The authors show that we live well not by “finding” ourselves and slavishly following a grand plan, as so much of Western thought would have us believe, but rather through a path of self-cultivation and engagement with the world. Believing in a “true self” only restricts what we can become – and tiny changes, from how we think about careers to how we talk to our family, can start to have powerful effects that will open up constellations of new possibilities.

Professor Michael Puett’s course in Chinese philosophy has taken Harvard by storm. In The Path, he and journalist Christine Gross-Loh make this timeless wisdom accessible to everyone for the first time.