So often we imagine that a pathway to a particular goal—whether it’s learning to read, becoming a top athlete, or running a company—is somewhere out there, like a trail through a forest cleared by the hikers that came before us. We presume the best way to be successful in life is to follow that well-blazed trail. But what the pathways principle tells us is that we are always creating our own pathway for the first time, inventing it as we go along, since every decision we make—or every event we experience—changes the possibilities available to us. This is true whether we are learning how to
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