I Don’t Know What To Do With My Life?

A Guide to Getting Up and Getting On With Your Life

It’s a beautiful day outside. The sun’s shining, and you can smell the flowers from your couch. Maybe your friends are on the phone, telling you to come to hang out at that cafe near the station.

All that, and yet you feel… nothing. You can’t bring yourself to care about what a nice day it is, and your friends seem like a bother.

We’ve all been stuck in a place like that, where nothing excites us, at one point or the other. It’s the worst kind of rut to fall into, and it’s frankly depressing.

The question is, how do you get out of the rut?

How do you find that one thing, that purpose, that makes your eyes open wide and your blood rush through your ears? How, really, do you feel alive?

Read Also: What to do when you don’t know what to do?

Thankfully, we’re not leaving you to find an answer to that by yourself. Below, we will explore some of the best ways to get up and get on with your life.

Before we do, though, there’s something we need to talk about. What’s Your Life Like Right now?

Falling into a rut has many effects on our mental health. Depression, anxiety, constant tension, and dissatisfaction: the list is a mile long.

The worst, though, is the uncertainty. It’s the fact that we don’t know what’s wrong with our lives or what’s making us unhappy right now. We have no idea what needs to change, and that’s scary.

You could have a good job, a loving family, and a hobby you enjoy and still feel like you’re not doing as much as you could be.  We’re here to tell you that it’s not just you being weird. Thousands of people worldwide feel like that.

So what’s the problem? What’s making you feel unhappy? There could be lots of things troubling you.

Too much change, for instance. Humans need time to adjust to change, and if they aren’t allowed to take that time, change can get overwhelming very quickly.  On the other hand, if you’re constantly dealing with one problem or the other and making decisions day after day, it’s easy to get stressed out from that too.

Dealing With Uncertainty: How You’re Going to Move On

Getting out of your rut means dealing with everything troubling you, and that… That doesn’t come easy.

The whole thing starts with asking yourself some hard questions to know what’s wrong and then taking affirmative action to create the changes you need.

And when we say hard questions, we mean the core stuff, like:

1. Pay Attention to Your Inner Child

The hustle and bustle of daily life often make us forget about our emotions, and it’s essential to pay attention to the things we feel.

Something you’ll often see is people forgetting about their inner child.

That’s because they forget that their inner child still exists deep down somewhere. It’s the purest, most unfiltered expression of their instincts.

Your inner child is the most authentic version of yourself, and if you want to be happy in life, listening to your inner child will never be a bad idea.

But that doesn’t mean we’re telling you to sit down and play with legos. Instead, think back to how you reacted to stuff as a child, and ask yourself questions like:

• What did you like doing?
• What did you think about the world?
• What changed the way you used to look at the world?
• And are there things that the child you wouldn’t like about you right now?

2. What Are Some Things in Your Life You Want to Change?

Being happy isn’t something you’re going to be without first taking the plunge and being brutally honest with yourself.

You could have everything going right, but a single central thing going wrong that’s making you unhappy.

For those times when you don’t know what’s wrong, we have a piece of advice that’s golden:

Make a list of everything good in your life. And when you’re done with that, make a list of everything, small or large, that’s going wrong.

Some of the usual suspects you want to be taking a look at are:

• The life habits you have and those of people around you.
• The path your career is taking, and how happy you are with it.
• Are you maybe in a toxic relationship, and your partner’s tantrums keep you unhappy?
• Last but not least, are you doing the same thing every day?

3. Knowing What You Want in Life

The most practical advice you will get when trying to find your purpose is to find your sweet spot.

That means finding out what excites you and where your natural talent lies.

We’re not kidding. Even if you feel like you’re not good at anything, every human being has a talent for something.

And even if you’re not particularly good at a single thing, does it make you happy? If so, it might be worth putting in the effort to improve.

This step is about identifying your passion and taking the joy you get from it to reinvigorate your life with a sense of achievement.

A better, simple way is to ask yourself the following questions:

• What makes you happy?
• Who do you want to help?
• What’s the result that makes you happy?

After all, don’t they say somebody who enjoys what he does will never work a day in his life?

4. Knowing What Happens if You Stay on the Sidelines

The image you have of a fulfilled life, where you’re happy and doing what you want, is the carrot. The incentive to go out and change your life.

But if you have a carrot, you need a stick too. Take five minutes from your day and imagine what happens if you stay where you are. If you never change.

Play out the road you’re on 10, 20, or even 30 years into the future.

If you feel disgusted with the image you’re seeing, that’s the incentive, right there, to bring about the changes you need in your life.

Discovering Through Experimenting: A Conclusion

We’re going to tell you something to change the way you’re looking at this: You don’t need to get it right immediately.  You don’t need to overhaul your life right now to feel happy. Instead, start small. Change the little things making you unhappy, and build up to the big stuff.

This counts for your hobbies and interests too. Start experimenting to see what you like. You’ll feel like you’re doing something, and even better when you discover what you do want!