As I was growing up, work was such an obvious goal of life that I never paused for a moment to question it. After more than three decades of constantly planning for the future, I was able to start living in the present.

Minimizing spending is a useful step in lowering the pressure of making money, but it’s not a lifestyle. The natural story for a digital‑native world in which nothing can stop us from finding others who share our desires, ideas, and questions. It was incredibly painful for me to realize that if I truly cared about living in a different way, I might need to leave the business world. shifting away from a life built on getting ahead and towards one focused on coming alive (releasing myself from the achievement narrative that I had been unconsciously following).

Even now, several years after doing so, when people ask about my journey, I’m more confused than you might expect.

On the pathless path, the goal is not to find a job, make money, build a business, or achieve any other metric.Not because of the contradictions in other people’s lives, but because it makes it difficult to live in contradiction in your own life. However, many people quickly realize that they’ve created the same conditions that they sought to escape. When you meet others on a similar path, there is an instant bond and a deep sense of knowing about the challenges you are both going through. Where I lived, what I did, how I thought about money, and the people I hung out with were all connected with my work identity.

The pathless path has helped me see that quitting my job was never about escaping work or living an easier life, it was about using the gifts I received from my parents to benefit others. After reading this book, you should no longer be able to look at your current path and think, ‘this is definitely the only way. makes commitments (to a type of work, ways of living, creative projects, or a “conversation” with the world; finding ideas and principles worth committing to and seeing where you end up). Instead, I hope you are able to shift to a place where you know that you have more freedom than you think, and your path can become something you choose again every day. the trap of prestigious career paths (instead of thinking about what you want to do with your life, you default to the options most admired by your peers).When others asked how I was doing, I felt compelled to give them proof that I had a plan and knew what I was doing. The journey towards the pathless path often starts at this moment, with a willingness to investigate your disappointment and to wonder if there is a better way of defining success.

You take a last stand, doubling down on the existing path despite all evidence that it is no longer working. Who Is Really Happy” uses the discovery of a human skull on the roadside to probe into the question of immortality and how misery arises out of the existence of the ego.On the pathless path, powered by digital communities, we can surround ourselves with people that inspire us and push us to improve in the ways we care about. Many self‑employed people are surprised to find that once they no longer have to work for anyone else, they still have a manager in their head.