Nine Lives Exercise

Design nine alternative lives you'd be excited to live

Graham Weaver
How to break out of autopilot and create the life you want

Nine Lives Exercise

"You basically come up with nine lives... The first rule is all the lives have to start from today. So you can't go back in time. They all start from today. And the second rule is you have to be excited about all these lives." - Graham Weaver

What It Is

The Nine Lives Exercise is a thought experiment to make career exploration less intimidating. Instead of pressuring yourself to find "the one thing" you should do with your life, you design nine different lives you'd genuinely enjoy—all starting from today.

Graham Weaver uses this exercise to help people who feel paralyzed by the weight of choosing a single life path. By generating multiple exciting options, you discover patterns in what energizes you, find ways to pull elements of other lives into your current one, and realize that over a long enough timeline, you can actually live most of these lives.

How It Works

The Rules

  1. All nine lives must start from today - No going back in time to make different choices
  2. You must be genuinely excited about all nine lives - No filler options

The Exercise

Create a list of nine different lives:

Life 1: Your current life (the baseline)

Lives 2-9: Alternative paths you'd find genuinely exciting. Examples:

  • Start a private equity firm and be a founder/CEO
  • Become an author (fiction or nonfiction)
  • Become a professor and teach
  • Make videos and build a social media presence
  • Become an actor
  • Start a nonprofit
  • Open an amusement park
  • Become a motivational speaker

Graham's Example

When Graham did this exercise, his lives included:

  • Corporate job (current at the time)
  • Founder/CEO
  • Author/writer
  • Professor/teacher
  • Video creator
  • Motivational speaker

Looking back at his career 23 years later: "I have had the corporate job, been the founder, been the professor, been a writer, had videos, taught people. I've been able to bring most of those lives into this current life."

How to Apply It

Finding the Most Energizing Life

Once you have all nine, ask yourself:

  • Which one gives me the most energy?
  • If I knew I wouldn't fail, which would I choose?
  • Which one do I think about in the shower?

Pulling Lives Into Your Current Life

You don't have to abandon Life 1 to benefit from this exercise:

  1. Identify the highest-energy life - Which alternative excites you most?
  2. Pull elements into your current life - Find ways to do it as a "side hustle" or hobby
  3. Experience the energy transfer - "Just the act of pulling something into your life you're really excited about will give you a tremendous amount of energy" in all areas

Example: Lenny Rachitsky was a product manager (Life 1) but had podcasting/writing as one of his nine lives. He started doing it on the side, which eventually became his full career.

The Sequential Realization

A liberating insight: "You can't have them at once, but if you're fortunate enough to live long enough, you can have all of these things."

Your career isn't one life—it's a series of lives. Lenny has had four: engineer, founder, PM, and creator/podcaster. Graham has lived most of his nine over 23 years.

When to Use It

  • When "what's your passion?" feels overwhelming - Nine options is less intimidating than one
  • Career transitions - See what alternatives genuinely excite you
  • Feeling constrained - Discover which elements you can add to your current life
  • Mid-career reflection - Realize you've already lived multiple lives, and more await
  • Coaching sessions - Help others articulate possibilities they haven't allowed themselves to imagine

Why It Works

The exercise bypasses several psychological barriers:

  1. Reduces pressure - Nine lives vs. "the one true calling"
  2. Requires excitement - No practical, "should do" options allowed
  3. Starts from today - No regret about past choices
  4. Reveals patterns - Common themes across lives show core interests
  5. Creates possibility - Seeing alternatives written down makes them feel more achievable

Source

  • Guest: Graham Weaver
  • Episode: "How to break out of autopilot and create the life you want"
  • Key Discussion: (00:43:23) - The nine lives exercise explained
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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