You must do in order to learn

Can you become as wise as Aristotle just by reading his teachings, or as impactful as Elon Musk just by reading his biography? Definitely not. Their understanding of the world, and by extension, their impact on it was predicated by their unique lived experience.

All of the advice you would ever need to find success in your career, or to be wise, exist as proverbs or books. Humans have been around for long enough such that every aspect of the human experience has been covered extensively.

So every deep, fundamental truth or piece of advice you come up with has, sadly, already been thought of before.

Even though all of this wisdom exists out there in the world, a natural reaction to reading about it is something along the lines of: "This is obviously true, it is common sense!". Yet for almost everyone, these life lessons fly over our heads because we don't truly understand them. They are just words that make sense in the moment, with nothing in our lives to apply or pattern match them to.

Only when you experience those lessons in your own life, will you come to understand them.

You must take risks, do things to actually learn their significance. We all take our own paths, even if such paths lead to the same end.