Recently, I've been thinking about self-awareness and its role in living a successful and peaceful life. Self awareness goes hand in hand with the theme of “Finding Your Own Way”. I think this is especially relevant in a world where many people are trying to emulate their heroes, while all the ‘heroes’ are often just giving out their winning lottery numbers. 

These methods and hacks, which happen to have worked for the heroes, don’t generalize. Ultimately leading people, who attempt to follow their hero's methods, to failure or unhappiness. A timely example would be people piggybacking on Michael Jordan’s attitudes and methods used to achieve success in basketball, as documented in the TV Series, “The Last Dance” and hailing it as “the way to success”. (My opinion is that what made MJ great was that he did it his own way.) 

I want to share two takes on this theme of “Finding Your Own Way” from some of my favorite individuals, one from from the ‘angel (investor) philosopher’, Naval Ravikant and his friend, performance advisor, Kapil Gupta, and the other from Mr Art of Learning himself, Josh Waitzkin.

Naval Ravikant and Kapil Gupta on Finding Your Own Way

KAPIL GUPTA: Prescriptions or “How To’s” are hacks. They are techniques and methods, various methodologies to get somewhere. 

...The problem is that whenever you venture into the realm of art, in any form (in business or sports or even in the setting of finding peace in your life or freedom or arriving at enlightenment or all of these so called spiritual pursuits) those things cannot be prescription.

...The Buddha attained enlightenment, you have Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods doing amazing things in golf, and Elon Musk, and various individuals who do great things in business and even yourself (Naval). If you take what those people did, and you write a book that said, “These people did X.” If you follow that, you will not become them. You will not.

NAVAL RAVIKANT: I’ve found business biographies to be useless for building a great business. They're good for inspiration. I can read Steve Jobs, his bio and be inspired but I can't be Steve Jobs. And if I want to be amazing at something, then I have to find my own way there. For mechanical things, “How To’s” work, but when you're trying to operate at the top of a field, when you're trying to do something creative, “How To’s” don't work beyond the most extreme basics.

...If you want to be the best in the world at anything, you cannot follow a prescription. If you want to be okay at it, then sure, you can follow prescription. If you want to learn how to lose a pound a month and get in decent shape, then you can follow a calorie counting worksheet. But if you want to be a shredded bodybuilder or an Olympic athlete, you're not going to get there through “How To’s”. You're going to have to create and forge your own path that is unique to you.

For more, listen to the full conversation between Naval Ravikant (@naval) and Kapil Gupta (@KapilGuptaMD) on Youtube.

Josh Waitzkin on Finding Your Own Way

JOSH WAITZKIN: One of the most common mistakes that I see people make, whether you're talking with kids or adults, in the learning curve is trying to do it, like someone else does it. Whether it's your dad, or your hero, or Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods, or whatever the sport is, there are people who are who are at the top, and you can try to do it like somebody else. But then it's very different from trying to figure out the relationship to the art which is completely your own.

...the path [to mastery] should be different for everybody, depending on what someone's personalities like, what their biases are, what their past is.

If you take investors, there might be an investment, which one from the outside we think is objectively good. But it really isn't objectively good. It has to fit into one's portfolio of investments in a way that emerges from one's own mental models. Otherwise, it is not a form of self expression. Then, when you enter volatility, you're not gonna know what to do with it.

And so, I believe that this theme of self expression, and attunement to oneself and developing one's own mental models, is utterly critical in the learning process. And one of the most dangerous things that anyone can do is to try to copy others’ mental models. It's better to have none than to copy others, because then when the storm comes, you're going to not have a compass to navigate with.”

For more sage wisdom, I compiled my favorite themes from Josh Waitzkin’s book and interviews with Tim Ferriss in The Ultimate Guide to Josh Waitzkin. If you enjoyed this piece on Finding Your Own Way, you’ll also enjoy Don’t Outsource Your Thinking.