Recently I watched Thirteen Lives, a film that dramatizes the rescue of a young soccer team from a flooded cave in northern Thailand.

For the first time, a thought crossed my mind regarding whether I had the correct outlook on life.

That moment was when I contrasted the attitude of the British Divers which led the rescue in comparison to Elon Musk who lobbied the Thai Government to use an ill-conceived submarine in the rescue.

In Silicon Valley you are told that you are changing the world and that we are the best of the best at what we do.

While I never fully bought into this outlook, I must have got carried away with it to a certain extent.

Upon watching the scene, I realized that I have cut myself adrift from human connection and who the real heroes are in society. It is not us.

That disconnect comes from the Silicon Valley bubble which is in stark contrast to the concept of giving that is presented in the ‘Pathless Path’ by Paul Millard.

Giving, to a certain respect, is about human connection, it is through the act of giving that you discover what is important in life.

The act, whether labor, money or advice is a process of trying on different values to find which causes are important to you and then directing your resources in that direction.

It takes time to find those causes one which requires active contemplation to reflect and find what is important in life.

Dr. Grace Lordan, the author of the Big Think, advocates thirteen minutes a day to do this.

Writing is an important part of this process, one which many who stray away from the default life path engage with as they try to work out what they are doing in life.

Some of us, find this hard and Paul Millard recommends that it is easier to write down what we do not want to be first, and so I followed his lead.

I don’t want to be overweight, unfit, working 12 to 16 hours a day on work that I do not find meaningful. I don’t want work to be the only dimension in life, so that each day I grow further apart from the interests and people that are important to me.

Reading this, I can begin to articulate what I want and move towards it, away from what I do not want to be.

From reading what I don’t want, fitness, diet, connection, and purpose are important to me and I feel confident enough to take a stab at what I do want.

I wish to leave my job to train for a marathon, upgrade my skills and develop a clear direction for the next phase of my life.

So, how can I design a lifestyle that edges me towards those goals?

It is not something that will happen overnight, there are acts such as giving, or auditing your day to evaluate what invigorates you and which tasks drain your reserves.

There is a lot of trial and error in this process and perhaps I advocated too quickly in my previous posts to narrowing down too quickly without more experimentation.

I was too eager to make my new life follow the default path before it had even begun. I need to give myself time for playful contemplation.

However, there are concrete actions I can take:

• Quit my job.
• Train for a marathon.
• Take some courses that I find interesting.

Some of these actions are very concrete, and some are still loosely defined. Therefore, I should follow a hybrid approach to my new path.

For the actions that are well defined, such as training for a marathon, they need to be scheduled with an active plan to realize that goal.

I then must execute the micro-goals of that plan taking the small steps each day as I progress towards marathon day.

I must then free up time to experiment and take in new experiences so that I can discover more about myself and try on different values so I can find the ones that suit and plan around them.

What’s next, well start with the concrete steps, and find the time to experiment. This is just the start. . . . until next time.