So what’s the answer?
How do you escape the dual traps that have been set by human nature and human society?
You take action.
You experiment, learn, and repeat.
You put your introjects on the chopping block.
You get enough experiences under your belt to know, in your gut, your beliefs are actually your own.
The big idea here is: don’t let someone construct your life for you. Design your own life.
Think about how someone designs a new product or service:
- They have an initial idea.
- They quickly build a prototype.
- They test the prototype in the real world and get feedback.
- They tweak and refine the prototype, get more feedback, and make it a little better each time.
- Eventually they end up with a successful product or service: something that people actually want.
You can do the same thing with your life:
- You have an idea for your life.
- You find the way to quickest, least expensive way to test the idea.
- You test the idea and get feedback.
- You tweak and refine your idea (or abandon it altogether), run another test, and make it a little better each time.
- Eventually you end up with set of good ideas — informed beliefs — about your life.
Figure it out by actually doing things. Get out of your own head. Test your assumptions. Expose your ideas to the real world. Watch, make notes, learn, and then make your next move.
As I said before:
You should be actively experimenting with lots of different possible missions. You should be exploring, probing, and immersing yourself in different fields, skills, and pursuits. You should be continuously building your version of how the world works, what’s important, what’s not, and what’s deserving of the precious little time you have on this earth.
That’s what this course is about. You are going to be running lots of little experiments on your life.
As you run these experiments, two things will happen:
- You will develop better-informed beliefs. Our experiments will push you to think hard about your beliefs. This will help you refine your definition of success, and eventually, lead you toward your mission in life.
- You will become more adventurous through doing. By boldly taking actions, you will practice the skills and habits that separate adventurous people from non-adventurous people.
- You will increasingly become the author of your own life. You will become the designer. Which is the whole point.