Keep being on your own course

The problem with pursuing a “a pre-existing path” is that life becomes too much on default. If you prioritize a pre-existing path, over your strengths, you’ll be average at what you do. Why provide good customer service, if you’re incentivized to go home afterwards? Chasing money or prestige isn’t going to work. You’ll also only get access to average-quality jobs that pay average, rather than the high quality jobs, that only the top 1% will get & be rewarded lucratively for their care for craft & brand.

Because you know yourself better than anybody else does. As they say, you do you. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you they know you better than you know yourself and they know what’s best for you. They do not. How can you compete against their game, if you don’t even care about their game? Not all advice, even well intentioned, fit easily into a particular person’s life. It’s the adjustment and incremental personal growth (a mindset committed to gradual change) that produces results you can measure and reflect on - motivating you along the way.

“To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom...” – Robert Louis Stevenson.

Why is it important to follow your own path? Because comparing yourself against other people will not only be a major distraction, it will make you miserable. You have to know why you do what you do and what truly motivates you to do it. Or I promise, it will cost you so much pain. And so much wasted time. History is flooded with proof of this, and I wrote a chapter in Ego Is The Enemy about my favorite example. It’s one where we get to see both sides play out: one man who followed his own path and one man led astray by what others expected (or what he thought others expected) of him.

At the end of the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant and his friend William Tecumseh Sherman were two of the most respected and important men in America. Essentially the dual architects of the Union’s victory, a grateful country, with a snap of its fingers, said: Whatever you like, as long as you live, is yours. With this freedom at their disposal, Sherman and Grant took different paths. Sherman abhorred politics and repeatedly declined entreaties to run for office. “I have all the rank I want,” he told them. Having seemingly mastered his ego, he would later retire to New York City, where he lived in what was, by all appearances, happiness and contentment.

Grant, on the other hand, chased power that he never before sought and money that he never before valued. His presidency rendered him a maligned and controversial figure, which he followed with careless investments that rendered him bankrupt. As Sherman wrote with sympathy and understanding of his friend, Grant had “aimed to rival the millionaires, who would have given their all to have won any of his battles.”That’s how it seems to go: We’re never happy with what we have, we want what others have too. We want to have more than everyone else. We start out knowing what is important to us, but once we’ve achieved it, we lose sight of our priorities. Ego sways us, and can ruin us.

All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want. It’s a cycle that goes on ad infinitum, while our brief time on earth or the small window we have here does not. We unconsciously pick up the pace to keep up with others. But what if other people are running for different reasons? What if there is more than one race going on? That’s what Sherman was saying about Grant. There’s a certain “Gift of the Magi” irony in how badly we chase what others want—and never stop to realize how desperately they want what we have, or want something other than what they have.

Let’s be clear: competitiveness is an important force in life. It’s what drives the market and is behind some of mankind’s most impressive accomplishments. On an individual level, however, it’s absolutely critical that you know who you are competing with and why. Only you know the race you’re running. Each one of us has a unique potential and purpose; that means we’re the only ones who can evaluate and set the terms of our lives. Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose.

According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymic is one we should think of often. It is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are and being as good as possible at it without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most you’re capable in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means tranquility in English).

Sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest. Without this, your life will not be as pleasurable or nearly as complete as it could be.This is especially true with money. If you don’t know how much you need, the default easily becomes: more. And so without thinking, critical energy is diverted from a person’s calling and toward filling a bank account. Maybe your priority actually is money. Or maybe it’s family. Or influence. Or change. Maybe it’s building an organization that lasts or serves a purpose. All of these are perfectly fine motivations. But you do need to know. You need to know what you don’t want and what your choices preclude because strategies are often mutually exclusive. One cannot be an opera singer and a teen pop idol at the same time. Life requires trade-offs.

So why do you do what you do? That’s the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Everyone buys into the myth that if only they had that—usually what someone else has— they would be happy. It may take getting burned a few times to realize the emptiness of this illusion. Are you starting to see? We set out on our path to do ________ because we find meaning and satisfaction in it. Then we see others who do less, make more, get more ________ and ask, what are we doing wrong? The answer is nothing.

According to Marcus Aurelius, we must live as we were meant to live. We must live in truth. Let them kill us if they don’t understand it, he said. Imagine that. We have to do what we have to do. We have to be who we are. We have to follow the truth as we see it. Because if we don’t, what good is this life we’ve been given anyway? Find out why you’re after what you’re after. Ignore those who mess with your pace. Let them covet what you have, not the other way around. Because that’s independence. That’s contentment. Cheers!