offers some certainty. Knowing to some degree what will come next can reduce some worry, but it may not lead to a good life
Prestige trap
Prestige can be thought of as the attention you get when you do things others find impressive. Think about how impressive it sounds when someone says "I'm a doctor", "I work at a fortune 100 company", "I am a senior vice president of global something or other".
I consider this to be the "proud parent" trap. These are the types of things that our parents & grandparents used to call their family memebers to brag about. "You know so and so is a director now?". We are obsessed with the attention this brings, but it misses a key item:
"Is that person happy?"
Our Beliefs Around Work
MIllerd goes in to a very intersting background on the history behind our current culture of work. Why do we feel the NEED to work the way we do.
Religion
More specifically it starts as God's punishment to Adam for eating the fruit from the Tree of Life.
"by the sweat of your brow will you eat your food until you return to the ground"
Later in the New Testament, St. Paul warns:
"He who shall not work, shall not eat.". He goes on to talk about those who don't want to work.. "do not associate with them, in order that they may feel ashamed."
Millerd gets right to the point: Work is duty.
This thought continues through every phase of religion over time. Work is a sign of our goodness and how we will be viewed in the eyes of God. If you were not working, you were a lazy hethen! What a piece of shit.
These ideas continued on to our parents’ generation as well. The Boomer era was marked by success and prosperity. Peter Thiel points out in his book Zero to One "Since tracker careers worked for them [the baby boomers], they can't imagine that they won't work for their kids too."
So, the cycle continues. But not it's not just that the cycle continues, it is pushed along because they see any other path as lazy or not prestigious (again the "proud parent" trap).
We can't completely blame this generation though. For them, this all made sense. Changes have been going on, though, that make this path actually less desireable for the younger generations. Multiple significant recessions, price of school sky rocketing, housing prices rising faster than salaries.
Opportunities just aren’t the same anymore
Another Way?
Millerd reflects on his own journey and how he started to question his beliefs about work. Over time our focus is strays away from what could help us grow as a person and morphs in to "what can I learn to help the company grow". For many, this is something that creates a rift between our own desires and what we need to continue to do for a job.
In his book, Paul has a quote from a former amazon employee that really highlights this shift over time:
" Everythign was going well and getting better. But despite all this, my motivation to go to work eac mornin was decreasing - almost i an inverse trend to my career and income growth."
This divergence in desire from the default path can lead to burnout. Burnout gets thought of as simply overworking, but it's original definition is a lot more than that.
The term burnout was coined in the 1970s by Herbert Freudenberger. Millerd discusses how the definition has evolved over the years. I think the best definition in "The Pathless Path" is "the disconnect between an individual and the culture of the company in which they worked"
So what do we do? What IS the other way?
Unfortunately, there's not a clear 5 step process to go find it, it's more of a reflection on yourself. Or what Blogger Marc Winn calls your "Ikigai", which is the intersection of 4 things:
That which you love
That which the world needs
That which you are good at
That which you can get paid for
Ikigai in Japanese translates to "a reason for being"
How Do I Take The Leap!?
Taking the leap is somthing that sounds sexy, but is rarely an actual leap. It's usually many small steps over time.
It's not a short journey. You have to be patient and learn to play the long game
Avoiding or mitigating risk is another big part of what Paul discusses. He references Tim Ferris's steps for overcoming fear. This is very much like Worst Case Analysis that others have written about as well.
Something I found to be a very interesting concept here is Millerd's "Ought To Self". This is the person inside all of us that pushes us to fix problems or do what we "ought" to do.
While it is the voice that can keep us on the default paht, it's also the voice that helps us know when we need to get our shit together as we explore a "Pathless Path"
"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us" - Joseph Campbell
When you lose your motivation or wonder if you're doing the right thing, sometimes you just need to tell yourself:
"If I don’t do it. I might regret it"...forever
Redefine Success
Another big topic in this book that really resonated with me. I've tried to define success as "Being Happy", but after reading this book, I've shifted to the idea of "Living a fulfilled life". There is a nuanced difference here.
Part of it is understanding what our "enough" is. We have to define what it is and what it means to us. What is the goal we want to work toward to get here.
Milled makes a really good point here that if we do not define enough, we go to our default which is "MORE". We have this idea engrained in us from youth that success means more money, more things, but then we are never truly happy. and never truly fulfilled.
Redfining success can also mean that we may need to reinvent ourselves. Getting stuck on the default path can lead us down a road where we need to fgure out who we need to become to go down the pathless path.
There's a cool reference to what researchers call the "end of history illusion". The world is constantly changing, but at some point we think that will stop, so we stop with it.
Personally, I consider this giving up. Put something similar on twitter recently because I really believe the second we stop evolving, the second we stop trying, we die.
Conclusion
I've read a lot over the past few years, but this book has to be one that resonated with me and some of my struggles more than anything else.
Millerd does an incredible job weaving together his own life experiences with history, research, and insight from some other amazing authors.
Reading this book has already helped me better define what success means in my life. Not just happiness, but fulfllment. A shift that makes me want to not only focus on my needs, but also to spend more time giving back and trying to help others
Over the past few years I have noticed a lot of people come to me for advice or insight. Some have gone as far to ask for mentorship. Maybe others see something in me that I don't haha. BUT at the end of every discussion & session, I feel happy. Full of joy. Fulfilled through helping others. "The Pathless Path" has helped me to realize that I want to focus more on this. Maybe this is a step to figuring out my own "Ikigai"
Be sure to give Paul Millerd a follow on social media: