How to identify where you want to go in life

If you could do anything in the world with zero chance of failure, what would you do?

This is one of my favourite conversation starters, and something I’ve asked every single person that’s ever been close to me. As we progress through life, it’s incredibly easy to follow the path that’s been laid out in front of us. To not deviate from the way life naturally unfolds. To choose the path based on our university degree, what our parents wanted for us, or what we thought we might do as children.

This doesn’t have to be the case. If some hidden part of you wants to be a professional dancer, why not bring that side of yourself out more? Maybe the professional dream is out of reach. But maybe dancing every day for fun isn’t out of reach. Maybe the professional dream is in reach, too. You never know until you try. I didn’t think I’d become a professional athlete in my mid-20’s. I dreamt it from the age of three. But after a certain point, that dream disappeared. Had I made it an actual priority in my life to dedicatedly focus on one sport and follow that path, I could have easily accomplished that childhood dream earlier in my life.

Unfortunately for me (or fortunately for me), I ran into the dilemma of having too many interests. I never truly would have wanted the professional athlete lifestyle, as I believe I have the capacity to impact the world on a grander scale in other ways beyond just a single sport.

I think it’s incredibly important to know what you want out of life. To chase those dreams relentlessly.

But I think you can only devote yourself to a few causes at a time. When I say a few, I mean four. Throughout my life, I’ve always chased several passions at once. After years of living this way, I finally confronted the issue at hand last year. Amid a steady-state run along the Cambridge-Paris Trail, I simply asked myself how many things I could focus on before sacrifices started to happen. Four. The answer was, and still is to this day, four.

I should brand a catchy title to this theory at some point. Maybe the ‘Mount Rushmore Theory’ or ‘Core Four Theory’. But my belief is that you can only truly dedicate yourself to four key areas of your life at a time. You can umbrella them in whatever way makes sense to you. But if you exceed four, prepare to make sacrifices.

My four?

1. Social relationships
2. The Blue
3. Trail Running
4. Teaching

Writing is a hobby of mine that I enjoy very much, but as I’ve noted in a few different articles now, I’ve had to make serious sacrifices to my business and my work in the soccer world.

When TMS lived in my brain as one of the core four, it didn’t feel as intrinsically motivating to me as I thought it might. Especially the main business premise of consulting with clubs and mentoring professionals. Turns out, I enjoy the writing process a whole lot more than one-on-one coaching calls. I wouldn’t have known that had I never tried to evolve my website into a business. But now that I know the answer to that riddle, I can make informed decisions for the future. Namely, what I want to do with my work on TMS, and my writing that I’ve now moved over here. I can structure life in a way that feels personally meaningful to me.

Bottom line, the sacrifices that I’ve made over time have always been things that no longer felt intrinsically motivating. It’s why I left my stable 9-5 job at the start of 2023 to chase other passions that brought me joy. I’ve carefully curated a list of what feels most important to me right now. Where I want to spend my energy and attention. Knowing this, I can then do a few things better:

1. Evaluate where I’m spending my time & energy in the present.

I want to constantly be aware of this question: Where am I spending my energy and attention? Am I spending it on the things I truly care about? Or am I wasting time prioritizing other things in life that are less important to me? Am I still hanging onto dreams I had as a child, or am I living life the way I want to live it right now, at this present moment?

2. Recognize where I want to go in the future.

If I know that these four areas of life are where I feel the deepest passion, I can more easily continue to chase those passions. It’s completely okay for feelings to evolve. The four most important things in your life can evolve over time. But it’s easier to chase your passions and dreams if you know what they are, rather than if you haven’t got a clue where you want to go or what you want to do.

If I were a YouTuber, this is the part of the video where I tell you to pause the video.

Write down your own personal ‘Mount Rushmore’. What are the bobbleheads that represent your life at the moment? What are the four most important things in your life right now? I usually try to exclude people on a singular level, but even a single person could be where you want to spend your time and attention.

At the very least, I think it’s important to avoid categories that become too broad. It’s harder to evaluate and measure how you’re spending your time when too many things fit into one category. For example, ‘helping others’ is my true passion. In whatever capacity that might include. But it’s vague and all-encompassing toward so many different areas of my life. So instead, it’s simply something that I try to bring out in each category within my own Mount Rushmore.

Go. Write your top four down. Then dedicatedly focus on putting your energy toward those four things, free of distractions.

But as you navigate your priorities, always keep half an eye on your dreams. ‘What would you do if you had zero chance of failure?’ might be an answer that exists nowhere near your current top four. But it might be part of your future. It might be something that you want to be part of your future. Never think that the moment has passed. That you can no longer make it happen. After all, the question is worded in respect to the future. It has nothing to do with what you could have changed in the past to inform the future.

Once you’ve answered that question, here’s my favourite follow-up, stolen from Ali Abdaal, who stole it from someone else. What would you do even if you knew you would fail?

My answer now changes. If I had zero chance of failure and guaranteed success, I’d start my own non-profit with some of my favourite people in the world. But if I knew that project was destined to fail, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t see a point in spending several hours every single day trying to make a long-term career out of something that was ultimately destined to fail.

But if I knew I would fail, I would still try to make it as a professional trail runner. In that case, the journey of training and chasing that dream would be intrinsically rewarding. That might be because I have fall-backs that I can always turn to if things don’t work out, or it might be because I love running. It’s rewarding. It makes me feel accomplished. It allows me to be alone in nature. Alone to my thoughts. It’s fun. So even if the performance outcome never came, the journey outcome would always be worth the time.

The same goes for my writing. Even if I yielded zero visitors to this platform, I would still write. Why? Writing is for me. I love when other people read my work and gain value from it. But ultimately, I write for myself. I write because it allows me to get my thoughts out. To explore my own opinions. To learn how I truly feel on an important issue. To be creative and expressive. To be funny. To have somewhere for my thoughts to go. It’s always intrinsically motivating.

Knowing what happened in the past with TMS, I’ll always have to be conscious of ensuring my writing doesn’t feel like work, and always feels like play. That will allow me to continue the trend. The trend of writing being something in my life that I would do regardless of whether or not I fail or succeed. On that note, if you do something often enough, it usually succeeds. Just going to throw that out there.

But nevertheless, this is an important distinction. If I wouldn’t start a non-profit just to have it fail, maybe it’s not worth starting the thing until I’m ready to change my mindset. If I’m willing to try and make it as a pro trail runner even if I would fail, maybe that’s worth more of my time and attention right now. Once more, I can evaluate my energy and attention in the present, and prepare for a more meaningful future based on the knowledge acquired.

The art of reflection is something that we should all do in whatever capacity makes sense for our brains. These are some of my favourite questions when reflecting on life, and questions that I think everyone should have an answer for if they truly want to make the most of their time.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!