How to break out of autopilot and create the life you want

Graham Weaver is a Stanford GSB professor and founder of Alpine Investors, a private equity firm. He discusses how to escape autopilot, identify a meaningful life direction, and push through the difficult early phases needed to achieve long-term goals.

01Key learnings

• Ask yourself what you would pursue if you knew you wouldn't fail, then work backward from that goal to find a path toward it.
• Write down your limiting beliefs and fears on paper; once externalized they lose power and become concrete to-do items you can plan around.
• Build accountability through an executive coach, a like-minded friend, or a weekly written form tracking goals and next steps.
• Write down your one-year goals and three actions you will take that day to move toward them, which Graham says produces more progress than years of unfocused effort.
• Expect the first steps toward anything worthwhile to feel negative, since everything you want is on the other side of worse first.
• Use the nine lives exercise: list nine different lives you'd be excited to live starting from today, then pull the most energizing ones into your current life, such as a side project.
• Treat time as the key variable: long-term success usually takes a decade or more, so commit to staying with a path rather than judging it early.
• Quit only when you can no longer see or believe in the vision for a long period; in the meantime, scale your bright spots, the things that are already working.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.