Self-help

I Don’t Know What To Do With My Life – This Guide Will Help You Fix It

I don’t know what to do with my life. This can be quite frustrating. Living a life without any goal or purpose is meaningless. This write-up will surely help you find what you can do with your life.

“I don’t know what to do with my life. I always feel lost in life. At times, severe depression hits me. I just want to get rid of this anxiety for good.”

A depressed patient to a psychiatrist

Life without purpose is meaningless. While growing up, one needs to decide the future course of life. In other words, one has to give a specific direction to one’s life. However, mostly we face an issue with this. We fail to determine what we actually want to do with life.

If you ask people what is it that they want to do with their life; every second person will say, “I don’t know what to do with my life”. If this question remains unanswered for a long, it turns into depression later.

Identifying People Facing this Dilemma in Life

Almost every category of people faces this situation in different stages of life. With this situation, people usually start feeling lost in life.

Primarily, the youth especially the students graduating from college come across this issue. They do not know what they are going to do after having degrees.

Then, there are those people who are having jobs but are still unsatisfied with life. It is because what they are doing is quite opposite of what they want to do. In simple words, there is a clash between their passion and their profession.

After that, we have our elders just retiring or retired from their jobs. They too are unclear about their future. For them, they have spent their lives and there is nothing left that they would do in life.

I don't know what I want to do with my life

Fixing Perspective to Sort Out What You Can Do With Life

Before we start exploring possible ways that can help you find what to do with life; be mindful that age is just a number. You are neither too young nor too old to start a new life or to give your life a new direction.

Simply, in order to find out the answer to ‘what to do with life’, one has to explore one’s passion and interests in life. Our passion will answer what to do with life. By pursuing our passion, we would ultimately find meaning and will be satisfied with life.

Not everyone is created equal; i.e. having the same passion and interests. Similarly, not everyone is fit for the same job. The fact that everyone is unique propounds that everyone is born with unique talents and interests. When life is spent according to one’s interests and passion, it becomes meaningful as well as colorful.

In contrast, life is dull and boring for a person who is controlled by circumstances. A person might be a textile engineer, earning a handsome amount of money; he would still be unhappy and uncertain about what to do with life if his inner passion is for teaching or painting.

However, there is another issue. We even do not know how to explore our passion. What are the steps that we need to take in order to give our life direction?

When we set out to explore ourselves, and our passions; more or less we find ourselves stuck in a quagmire. We find our thoughts entangled, our minds stuck.

Hence, in this write-up, we will address your issue by identifying different ways that will help you in sorting out what you can do with your life.

Don’t know what to do with life? Let’s find out the answer!


Recommendations to Find Meaning in Life

So, are you the one stuck at, ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life’? Make the following recommendation a part of your lifestyle. These will fix your life and help you find meaning in life.

1. Traveling to Explore Yourself

Probably you are leading a monotonous life for so long that your mind has stopped thinking out of the box. For this, you need to change your lifestyle and life experiences.

The best way to do this is by packing your bag and starting traveling.

Go anywhere you like going. Go for a hike or to the countryside. Opt for beaches or choose any city.

Traveling leads to self-exploration. Through it you will be able to know yourself and what your life demands from you, more clearly.

Idk what to do with my life
Traveling opens the locked doors in life and introduces us to the hidden world.

This journey to self-exploration will lead to the exploration of passion and interest. You will be able to hear your mind and heart clearly.

Furthermore, traveling leads to multiple experiences. One meets with different people; observes their lifestyles. This way one can feed one’s mind with many different and new ideas for his own life.

Or you might not meet anyone along the way. It is just you and nature. When you are all alone; you are actually not alone. This is a perfect time when you can listen to your own hidden voices. You get the best chance to meet yourself; to talk to yourself!

In short, traveling opens up one’s mind to new ideas. Spend a few days with yourself and change your own life!

2. Learn from the Experiences of People

If you don’t know what to do with life, you are not alone. Almost everyone faces this sort of blockage in life.

There are people who have faced this and made their way out of this problem. You can learn from them how they managed to find the answer.

One way of learning this from them is through direct interactions with elders. I am saying ‘elders’ specifically because elder people have always had more life experiences than us.

