Spent years climbing a ladder that led nowhere I wanted to go. One chapter changed everything by asking: “What if you’re climbing the wrong ladder entirely?” Time to stop performing and start living.
The story
Before: I spent years checking boxes someone else drew. Got the degree everyone said I needed. Chased the job title that looked good on paper. Followed the path that made sense to everyone but me. I was climbing a ladder that led nowhere I actually wanted to go.
After: Chapter 7 of Attila B. Horvath’s “The Journey – I wish I knew this before I was 21” hit me hard with one question: “What if you’re climbing the wrong ladder entirely?”
That stopped me cold.
Horvath doesn’t sugarcoat it. Our education system taught us to conform, not to think. We learned to fit in, not stand out. We absorbed other people’s dreams and called them our own.
The chapter walks you through something most of us avoid: questioning everything. Not in a cynical way, but in a “let’s figure out what’s actually yours” way. Your uniqueness isn’t a liability. It’s the key to evaluating what matters.
Those limiting beliefs we carry around? They’re not facts. They’re just thoughts we kept repeating until they felt true.
Horvath lays out the practical stuff: self-education, changing your thinking patterns, building new habits, taking action. But it all comes back to one thing – finding the individual inside you instead of performing the character everyone expects.
