we are obsessed with finding formulas for our lives, when in reality they don't exist.
the question i get most from young people early in their careers takes the form of "how do i get to x?" — where x represents some outcome they want to reach.
i always struggle to answer this type of question because i think it's the wrong question to ask.
our obsession with finding a formula is just a cheap way of hiding from the reality that the world is uncertain and ambiguous. many seek an illusion of safety in finding one clear-cut formula they can blindly follow. and it's just an extension of a fundamental human tendency: "people prefer the certainty of misery over the misery of uncertainty."
so here's the truth: there is no clear-cut path you can blindly follow to figure out your life and career.
instead, you need to do the work. live in uncertainty. try things. learn from them. trust your intuition. go your own way.
no mentor, book, or online course can walk that path for you. the answers to most questions you're seeking already exist in or around you — and only you can find them. not your parents. not your friends. not your boss. not your professor.
instead of trying to avoid the messy work of figuring your life or business out, you need to just do it.
i sometimes think of this as a muscle you can train — the muscle of confronting reality and the world as it is. seeing what's in front of you clearly and acting from it. not hiding from hard decisions or the pain that might come with them, but embracing it while trusting that you have the inner foundation to deal with whatever comes.
as a society, this brings us to one important question we've been dismissing for too long: how do we prepare young people for entry into this world?
instead of training skills and formulas, we should be training resilience, intuition, and inner foundation.
and i hate to break it to you, but this is only getting "worse" with ai. most of the formula-based illusions we've cultivated in society are becoming more wrong by the day. and instead of lying to the younger generation, we should address this head-on.