Yuval Noah Harari, in Tribe of Mentors:
So you have no choice but to really get to know yourself better. Know who you are and what you really want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book: know thyself.
The answer for everything: it depends.
Okay, so what does it depend on? You!
What’s the best food to eat? It depends what your goals are and how well your body can process certain foods. (That said, vegetables are a good starting point.) What’s the best work out? It depends also on your goals and what you’ll actually do consistently. What’s the best way to build a habit? It depends on what’s causing friction in the first place.
(Check out a post I wrote about Harari’s book Sapiens and the stories we believe in.)
It’s important to know yourself to know the best way to approach things that come up in life.
You might be on the right path and doing the right things that worked for someone else that might not work for you. One of the reasons I really like Tribe of Mentors (and Tools of Titans before it) is that it provides glimpses of what a lot of different people do.
You’ll see conflicting information between people who were interviewed. It worked for them. Parts of what they do will work for you. If you know yourself well, you’ll be able to pick and choose techniques that will be effective for you.
Speaking of conflict, Tim Ferriss even talks about how his approach now is a lot different than it was when he was younger. He had a high pain tolerance so he pushed through things when he was younger. Plenty of people have that mindset. You’ll often see success attributed to that. (Work hard through everything. Run to the end zone with a broken leg!) Now he knows some of the pain wasn’t necessary.
Now he asks: what would it look like if it was easy?