How to break out of autopilot and create the life you want | Graham Weaver (Stanford GSB professor, founder of Alpine Investors)
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What is Graham Weaver’s background and why do students ask him about their life purpose?
You are ostensibly a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and you shared that when people come ask you for advice, the most common question you get is, what should I do with my life?
Imagine that you're walking home from work, you see this bright, shiny object, and you realize it's a magic lamp, and you rub the lamp, and this genie comes out, and the genie says, Hey, I can give you one wish. Whatever you throw yourself into with your whole life and your career, it's gonna turn out great. If that were true and you had that genie, what would you wish for? At some point in this one life we get, you wanna get yourself on that path of that journey.
This whole exercise connects to something that you're a big advocate of of this idea of getting out of autopilot mode in your life. You're unconscious.
And you may not even realize why you're doing what you're doing or even realize what you're doing. So for example, I get up, work out, drive into work, fight traffic, commute, maybe I return some emails, fight traffic on the way home, rush through dinner, go to bed. It's not a day that is intentional. It's not a day where I've said, where do I want to be going with my life? What's important to me in this world? You have another quote which is everything that you want is on the other side of worse first. Pick anything. You want a better body. Okay, you're going to need to go to the gym. When you go to the gym the first few times, it's gonna not be that fun. The first move is negative. If I'm optimizing for tomorrow and I just want to have a great day tomorrow, I'm gonna stay exactly where I am.
So many people I see have this happen where they just they hit a plateau and they never move past it because they're not willing to have that that hard day.
Day, month, week, year. When should you quit something? Because some things are just not worth it. I think the time to quit is when you can no longer. Today, my guest is Graham Weaver. Graham teaches a top-rated course at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, a course which is technically called Managing Growing Enterprises. But as you'll hear in our conversation, he ends up mostly helping students figure out what to do with their lives and how to get out of the autopilot mode that most people are in. He recently won Stanford Graduate Business School's 2024 MBA Distinguished Teaching Award, and teaching is Actually, his side gig. His full-time job is founder and CEO of Alpine Investors, a private equity firm which, based on my research, is one of, if not the top-performing private equity funds in the world.
So the advice you're going to hear today is coming from someone who is actually doing the thing, not just teaching the thing. In our conversation, we cover practical exercises that can help you figure out what you should do with your life. Including something he calls the Genie Framework and the Line Lives Exercise, we talk about why life is suffering and you may as well choose something worth suffering for, also why most things in life that are worthwhile take more time than you expect, some practical advice for creating accountability in your life to help you achieve your goals, and so much more. If you listen to this episode and actually try some of the exercises that Graham shares, I promise you that you're
Life and your future will be better off. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Graham Weaver. This episode is brought to you by Merge. Product leaders, yes, like you, cringe when they hear the word integration. They're not fun for you to scope, build, launch, or maintain, and integrations probably aren't what led you to product work in the first place. Lucky for you, the folks at Merge are obsessed with integrations. Their single API helps SaaS companies launch over 200 product integrations in weeks, not quarters. Think of Merge like Plaid, but for everything B2B SaaS.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Graham Weaver’s background and why do students ask him about their life purpose?
0:00–10:35
2
How does the Genie Methodology help you discover your true path?
10:35–18:56
3
What strategies does Graham suggest to break free from autopilot mode?
18:56–27:46
4
How can you identify and overcome limiting beliefs that hold you back?
27:46–36:48
5
What is the Nine Lives exercise and how can it expand your life possibilities?
36:48–45:18
6
Why does the “not now” mindset often turn into never taking action?
45:18–54:14
7
When is it appropriate to quit a pursuit versus persisting?
54:14–1:03:20
8
What practical steps can listeners take today to create the life they want?
1:03:20–1:12:09
Speakers
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