Especially young people are often asking themselves: What should I do in life? What is my perfect job, what is my mission here?
And all too often, we don’t have the answer.
It’s ironic that in our western civilisation with so many pathways to choose and so many opportunities to go for, we get stuck, not knowing what it is that we want. This question has always been present, but perhaps we thought we are going to find the answer one beautiful morning. Perhaps someone can tell us what we should do. But with time we change jobs, we change hobbies, and we are still lost… just as we were at the beginning.
How come we don’t know what we want?
And how can we know?
I myself have been dealing with this question for a long time. At the end I came up with two main reasons for why we don’t know what we want.
#1 We don’t know ourselves
It’s a matter of fact that most people have never investigated themselves. We are often interested more in things happening around us than things happening inside us. We know what our favourite food is, where we like to spend our holidays and what we like or dislike on the opposite sex. But that’s not enough.
Getting into personal development and discovering the world inside you is one of the most fascinating journeys you can make. You’ll discover new territories, re-evaluate things you thought were obvious and learn a bit more about the person you should know best: yourself.
Unless you really know yourself, your hidden desires, your strengths, what drives you… you probably won’t find the job or life mission that fulfils you.
#2 We are afraid to choose the path that our hearts desire
The second reason for not knowing what you want is because you’re afraid. Your fears are simply keeping your true desire hidden from your consciousness. We have many fears we are not fully conscious about: the fear of rejection, failure, being laughed at… even the fear of success and its possible consequences, like our friends envying us.
You might want to do something that would force you to change the country and you’re afraid of being alone. Or you want to start a project you’re passionate about but you’re afraid to fail.
Whatever your case is, see which fear is holding you back from knowing what you want to do in life. What would you do if you didn’t have this fear?
Questions to ask yourself:
To help you find what has always been inside you, but what you lost the sight of, have a look at the questions below.
Answer them with your heart, not with your mind. Just answer what you feel like, and forget what is right/wrong, im/possible, if you’re capable of it or not.
What person do you admire for their job, or you envy his/her job?
What would you do if you weren’t afraid of anything? What would you do if you knew a 100% that you would succeed?
What did you want to do when you were a child?
What is it that you want people to say about you?
Still no idea? Try this.
Close your eyes and imagine yourself waking up in the morning with enthusiastic energy, so much looking forward to the day that’s ahead of you. Go into the details:
At what time do you wake up? In which place and which bed? Is it where you live now or perhaps a different place? Decide whatever feels the best.
What is the first thing you do? Do you prepare yourself to go out or stay at home? If you go out, what are you wearing and what are you taking with yourself? If you stay at home, what do you do next?
Imagine the best working day for you, but do it step by step. Start by getting up and end by going to sleep. Take little imaginary decisions, it’s a day-dreaming exercise. It might reveal something that you kept hidden!
If you lack imagination and you really don’t know how your day would look like, don’t worry. Maybe it’s not the best day to do this exercise. Try to do it when you are calm, with no problems in your head, and when you can connect with your intuition. I’m sure you’ll find something!