Struggling with feeling lost or unsure about your path in life? It’s a problem most of us face at some point in our lives.
Finding a purpose can feel impossible, and if you’re anything like me, once the realization hits that you’re not moving in a direction that you want to be headed, it can feel all-consuming.
You desperately want to figure out what you should be doing with your life.
Maybe you’re focused on wanting to switch careers to find something that is more fulfilling, or perhaps you are lacking meaningful relationships and feeling isolated.
You know that you desire something more, but feel stuck because you don’t have a crystal clear picture in your mind of what it is.
Often when we feel stuck in something in our lives, we hesitate to make changes until we feel absolutely sure about what it is that we want. It can be hard to get moving when we don’t know with absolute certainty what we want to be working towards.
I was 100% guilty of this when I worked as an auditor for a public accounting firm; I knew that I didn’t like my job and that I didn’t want to be doing it for the rest of my life, but I stayed at that job for a year longer than I should have because I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I wanted to do next.
After a year of feeling that way, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do but was so miserable that I decided to jump ship anyway. Looking back, I wish I’d done it sooner.
Why? Because we’ll never find out what it is we enjoy doing if we don’t try new things. Life is a learning process, and without some experimentation, we’ll forever be stuck in what we know.
Related Reading: The Importance of Building Identity Capital
Start Making Choices and Taking Action in Your Life
The first step to figuring out what you want to do with your life is to get moving.
Start making choices. Start taking action on things that you are curious about. Push yourself outside of your comfort zone and try something new.
You can’t figure out where your passions truly lie until you begin to experience them.
Getting started is often the hardest step, but until you do, you won’t make much progress. By taking action, you’ll start to understand yourself better and realize what you do and do not enjoy.
Often times when we aren’t sure what the best course of action is, instead of making a choice we choose nothing at all.
Choosing to do nothing will likely only lead to further feelings of frustration, while making a choice, whatever it may be, will result in progress.
If it ends up being progress in a direction that you later find yourself unhappy with, you can always change your mind, and you’ll have new experiences and identity capital to take with you to your next chapter.
Something I’ve struggled with immensely is turning thoughts and plans into actions.
Have you ever had an idea in your head and spent countless hours planning, learning, and strategizing how to implement it, but never taking any action to actually make it happen?
James Clear talks about the concept of motion vs. action in his book Atomic Habits. Motion is what is described above – having a plan and being excited about the idea.
“We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action”
– James Clear
While this can be great for getting ideas flowing, it doesn’t create a result.
Sometimes, taking imperfect action is what we need to get the ball rolling.
Inspiration and Motivation Will Follow
Mark Manson first wrote about the “Do Something” Principle on his blog, and I later found it in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (this was one of my first personal development books and I’d highly recommend it).
This idea stems from the mindset that when inspiration strikes, we will find motivation, which will lead to action.
However, if we always wait for inspiration to come before taking action, we may very well spend our entire lives on the couch ruminating on negative emotions.
The “Do Something” Principle reframes the motivation chain as: Action → Inspiration → Motivation.
The idea is that when you are lacking motivation, if you just do something, the inspiration and motivation will come soon after.
I spent a lot of time sitting around thinking about how I wanted to make more out of my life, but never having a clear idea of what that looked like. I made the mistake of thinking that eventually, I’d have an epiphany and the inspiration would come.
If you’re currently in that mindset, don’t sit around waiting for that epiphany. It very well may never come.
Instead, start taking actions that align with what you’re passionate about and the inspiration and motivation will inevitably follow.
In my case, the first action I took was to start reading personal development books. The inspiration hasn’t stopped flowing since.
Remember that Growth Is an Iterative Process
Something I’ve found helpful when struggling to get started on a new goal (whether that is due to fear of failure, fear of what other people might think, or lack of clarity, among many other factors) is to remember that we are all always growing.
Nobody is perfect, and nobody should expect you to be perfect. If you find that you’re feeling that pressure from someone in your life, you might want to reevaluate that relationship.
If you can let go of the need for perfection right from the start, you’ll give yourself the freedom to explore, learn, and grow without judgment or constraint.
Lean into this feeling and allow yourself to be imperfect; just keep showing up.
This idea is explored in depth in growth mindset research. And once you adopt a growth mindset, it’s hard to turn back (not that you would want to!)
Once we get comfortable with living outside of our comfort zone, the growth really never stops if you keep taking action. If you need some help getting started, check out these ideas for personal growth goals.
Here are a few things you can focus on to get moving on your dream life, even if you don’t feel ready or don’t have a clear goal in mind:
- Always be curious; learn something new every day.
- Find joy in the process of growth. Appreciate the little wins, for they will lead to the big wins.
- Continue making choices and evaluating the results of your decisions and the direction you’re headed. If you’re not happy with your direction, change something.
- Don’t feel frustrated if you feel like you don’t have it all figured out; instead, find joy in putting the pieces together.
- Remember that this life is your masterpiece – edit frequently and with intention.
Life is full of opportunities for growth, and if you welcome the idea of continually learning and pushing yourself to try new things, you’ll always be growing in one way or another.
Accept the Uncertainty
Change and growth can be terrifying, and taking action on something with an uncertain outcome may seem too risky for a lot of people.
We’ve been conditioned to think that our lives should look a certain way, that we should stick to the status quo. This causes many people to shrink back from trying things that may be perceived as wild or unpredictable for fear of the “I told you so” if they don’t succeed.
But if you were absolutely certain the outcome would be positive, you’d do whatever it takes, right?
Why is it that we crave so much certainty in our futures? What would happen if we learned to let go of even just a little bit of that?
I’m not suggesting that uncertainty isn’t scary or uncomfortable – of course it is. But whether we like it or not, so many things in this life are beyond our control.
Instead of sitting in your comfort zone and bracing yourself for the impact when something does inevitably go wrong, let yourself release the need for control and embrace the uncertainty with open arms.
Accept that you can’t plan for every miniscule detail of your life, and let the freedom flow.
For any of you out there that are podcast listeners, one of my favorites is “Good Life Project” by Jonathan Fields. A recent episode was focused on how to let go of what you think your life should look like and just let it be, which to me really resonates with this message.
So start that side hustle you’ve had in mind for years but have kept putting off because you’re afraid of going all in and failing.
Move to the city you’ve dreamed of your whole life.
Put your most authentic self out in the world for everyone to see.
Truly, the biggest risk of all is looking back on your life and wishing you’d have taken more chances on yourself.
Final Thoughts: Get Moving on Your Dream Life
We all feel a little lost sometimes. The key is to not let it overwhelm you.
Start taking actions, no matter how small, and you’ll be better off than you were yesterday. Remember that growth is an iterative process, accept the uncertainty, and get moving on your dream life.
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