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What To Do With My Life- Stepping Out Of Your Boundaries
At a young age, the most common question that revolves around our mind is “what to do with my life?”. Sometimes we find ourselves at a point where we hit the dead-end or a path that has ended or seems to take us nowhere. We often keep saying to ourselves and our close friends that I don’t know what to do with my life anymore. If this is happening to you right now, you need certain tips that may help you realize and come with an answer to this question.
No matter what stage your life is at right now, if you are not happy where your life is leading to, or you do not know what step to take next, you must reevaluate.
Back in high school, I often thought about what to do with my life or what is going to be the next chapter, where I am going with my studies, which career should I pick next that would not make me regret later in my life. How do we find out what will make us satisfied and happy in the 50s?
One thing I realized is that all of us know what we want as a career deep down, but the surface thoughts are empty, most of us just take a step back because we do not think our desires are secure enough or big enough or we often remain scared of what will people think.
You cannot decide and know at 16 or 20, what will make you happy enough if you won’t be regretting later without even trying to do what seems fun right now, right? It is often a daunting task, but once you find out the path, there is nothing that can make you happier.
Life is mostly about trying different things and realizing in between what you do not like to do or what you cannot choose as a career. Sometimes after getting into a job you may realize the job is not for me in your 30s or sometimes you will know the answer right from the beginning just after crossing your high school.
here are few things you must read about to explore and find out the answer to your question- what to do with my life?
What To Do With My Life- Some Worth Knowing Tips
1. It is OKAY if you do not know right now
You must remember this point and piece of advice for your entire life. remember that you cannot figure out your whole future right now and you cannot decide if the career you have chosen right now will make you happy later or not. Things change, people change, perspective change, WE change.
You never know what is on your path. Life is full of interesting yet surprising twists and turns, just continue doing things that thrill you, excites you, and make you happy be it your personal life or your job. These things will make your journey fruitful and interesting rather than worrying unnecessarily over things that you and I cannot control.
Maybe you love creating DIY pieces right now, you can sell it as your career as it makes you happy and alive. After 5 years, who knows you might be the best at DIY clothes or jewelry and establish your own brand or you might have neglected this idea and moved on to something more fun, it does not matter unless you seem happy with your choices, after all, gut feeling is a wonderful gift.
Just try out things, your experience of DIY might help you in the future with some other projects or personal life experiences you will work on, you never know, do you?
2. Discomfort is not an enemy
Just try to be comfortable even in times of discomfort. Sometimes, life can be cruel and uncomfortable. You might end up being broke when you need money the most for your passion, things happen.
Sometimes your family might not support you with whatever you want to pursue and it causes discomfort to lie to them again and again, but for your dreams to come true and your satisfaction, you must accept the discomfort and take the risk.
3. Stop procrastinating
Know that you are not getting younger day by day. As rude and harsh as it sounds, it is the truth as it is how life goes unless you are a vampire, just kidding. If you do not start taking time seriously and pursue what you love. If you do not go for it right now, you will just find yourself with nothing, just a bunch of posts on Facebook and TV shows to watch.
Remember the famous saying- the best time to complete a task was yesterday, and the second-best time is NOW itself. So stop procrastinating. If you are sure and serious about your dream- whether it is skateboarding, jewelry making, fashion designing, dancing, singing, or being famous, you better step on the ladder to climb it.
Start taking your first steps, just turn off all the notifications from social media and start working on what feels right inside. Know that taking a single step towards your future is always better than thinking how great it could be.
Stop procrastinating and start focusing on what matters truly if you wish to reach somewhere and not regret it later.
4. Question yourself
Take some time off and ask yourself questions- the small ones and the big questions. It involves where do you wanna see yourself in the next 10 years or what you wish to prioritize. Learn about yourself through meditation. Note down all eh things that inspire you and interest you. Dream big and expand your thoughts. Quiet your mind and see yourself doing the things that you love. You might have made a picture in your mind right now reading this, this might be something you will love doing in the future.
Once you start asking yourself meaningful questions, you will feel motivated to find answers. remember that by practicing useful things like these, you are creating a better version of yourself by little steps that make you invincible.
5. Explore Your Interests
One thing you must always know is that laziness is an antagonist to success. Go for exploring your interest in tangible ways. Build your portfolio and start reaching out.
Even if you er not sure if something interests you or not, you can just try things out to at least cut that option out from the list. It helps you rule out things you do not want to pursue as a career.
