What do you want in life? 9 ways to figure out
When people are asked what they want from their life, they use mostly formulaic answers, such as a good salary, a stable job, a strong family, but they literally don’t explain what your want in life. Few people know what they want to strive for. And the sooner you understand this, the less you will worry about your uncertainty.
There is nothing wrong with not being able to plan your life for years to come. And although the search for the meaning of life is one of your main goals, it is quite normal to answer the questions of others with an honest phrase: “I don’t know what I want.” Recognizing a problem is the first step towards solving it. If you want to understand what you expect from life, try not to sit idly by, but make some effort to find your way.
How to figure out what you want in life
Try new things as often as possible
How will you understand what you want from life if you don’t try anything new? If you are not inspired by your work, hobbies, and life in general, stop sticking to your old goals and habits. Please don’t hold on to the past; it only takes you further from understanding who you are and what is important to you.
Start with less: more often agree to different adventures, listen to yourself, experiment with organizing your leisure time, talk to new interesting people who can make your life brighter.
Pay no attention to inner anxiety
If any changes in your life cause you inner anxiety, there is nothing to worry about. You start to step out of your comfort zone, and this process is invariably accompanied by anxiety and stress. You start to do what you have never done, or what you are not used to; it scares you, makes you think about how to return everything as it was before.
It is imperative that you can force yourself to move on and not roll back a few steps at this stage.
If in doubt about your goal, give yourself time to try
It is unlikely that you will ever be overshadowed, and you will immediately understand what you are living for. Your meaning in life can only be found empirically. So often, give yourself a chance to try something new, even if you doubt your goal.
Until you begin to implement it, you will not be able to make sure that it suits you or does not suit you. Failure, making mistakes, and being disappointed in your beliefs and values is the only way to figure out what you need from life.
Stop doing anything that makes you bored
Stop wasting your time and energy on activities that make you bored. You only drain your internal resources instead of directing them to essential tasks that meet your values and interests.
As soon as you find the strength to give up everything that bothers you, you will have a lot of opportunities to prove yourself from a new side.
Imagine what you would be doing if you did not need to work
This is a very powerful exercise that will help you understand what you want out of life. So, imagine: you have enough money in your account so that in the next 50 years you can safely provide yourself with everything you need while not working. Yes, this is practically the dream life of any person, but after getting rid of work, you get a huge amount of free time that needs to be spent on something.
So think about how you would spend your days. Maybe you would be involved in charity work, have mastered a sport to perfection, started writing your music or flew on a trip around the world. Be extremely honest with yourself because, in these answers, your meaning of life lies.
Remember what you are good at
Perhaps in childhood or adolescence, you went to certain hobby groups, attended sports sections, or even managed to graduate from a music or art school. Over time, your priorities could change, or you could stop allocating enough time for your hobbies. Maybe your parents just influenced your choice of college or university, and you had to forget about your hobbies.
In any case, if your hobby has to be postponed, this does not mean that you have lost all the necessary knowledge and skills to do it again. Suddenly, since childhood, you dreamed of becoming a graphic designer or musician, and so, you can easily make your dreams come true now. Stop looking for excuses for your inaction, and remember that it is never too late to find your way.
Determine who you envy
Perhaps you have friends, acquaintances, classmates whose life you follow with interest. You often go to their pages on social networks, read their posts, look at their photos. It seems to you that they live an ideal life, and you even feel certain envy and a share of regret that you are not in their place.
Take a close look at these people, or rather, how they live. Most likely, they have what you so desperately dream of, not even admitting it to yourself.
Stop limiting yourself to one thing
Who said that there could be only one goal in life. You can simultaneously want from life and a strong family, and a good career, and the opportunity to travel the world. Just stop limiting yourself by trying to choose one thing.
You can have a whole list of things that you ever want to do. And this is great because it sounds like a ready-made life plan into which you can add new points over time.
Be as honest as possible with yourself
Often behind the misunderstanding of what you want from life, the usual desire to please others is hidden. Perhaps your meaning in life sounds too stupid to them or contradicts their views and values. You must realize that only you have the right to control your life.
And if the opinion of the people around you forces you to change your priorities, this will only make you worse in the future. Imagine this situation: someday, you will wake up and realize that your whole life is shit, and all your decisions were made because of the fear of not being like everyone else. You can waste a ton of time and energy trying to impress those who don’t give a damn about you. Or you can live the way you always wanted.
