Dear Readers,
As some of you may already know, The Wisdom School is a podcast designed to deliver short reminders (and readings) on the art of living. Here, I share short clips from my conversations on In Search of Wisdom (Tuesdays and Thursdays). Then, on Saturdays, I release a short selected reading from a philosophical or spiritual text as part of the weekend contemplation.
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Finding Your Way with Derek Sivers
In this episode of The Wisdom School, I share a short clip from my conversation with Derek Sivers (author of How to Live) on In Search of Wisdom. You’ll hear Derek discuss how he found his way early in life.
Here’s a portion of the transcript:
Josh — A question I typically open with is something along the lines of, how did you discern your path early in life? If you could take yourself back there, how do you think about some of the forks in the road that you might have encountered as a young person?
Derek — Yeah, no forks. I was a knife, not a fork. I highly recommend being a knife, not a fork. No matter what it is, for me, it was music. At the age of 15, I wanted to be a great guitarist. Specifically, at the age of 15, I think I just wanted to be a great heavy metal guitarist.
But by 16, it had expanded into I just wanted to be a great, successful musician, by my own definition. I don't mean successful with money. I just mean, really, I just, I wanted to be great. I wanted to be a great musician, making my full-time living playing music. That narrow focus stayed with me from the age of 15 until 29, and I am so thankful for that.
I think I can wholeheartedly prescribe everyone to focus on something, anything, whether you want to be a great juggler or AI programmer or, I don't know, mountain climber, whatever it may be if you've got one thing that you're focused on, it helps you filter out that noise when the world has a ton of money and resources behind. […]
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Thank you for listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
P.S. Feel free to comment, ask questions, or make suggestions!
I think Denis Sievers gives excellent advice. But a lot depends on the type of kid you are and the type of family you come from. Both of my parents graduated eighth grade and went to work. They didn’t go to high school so they didn’t have a frame of reference to give me advice about what to do. I think I was very fortunate in that I was a bookworm from a very early age and had a good vocabulary. I got good grades, and so between the influence of my teachers and also a number of relatives who advised me, I was early on advised to go to college. In those days, the 50s, I graduated at 1960, we had tracks in high school and I was put in the college prep track. That meant that my friends were all in that track also. And so it was just understood that I was going to college. But I didn’t know anything about College or what I wanted to Major in. When Josh opened up the segment asking about what forks Dennis had taken, for me, that was a very relevant question. I have always envy people who knew exactly what they wanted to do. I just feel immense gratitude that things worked out so well for me. Lots of things by chance and others by design. By the time I reached my mid 20s, I was married, had started a career, got drafted, so I enlisted in the Air Force. after a sequence of events in basic training, I ended up in the office of the secretary of defense at the Pentagon, on to Dr. McNamara and that’s when I decided I wanted to go to graduate school. And so while some people can be knives, and hopefully more people will be, I think forks are more prevalent. At least for my experience and many other people I know. We can look to the poems of Robert Frost and the books by Scott Peck, “the Road less traveled,” for guidance. Thank you, Josh for another excellent podcast!