the ancient Greeks’ aspiration to perform some virtuous and noble deed that would give their lives a sense of purpose and ensure their immortality in historical memory.

Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

We get so worried about regretting making a bad choice that we may end up making no decision at all, and remain frozen in our current unfulfilling career.

As Tolstoy noted, most people ‘instinctively keep to the circle of those people who share their views of life and their own place in it’. When was the last time you spent an afternoon with a bee keeper or a shamanic healer?

One of the best ways to escape the confines of our worldview is to shift our peer group and talk to people whose work experiences and daily lives are very different from our own.

‘I thought that there was no way I would or could quit only a short time after qualifying – I’d worked so hard to get there. I would be letting myself down.’ This kind of thinking resembles what economists describe as a decision based on ‘sunk costs’: if you buy an expensive pair of shoes that turn out to be incredibly uncomfortable, you won’t want

the ancient Greek ideal of eudaimonia or ‘the good life’.

haranguing

We must adopt Leonardo da Vinci’s adventurous credo, ‘experience will be my mistress’.