Know that it is never too late to discover your interest or build a new hobby. Look for activities to take part in to explore your interests. If you enjoy doing something that interests you to avoid work there are good chances that interest you. Learn work values to know more about your interests.
6. Talk to successful people
Once you know what interests you, you can build a career in that firm. Try to look for people successful people in that firm and contact them. Talk about their experience and how they began their careers initially.
By talking to people who have been in the same career and same interests as yours, you could be one step closer to your dream job and life. You can gain more knowledge and insights into their motivation sources and ambitions. Know what made them so successful and how they go there.
This can help you immensely in choosing a path that you desire. If you cannot contact them directly because of the busy schedule or status of a person you admire or get inspiration from, you can also reach out to watch their interviews. Loo for other interviews online related to your career path and job. In between this process of looking out for people, you might find someone you can look up to.
Watch videos, listen to podcasts, and read books of famous people whose life journey has played a major role in building your morals and values. If you wish to e successful, it is a great idea to follow in the footsteps of people who inspire you. These people might have some stories to tell that may match yours or build a clear picture to achieve your goals.
7. Be patient and wait for answers
Unfortunately, knowing your interest and figuring out what you love overnight is not possible for everyone. This isn’t something that will happen in one day and the next day you will be successful, life doesn’t work like a fairytale.
Know that our interests change constantly so finding that one interest that can help you make money too can be hectic. You might be anxious sometimes even if you are following the right path. Instead of dreading the stress that comes with new experiences, you must embrace the changes that come in your path. These will shape you and help you grow.
Do not feel and about yourself if something is not working out, think positively as the experience has helped you in ruling out certain options from your path.
8. Consider your experience, education, and strength
Ask yourself- what to do with my life and what skills will make me do that? List out things that you have to offer and gather strength to proceed in that direction.
The foremost important thing is, to be honest with yourself. Know what you can offer and what field is of interest to you. You might have to learn out new skills for your interest. List out skills needed, skills you already have, and the skills you need.
Look for online courses, certification classes, and schools that can help you with your future. It is important to remain open to new experiences every time. All the accomplishments you achieve now will help you in a long term.
Craft cover letters and resumes that may help you get your first gig as a fresher so that you can learn more from these experiences.
9. Start savings
If your interest or goals in life has to do with a lot of money, start saving now itself because there is no better time to do it but now. This simple everywhere, even if you want admission to a good college that requires money, start saving today itself.
Look for part-time jobs that can help you with the experience and closure you require at a young age or at least that can pay your a good amount to add up to your savings. Even if the amount is not too tempting, little savings every now ad then can make a huge impact in few years and you will have the desired amount needed.
10. Always answer the door
Sometimes you knock all the opportunities off. Opportunities might be knocking on your door but if you do not answer the door at that moment, know that there are hundreds and thousands of people waiting for the same to be picked.
You must take all the opportunities presented to you. Sometimes you might be going through tough times or the time may not be perfect but that doesn’t matter in a long run. Just think about your future and ask yourself questions like “will I feel the same about this problem months later?” No right, because issues come and go but opportunities to enhance your growth might not every time. Just get going whatever it is.
11. The people you look up to have also failed tons of times
Know that it is completely okay to fail, no one is perfect. Nothing will make you slow down more than your own thoughts and fear of what will people say or fear of being failed in the thing you love the most. Do not let that stop you or have seconds thoughts regarding things. You might have heard this a lot of times by now, in quotes, TED talks, movies, or somewhere else, people say it for a reason buddy.
You will never be able to nail down what makes you happy if you are always in fear of losing. It takes you nowhere. Start learning skills that are required to accomplish what your heart desires. Most people fail in their first,s second, third, and god knows how many efforts and attempts. We all have a story to share about our failure. Just recall stories you have read from your role models, haven’t they failed a dozen times?
Failing makes us learn and avoid the mistakes we did previously. take time to learn, fail, experiment with things, grow, and repeat.
12. Enjoy Not Knowing
Recall your mats problems in senior secondary, they seemed impossible for a long time but at last, you were able to solve them with a big grin on your face. You just needed a small break and gossip with friends and you were good to go. Nothing has still changed, you’re the same, don’t let the child in yourself die. Just take a break and figure out things, reevaluate things. Your life is no less than a math problem ( for some people it may be as hard as trigonometry, but you got it) and o find the solution of “what to do with my life”, you got to wait and take breaks.