As mentioned above, traveling will enable us to meet people. We can share our problems with them; talk to them and find the answer. They will be our best guide.

But, in case you don’t have anyone to directly talk to; still, you can learn from people.

Read (auto)biographies of people.

You will see what you are facing now; they have already faced it and made a way out of it.

You will get a chance to learn from them, or from their lives.

Every biography gives an interesting account of all the phases of someone’s life. We get a chance to learn about the issues he has faced in different stages of life and about the way he has tackled them.

What the writers have learned/experienced in their whole life; shared with you within 300 pages.

You can learn from their 40 to 80 years of life experiences in just a week through indirect interaction with them.

Similarly, one can learn from one’s peers; such as what they are doing with their life or how they handle it when they face these issues.

In short, man is a social animal that is bound to learn from society. Get exposure to society and do what society is doing, or what it has done when it faced this situation.

3. Identify the Opportunities around you that usually go unnoticed

We are living in a technological era where we have unlimited opportunities to shape our life the way we want.

Explore your passion and talent, you will find a way.

If you have a passion for gaming, you can start a Youtube Gaming Channel. If you like traveling and want to make it your career; pick up a camera and start making travel vlogs. If you feel, you are a writer and want to become an authority on it; start your own blog, and reach out to hundreds if not thousands of people.

The Internet offers an infinite number of opportunities to everyone.

You can do any random thing and share it with people. Side by side you can also earn a living out of it.

Surf Google and YouTube and see what sort of blogs and channels are active. Pick anyone that clicks your interest and start doing it.

Hence, it is not that the opportunities are limited for you; it is actually that your exposure is limited to the opportunities for you out there.

4. Meditate to clear your mind

To see the world more clearly and to understand the purpose of life; one needs to have a clear and focused mind.

“Relax, allow the mind to become empty, and surprise yourself with the great treasure that begins to flow from your soul.”

Paulo Coelho

If you are unsure what to do with life, it might be because your mind is unclear and stuffed with random irregular thoughts.

If this is so, you can start meditation to clear your mind. Meditation will make your mind focused. With regular meditation sessions, there will be no more distractions in life.

I don't know what to do with my life
Meditation will help you find out the meaning in life.

Hence, with a focussed and clear mind, you will start looking at life from a different angle.

Numerous locked doors will open up to you; numerous ideas will start knocking at your mind’s door; your mind will invoke new passions and kindle new interests in you.

Thus, you will become more optimistic, more lively, and more energetic toward life.

5. Set Small Goals Daily

We often see life as a long-term game and try to plan it accordingly. For example, a person sees himself as a doctor after 10 years. His goal becomes his purpose in life and he strives for it.

But, when he fails to achieve that goal; happens is, he starts to lose interest in life. This is when depression begins to hit him. He does not understand what to do with life.

So, you see, the core problem lies in our long-term planning.

Life is very uncertain and we are not here for an infinite amount of time.

Every new day is a new chapter in life. So, we must focus to make each chapter as colorful as we can.

We can only do this by short-term planning. We must stop making plans for years, and start focusing on days.

In simple words, do not think about what we should do for the rest of life; rather think about what we should do for tomorrow or for the next day.

You can either arrange a party with friends, or a short outdoor trip with family. If it is not possible for the day, you can either pick a book or select a movie for the day and enjoy your time.

Once you start making plans on daily basis, you will see how colorful and meaningful your life would become.

“A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

Bruce Lee

Final Thoughts

I hope you will find the above guide an ultimate panacea. Following the above-mentioned steps, you will get to know what to do with your life.

The point is; our outer world is the reflection of our inner self. If we see our life as insipid and uninspiring, it is because of our monotonous routine and limited life experiences.

To bring change in life, we need to change our lifestyle.

Going for a hike, making a short excursion, meeting with different people, and getting exposed to different experiences; all serve to change us from the inside so that our outer world would change.

Finally, you will be able to say confidently, “I know very well now, what I want to do with my life”.

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About the author

Aakif

A versatile human being with a passion for reading and writing - always striving for growth, living in the moment but trying to keep pace with the evolving world.

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