The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

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Years of resentment, frustration, and confusion demanded to be released. While working, I always sensed that these feelings were there, but the daily inertia of a life centered around work kept them hidden. Now, without a plan and without anywhere to show up, I had to feel the full force of my emotions.” Getting Ahead: My journey of learning how to become a "hoop-jumper," breaking into strategy consulting, going to business school, and then how dealing with the loss of my health and someone important changes what I value That we must place efforts on to living our true selves and living our lives to our own desires, not for other people People, including myself, have a deep desire to work on things that matter to them and bring forth what is inside them. It is only when we cling to the logic of the default path that we fail to see the possibilities for making that happen. The Pathless Path is a personal journey of awakening and is a recommend read for people looking into leaving traditional forms of work, finding a new path or ways of working by dealing with uncertainty that is common when navigating the unconventional "pathless path". 👥 Who should read it?

We are all creative and we should not wait for the opportunity to start being creative. The internet and today's technology allows us to start creating and producing content immediately without the need ot ask for permission to do so. We should also not be worried what other people think about our creative endeavours. Criticism will always come but our first challenge is building an audience.As my money anxieties receded, I realized I wanted to go deeper. Not with freelance work, but in my life. In those first six months, I experienced a remarkable sense of freedom and ownership over my life. Most days I decided when, where, and how I worked.” The pathless path is an alternative to the default path. It is an embrace of uncertainty and discomfort. It’s a call to adventure in a world that tells us to conform. For me, it’s also a gentle reminder to laugh when things feel out of control and trusting that an uncertain future is not a problem to be solved.” - from The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd. When you find the work you want to keep doing, what makes it meaningful is that you are drawn to do it for its own sake.”

worry is traded for wonder (people stop thinking about worst‑case scenarios and begin to imagine the benefits of following an uncertain path. Automation, remote work, consistent travel, entrepreneurship, being a brand, prioritizing experiences over possessions, grinding (sometimes), prioritizing mental health over the grind (other times). There were a lot of trends that emerged form this movement which persist to today. Tim Ferriss, with his book The Four Hour Work-Week, was one of the first high profile people to advocate for a lot of the things digital nomads aimed for. The tagline for that book was, " The 4-Hour Workweek is a new way of solving a very old problem: just how can we work to live and prevent our lives from being all about work? " (Sound familiar?) Tells the story of Kevin Durant chasing a championship and after he eventually won one, felt unfulfilled. Accomplishments don't bring lasting happiness and even after each achievement we still continue to ratchet up the next goal and continue which is why maybe disappointment is a way to re-evaluate what success means. Re-orientating to different goals like feeling alive, helping people and meeting one's own needs meant Paul wasn't competing with anyone else. This increased the odds of him continuing his journey on the pathless path.

Paul navigates the recruitment processes for various companies by attending networking events, landing interviews and ended up taking an offer with GE. The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom.” – Rolf Potts We must try to live our lives to what we are capable of, not just the ones other think we should live.

In thoughts about the future, worry is traded for wonder. People stop thinking about worst‑case scenarios and begin to imagine the benefits of following an uncertain path. They get curious about who they might become if they embrace discomfort and are filled with a sense of urgency that says, “if I don’t do this now, I might regret it.” If you were born in 1945 or 1950 or 1955, things got better every year for the first 18 years of your life. So continuing on the default path made sense for that generation. But this created accidental meaning for them. The paths that enabled people to thrive were the result of unique economic and historical circumstances, and as millennial’s entered the workforce, these circumstances no longer applied. The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life by Paul Millerd 🚀 The Book in 3 SentencesWe are living in a time when it’s possible for more and more people to design a life in which they can thrive. Yet many look at that possibility and say, “no thanks,” because it means discomfort, uncertainty, and a higher risk of failure. At the time I could not imagine any other existence. Where I lived, what I did, how I thought about money, and the people I hung out with were all connected with my work identity.” ignoring the shiny objects and distractions (and stripping away the stories that are not our own to remember who we are).

In this section it gives examples of how people work a job for the sake of having a job. Sometimes people are willing to spend their lifetimes completing pretend busywork or be in constant pursuit of more work for the sake of just working. Chapter 4 - Awakening an embrace of uncertainty and discomfort (a gentle reminder to laugh when things feel out of control and trusting that an uncertain future is not a problem to be solved; making life changes requires overcoming the discomfort of not knowing what will happen; accepting that you might not know what you are doing and you might look like a fool.).

Table of contents

Understanding that there is more than one way to live than your current path. You can shift to a place where you can gain more freedom and where your path can become something you choose again every day. I always took all of my vacation days. Didn’t work crazy hours. Made time for friends and family. Changed jobs when I stopped learning.”