Enjoy taking breaks, not knowing what to do is sometimes the best thing and tasks you to unknown places which may seem interesting, you never know. The more you appreciate your present, the more chances of a fantastic future become. Don’t pressurize yourself to be in the future because this is an endless game.
13. Get clear on what you believe in and who you are
The key to living a fulfilled life is to live a coherent life where what you believe in, who you are, and how you spend your time are aligned. Coherent life is lived in a way where all these three things are connected through the dots.
This is the time when you need to research yourself to know yourself to the core (most people do not practice this). This involves different steps in which things are done such as:
- Knowing what you are good at.
- Knowing your values and realizing what is it that you feel close to your heart and is most important to you.
- Identifying opportunities and challenges in the world.
Let’s see each of these steps in detail to know more about them and fulfill your dreams.
1. Know your strengths or what you are good at
These include things or activities you are naturally good at. You may not realize it but you do have some strengths due to which you’re good at certain things and they come easily to you. Once you recognize your strengths, you know what you are good at, you often enjoy doing those things because you somewhere know you’re better than everyone.
Remember that the career which uses your strengths is always the one you should go for as it makes you happy.
2. Know your values
Your values are generally what is most important to you in your life. For example curiosity, experience, freedom, health, vibrancy, etc. You have to decide what values define you. Just write them down and work on them.
The best time to figure out everything is to recall a time when you were happy and everything seemed perfect such that you wouldn’t change a single thing of that moment or day. Write down about that day and ask yourself what values do you witness.
For example, if the day you recall is somewhere you were on a beach, then the values may be adventure, freedom, travel, independence, etc. Once you can list out all the values out of an experience, just arrange them to form your top 3 or top 5.
3. Identify the opportunities and challenges you acre about
What are some of the opportunities or challenges you see in your surroundings or the world you live in?
Think about the newspaper articles, documentaries, blogs, magazines, youtube videos. topics discussed with friends and note down some of the things that attach you the most or you are naturally drawn to them.
Once you can list themes and topics, go through each of these in detail and identify what are the opportunities or challenges you can find. By identifying these, know where there is potential to add your values. This is because adding your values to the career you chose gives a meaningful purpose to the firm and your personal life.
Do not be afraid to think outside of the box like most people are. Remember the main goal of this pint is to start thinking about how you can combine or align three main things- what you believe in, who you are, and what you do. This will lead you to find out “what to do with my life”.
14. Building a strong mindset
Most people cannot answer the question “what to do with my life”. This is mainly because they know what exactly needs to be done and what exactly they find interesting but they cannot execute or walk on that path due to excuses, self-doubts, fears, and what will people think.
just open yourself up and you will see a lot of clarity in things that need to be done. Do not let fear hold you back. You need to have a strong mindset to achieve something big and fulfill your dreams. Life is a process of making wrong choices and leading to the right path. There are many options open in front of you, just stop running after one. Start welcoming polyamory life where you can decide on different careers and see which one seems more interesting and fun to you.
Instead of thinking- what to do with my life, think about different options that can be done right now and rule them out accrdngly. Dodge all your fears and self-doubts. No one can succeed until they leave their fears behind.
15. Get out and push yourself to make stuff happen
remember that the people who are living the best of their life are not the ones who had clarity from the beginning itself on what to do, instead, it is those people who did not let fear hold them behind and build a strong mindset to proceed further.
They are living the best life because they were not afraid to take risks, even though they failed miserably at times, it did not shatter their confidence. They were willing to walk through uncomfortable paths despite so many inscruties, fears, imposter syndrome, and what not!
Know that everyone has the freedom to chose their oath and reach their desired destination. Just check your mindset, start thinking about what you believe in, and know your values.
Know that despite knowing and having a proper answer to your question- “what to do with my life”, the road to success will not become any easier. Life can be messy sometimes with a lot of ups and downs, do not let them divert your oath or hold you from reaching your goals and fulfilling them.
Few More Thoughts!
The most important thing which you must know is that when you are trying to figure out “what to do with my life” you must take action based on your thoughts. You must take action and try things out instead of focusing on others’ success and feeling exhausted with yourself.
Know that it is never too late to start everything or know what you love. At the end of your life, you will be grateful to have tried so many things in between. You will love your failures and embrace them without any regret of never trying things.
