What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

by Po Bronson

if you succeed at something in which you’re honest to yourself, and in line with your values, and not wearing a mask to the world, then that does seem to make people happy.

He’d asked them to write down their limiting beliefs—essentially, their opinions of themselves, reseen not as identity statements but as self-constraints. One woman’s limiting belief her whole life was that she wasn’t smart and couldn’t learn—she’d realized she did learn, but slowly.

“Am I the person I think I am if nobody is there to tell me who I am?”

Being uncomfortable is good. If you remain comfortable, you remain more or less yourself. The quickest way to make yourself uncomfortable is to travel alone. I found a high correlation between traveling alone and milking the rock. It takes courage to change your life. Sometimes, doing so, you feel all alone in the world. You can get used to this scary feeling by traveling alone, being by yourself for long periods of time, having to talk to strangers, having to get yourself from one city to another. You become accustomed to it. The fear of being alone will no longer stop you.

Do not wait for the kind of clarity that comes with epiphanies. In the nine hundred plus stories I heard in my research, almost nobody was struck with an epiphany. It was one of my biggest surprises. Most people had a slim notion or a slight urge that they slowly nurtured until it grew into a faint hope which barely stayed alive for years until it could mature into a vision. Most people feel guilty about wanting what they want, and they feel foolish for wanting something impossible, and those censoring voices will bark like a pack of junkyard dogs, night after night. Don’t doubt your desire because it comes to you as a whisper; don’t think, “If it were really important to me, I’d feel clearer about this, less conflicted.” My research didn’t show that to be true. The things we really want to do are usually the ones that scare us the most. The things you’ll not feel conflicted about are the choices that leave no one hurt.

You want to know where your fears are hiding? Tell me what you know about yourself. Tell me what you can’t live without.

I accumulated a hundred stories from recent parents, and I could make only one broad observation: many of our fears and misconceptions about our careers stem from our fears and misconceptions about being a parent.