Simple Guide to Life

I never actually chose this career.

Most of us never actually choose. We get placed in the river of life, by parents, society, circumstances, that one guidance counselor who thought everyone should be a dentist, and we're told to swim.

We learn the rules of the river, the way we should swim, what success looks like, and what our goals should be. Our job isn't to think about our path. It's to succeed on the path we've been placed on, based on how success has been defined for us.

3 big decisions you really don't want to mess up

WHO you spend your time with. WHERE you spend your time. HOW you spend your time. And your career? It determines all 3.

On average, you'll invest 80,000 hours into your career. Maybe 150,000 if you're really committed to the grind... or just bad at retirement. If you choose wrong, you're choosing to spend 50,000 to 150,000 hours doing the wrong thing with the wrong people in the wrong place. That's like... a LOTTT of regret, compounding day after day.

It's the single largest investment of our lives, and yet most people just let the river choose where they end up.

The deathbed test

Bronnie Ware, a hospice nurse, spent years with people in their final weeks. The most common regret: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Never "I wish I'd gotten promoted faster."

So write your own obituary. You're 90 and you lived your most meaningful life. How do you want to feel about yourself? What did people say about you? How did you spend your time? Not borrowed ambitions. Yours. The ones that make you want to jump out of bed, not hit snooze 47 times.