Forging Your Own Path

Only you can decide what works best for you, no one else

Getting into personal development and self-help is one of the most profound, life-changing things anyone can do. The teachings, principles, insights, and perspectives that you’re exposed to can transform your life in ways you never even thought were possible. However, there is a major pitfall that I see a lot of people getting stumped by — myself included.

I used to take everything I read as gospel. I mean if it worked for the person teaching it, then it must work for everyone, right? You always see those ads on youtube, of some personal development guru, trying to sell you a course; talking about how they made X amount of money online, became enlightened, or achieved some other great feat, and how anyone can do it — if they just follow “these 5 simple steps.”

The problem with this approach is, it doesn’t take individual differences into account. This is something I’d kind of superficially noticed while on my own path of personal growth. However, more recently, watching the videos of Leo Guru from actualised.org has even further highlighted just how big an issue this has been for me and is for others.

In his content, Leo always stresses the importance of being able to verify things for yourself. He urges the people that follow him not to just take what he says for granted, but to verify this stuff in their own personal experience. If it doesn’t check out, he suggests that you disregard it as it may not apply to your life in the same way.

We are all different: different genetics, different environments, different predispositions etc. So, what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. What makes one person happy might make another depressed. This may seem like an obvious point, but in a lot of self-help content, it’s rarely implied, explicitly or implicitly.

Gurus are often trying to tell you “ the best ways to make money online,” “why you should quit your job and start a business,” “how meditation will change your life,” “how Ayoauscha can lead to self-discovery,” etc. And it’s not necessarily that they are wrong, most of these things will work very well for the majority of people. But they can also be very detrimental for some.

For example, starting an online business isn’t for everyone, there are a lot of downsides: there’s uncertainty, an initial lack of security, lots of responsibility, you need to put in an extreme amount of working hours in the beginning and make a lot of sacrifices. You have to be a particular type of person to be an entrepreneur. But if you aren’t that person, you enjoy your career, the security it provides and the time off you get to spend with your kids, the structure and discipline your career provides, then that’s probably the path you should take. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t get to spend much time with their friends and family because their businesses take up so much of their time, at least in the initial stages.

On the other hand, it may be the case that you can be an entrepreneur but that certain business models don’t suit your personality. Are you more of a creative person or an analytical person? This will greatly affect which type of business suits you.

This is the same with meditation. I love meditation; I’ve had amazing experiences meditating and it’s helped me deal with difficult life situations much more effectively, with less stress. However, I also know a lot of people that haven’t had good experiences with it. For some people, meditation can actually exacerbate pre-existing mental issues causing depression. “Dark Night of the soul” is a term coined to explain a stage of spiritual growth — which can be caused by too much meditation — in which someone experiences a deep sense of the meaninglessness of existence. After getting through this dark point, they are meant to have a new and deeper sense of meaning and appreciation for reality. However, some people don’t make it through. Granted, this is an extreme example, but there are countless other stories of people who’ve found that meditation leaves them feeling even more void and anxious than before.

When my girlfriend and I practise the Wim Hoff breathing method, we both notice different sensations, she often feels an itch or tingle on her skin, whereas I often feel my temperature rise.

I’ve never taken any psychedelics, but from my research, it’s apparent that the experiences people have are vastly different. With substances like DMT and Ayahuasca, some people document these amazing stories of personal breakthrough and self-discovery. Whereas some people explain how the experience was horrible and dark — something they would never do again. The common thread between these experiences seems to be how willing the person was to let go and accept whatever they were being shown; people who resisted tend to be the ones who had bad experiences, people who were able to let go seemed to generally have the more positive, profound experiences. But even then, the person’s ability to let go and accept the trip is largely dependent on a number of genetic and environmental factors, including the persons past, and mental state before the trip.

The examples I’ve mentioned are just a few, but you can find examples throughout life where the experiences individuals have of the same thing largely depend on the person themselves.

This isn’t to say that you should stop learning from others. It’s great to read and digest as much information as possible; to learn from the greatest minds in the world. After all, there is no use in reinventing the wheel. If someone has already discovered something you can save yourself a lot of time and energy by learning from them. I’ve read some books and watched certain videos that have completely turned my life around. Plus I’ve saved myself a lot of time and energy learning from the mistakes of others.

But, I have also noticed that sometimes I’ve tried to force things to work, which weren’t necessarily right for me. It’s easy to do this when you see something working so well for somebody else; you want to get the same results as them, but you have to remember you’re not them. What’s easy and fulfilling for them may not be for you. So try things out, experiment. When it comes to personal development, weight loss, spiritual growth, whatever you’re trying to succeed in, see what works best for you.

A lot of the time people just want things to be laid out on a plate for them. They want a step by step manual that they can just follow and achieve the desired results. Unfortunately, that’s not how life works. And in all honesty, that’s not how you want life to work. It would be pretty boring if everything was just laid out for you and everything worked out the same for everybody. These differences in us are what leads to new discoveries, new techniques and methods, or improvements in old techniques for success.

In addition, through trial and error, you get to learn more about yourself as a person and your unique differences as a human being. Yes, it is going to be frustrating, scary and uncertain sometimes, but so is everything that’s worth achieving in life.

Remember, no one can possibly know you in the same way that you can know yourself. No one can hear your thoughts, no one can feel your feelings; as much as you can describe the things that you experience to other people, no one can actually truly understand it the way you can. So draw on the wisdom of others, but know that only you can tailor your life for yourself.

Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Well, you still have to pick the Giant, you still have to choose the shoulder, plus you still have to use your own eyes to see and make sense of it all.

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