Walk Your Own Path | Control Your Life

Walk Your Own Path “Walking your own path is getting off the moving walkway at the airport. On the walkway, you may be moving but you are not the one driving the motion nor are you in control of where it is going. Instead, choose yourself where to go and how to get there. It’s more work than the moving walkway, but the payoff is worth it.” Dennis Worden Usually on the podcast we hear amazing stories from NextGen Natives around the country. This episode I discuss some concepts and ideas that I think are relevant for NextGen Natives. They are things I have been thinking about recently. A bit of background: the original idea for this episode came from a negative experience that occurred recently. I was going to turn around the negative experience and discuss the upside of why it didn’t bother me as much as it could have. It was then I realized the episode was much bigger than a single incident. It is about how we shape our lives, and choose to respond to the world around us, particularly when things are beyond our control. We control more about our lives than we may think, and we can then influence how we live our life. It is an intimidating realization. But it’s intimidating because it’s powerful. I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection about where I want to go in my personal life and in my career. Over the last few years I’ve been introduced to several different resources and ideas that are finally becoming a coherent philosophy for me. And I wanted to share these with you. In this episode I discuss a few key concepts that are influencing me right now: Plan beats no plan. It may not be perfect, but it’s better than nothing. You can’t judge a decision by outcomes. You can only judge decisions based on the information at the time a decision was made. Creating your life builds conviction about what you are doing. Don’t let critics get your down. It is not the critics who count. Stoic philosophy as introduced to me by Tim Ferriss. Some thoughts and resources on personal finance as described by Mr. Money Mustache. Including The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement. I’m listening to some personal finance podcasts including Scott Alan Turner and Farnoosh Torabi. Have you had similar experiences? What has helped you find your own path?