Make a plan
Everything in life comes with instructions right? How do you put this Ikea cabinet together, well with these instructions right? And if those are hard to read there are YouTube videos and customer service and all sorts of avenues to go down that help you figure out how to build it. But what about your life? You came to this rock and now you have no idea where you want to go or what you want to do. There are no instructions on living just a lot of input from parents, family, friends, school, tv, boyfriends/girlfriends, co-workers, and so on but you did not come here with an instruction manual for operation. That’s where it gets tough because now you have all this data you were raised on that was taught to you from your environment about who you should be and may not of nurtured who you are. Then you spend your 20’s & 30’s working on sorting out the data, figuring out how to heal from it and find your own voice in it.
It can be exhausting. As soon as you start to find a path maybe some obstacle comes up or something basically denies you access because you can’t possibly go down this route. Sifting through years of self-doubts, years of others telling you who you are and how to live is why we have so many people not knowing what they want. You grow up wanting to impress your family and friends and make them proud by doing exactly what your dad did, only to find that you silenced your passion to appease others.
So how can we find out what we want when we have all that head noise going on? Well the first thing I would say is find a therapist to help you understand yourself better and create awareness in you. They will be able to help separate you from the past and give you the tools to start looking inward. Make sure to find the right one because not all therapists have your healing as a priority, find someone kind who listens to hear not listens to again dictate who you are and prescribe drugs. (If you need a prescription there is no shame, but finding healthy coping mechanisms should be the first priority then drugs if you truly can’t.) At least that is my opinion. Please take that with a grain of salt.
Then after you started doing that internal work on shuffling papers around and de-cluttering your life next start finding your likes. Even if it’s something you aren’t good at, something you haven’t done, or something you just find interesting put it on the list. Along with this put qualities you like as well like not dealing with customers or have more one on one interactions with people rather than in masses, or leading people as a team by using my organization skills. Put down whatever qualities you have or like or want to possess. After this I want you to list your current skills down along with your current qualities. This may be different than the ideal list of things you want or like and that’s okay because this is where we get to determine where we are now. Take stock in our person then from there compare it to what we want and then start working on steps to achieve them.
Once you do your dream lists and your current lists now we can start looking at careers that will be best suited for your dream list. This is when you take your skills, qualities and hopes and look at jobs that have these on them. This means for example if you are super into creative writing and you love puzzles, and you want to be charismatic, work by yourself and own your own business then maybe you write a mystery series. Or you can look into writing coding or system analyst. Write out a few careers that have some of the things you love and see if they match up to you. This is important, be patient here. When looking at the careers some may require you to go back to school, you won’t have the skills to do the job right now that is why you have to cultivate them. Also if you go back to school and after a year decide it’s not right for you that is perfectly okay. It was not time wasted because now you narrowed down your search even more. You found more things you like and more things you don’t.
The most important thing is that you just keep trying things until you like it and even then in 20 years you may no longer find yourself happy with it. That is the beauty about life, we are constantly changing and growing and honing our person like a knife till we are sharp and direct. So give yourself a break in this whole process and make a plan by figuring out the things you like and want for yourself. No one has a say in that except for you, you determine exactly what you want to do and that is it. If others throw wrenches in the mix then that is a reflection of their own insecurities being projected onto you. Don’t take it personally. I will say this though if you have no desires and dreams then maybe take time for yourself to go inward. We all have something that we want out of life even if it’s being a millionaire and doing hobbies all the time. If that’s the case then find a way to get there by making a plan. Retire at 30 and do it. You don’t have to settle for the ordinary, you don’t have to accept the paycheck to paycheck life. You can do anything you wish to it just requires you to live your life rather than autopilot it. And if you need help figuring out what you want shoot me an email. I’d love to help you find the thing you want and take steps to get there. Just know it may not be a fast process and you may have to grind for a bit. You don’t become a level 100 overnight, you have to grind that shit. Be well my friends :)
Today was a 9.