How to Find Your Path in Life with David Epstein

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In one of my favorite conversations, bestselling author David Epstein joins the podcast to explore how to find your path in life, the problem with 10,000 hours, and why generalists triumph in a specialized world. David and I discuss why sampling different paths before specializing tends to lead to more fulfillment. David explains why feeling "behind" is actually normal for successful people who take non-linear paths, and how "fit looks like grit" when you find something that genuinely connects with your strengths and interests. We then detail how to identify good fits, a practical process for getting good at almost anything, and what helps create a breakthrough moment. About our Guest: David Epstein is a bestselling author, science writer, and investigative reporter known for challenging conventional wisdom about peak performance. His books include Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World and The Sports Gene. You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction and summary of David’s work 1:25: The benefits of generalism and an unusual background 4:15: Feeling behind, and David vs. Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours 11:40: Curiosity, transferable skills, and comfort with failure 21:40: Problems with specialization, and the value of consistent learning 27:10: Beginner’s mind and the eight lane highway 31:35: Finding what you want to do, and the value of constraint 41:35: Doing what’s in front of you, and Frances Hesselbein 45:55: How to actually get good at something 54:20: More on getting comfortable with failure 1:00:10: Autonomy, flow, and just picking something 1:04:00: What creates the “breakthrough moment”? 1:11:30: Recap Rumination Course: Rick’s 5-week online course Breaking Out of Rumination starts on March 29th. Rumination is a big pain point for many people, and this course will help you learn how to break repetitive patterns of thought. Learn more at RickHanson.com/ruminating, and use coupon code BeingWell25 to receive a 25% discount. Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Zocdoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need. Head to zocdoc.com/being and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BEINGWELL at https://www.oneskin.co/ Go to ZOE.com and find out what ZOE Membership could do for you. Use code WELL10 to get 10% off membership. Field of Greens from Brickhouse Nutrition is a superfood powder packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants. Use the code BEINGWELL at fieldofgreens.com for 20% off your first order. Connect with the show: Subscribe on iTunes Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Forrest on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Visit Forrest's website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to being well. I'm Forrest Hansen.
0:09.9	If you're new to the show, thanks for listening today. And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:14.1	I've been looking forward to this episode for a while now. I'm joined by somebody I'm a personal
0:18.5	fan of, journalist and bestselling author David Epstein. So David, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm joined by somebody I'm a personal fan of, journalist, and bestselling author, David
0:21.3	Epstein. So, David, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks so much for
0:25.5	having me. Really excited to be doing this with you. I've been trying to book you on the show for
0:29.7	like several years now or something like that. I didn't know that, by the way, just by way of excuse.
0:35.0	I only learned this recently. Yeah, and email got caught in a filter or something.
0:39.3	It was very serendipitous that way. Your work is kind of difficult to put into a box. It's hard to
0:45.0	summarize, which I think is kind of analogous to what you do. So how would you summarize your
0:49.1	work to people? Well, I think of myself as a science writer, an investigative reporter, and I think I'm drawn to work that takes on topics that are important to human performance and self-development that everyone talks about, but that usually only with intuition.
1:05.1	And I want to bring stories and scientific research to those big, difficult topics like the balance of nature and
1:11.6	nurture and developing skills and how broad or specialized to be. So I'm drawn to these topics that are
1:16.7	everyone, important to everyone, but usually only discussed with intuition. And I want to try to bring
1:21.3	some more rigor to them to make those discussions both more interesting and more productive.
1:26.4	So I first ran into your work, I don't know, 15 years ago at this point, something like
1:32.9	that, where you wrote a story in Sports Illustrated where you were one of the co-authors on it,
1:37.8	talking about how Alex Rodriguez was using performance-enhancing drugs.
1:41.3	This is like very early.
1:42.4	Like you've been with me almost since the beginning of my journalism career.
1:45.0	There you go.
1:46.0	So I literally remember where I was in college when I was reading that story.
	...

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