How To Know What You Want To Do In Your Life
“I have no idea what I want to do.”
“But I know I want to do something big. What is that? I want to be famous. I want to do something to this world. I wish I am strong enough to concentrate on one single thing and do everything to be the best at it.”
We all have the same problem. We make varieties of decisions in our head to accomplish. In real, these entire tasks can never be accomplished at once.
Rome was not built in a day.
Have clear thought on “what to do” is one of the most common questions, we all have. People are looking for new ventures, relations and so on. Some of us feel that we are entering a period of our life where we should have clarity in what we want to do. Yes, and this is true for all us at any age where we know what is good or bad.
However, unknown quest makes all of us frustrated. Achievements may not shape it that way. We feel most of the time that that if we can discover what we want to do, we can get started on it right away, rather than wasting time doing seemingly unrelated things.
It is very tough to find what we are looking for. To get an idea of what we you want to do, we have to first base it off a reference point. This reference point is based on your past experiences. If you have not accumulated a set amount of experiences, you can’t possibly generate a meaningful answer in that regard.
We take this example here; You want to buy a new cell phone. However, you have never used one ever. You don’t know how a cell phone looks like or what it does other than making calls. How many types and brnad there in the market, which one is the best or matches our requirements.
What do we do in this situation?
Option I
Will you sit back home and do some imagination over what mobile phone you should buy, waiting for the answer to pop up out of the ceiling.
Or,
Will you start getting information on what cell phone is. Get out from the room and and explore the different phones in the market. You want to try out it too. May be using your friends’ or out in the shops.
Which option do you choose?
Which option has ability to give you new insights, new information, and new data points for you to base your decision on?
Which option is a more reliable method to get you what you want?
If you are thinking option II, we are thinking the same thing.
You see where I’m getting at with this?
The Cloud in your thought
For you to know what you want to do, you should have some kind of experience you can refer to. Now, if you have never been out there getting into the thick of things, there’s not going to be a lot of things to reference with in your mind. There’s a cloud in your mind, and the cloud exists because you have never ventured much beyond your current point.
It’s like asking: what your favorite meat to a vegetarian or what’s your favorite restaurant when you are self-cooked person.
The cloud remains in you as long as you stay still. It’ll still be uncertain, hazy, possibly confusing and disempowering. To clear out the cloud, you need to explore, see and learn. You need to get out of the boundaries and start trying out new and different things. You have to acquire experience, to pick up new knowledge, to get yourself into new situations. By building up as many of these experiences as possible, you create a baseline reference point in your mind. The more experiences you get, the more knowledgeable you become, the clearer you are of what you don’t like and what you like to doing or doing, and the more you discover what you don’t want to do and what you want to do, it is becomes more easy for you to choose.
How to know what you want to do in life
One of the key things that help you is you should know what interest you most what you want more to be like. It is said, when you do what you interest you, you never get tired. Work becomes fun. It is not true that all the great men have complete clarity of what they wanted to do in their life in early age. But they followed their instinct, inner want and passion. That made them great of all times.
All of us remember…. in childhood days the blessing from our elders “may you be a renowned person”. That made us think what that means. We always love reading about all great men, poet, artists actors, leaders and scientist. We also get inspired to be as such. Though we did not have that clarity of what makes me great. We all wanted to make the best out of our life and be a person of value to the society, and that meant doing our best and achieving our highest potential. Therefore the first thing is what you really like to be like.
And here is first clue, “pursue your goal”. Make a goal.
“Make a goal.”
In every sport, you have goal to accomplish to win. That is what entire team is focused at. In football, the mission of every player is to win the game by make score and stop opponents to make score against you. All the 11 players are playing for the same ultimate goal to win. Scoring more than the opponent is your goal.
The personal priorities and way of living may change going along life. However, just take your goal of life with you always. It is not possible to be busy in something else to say I forgot my goal….that means you did not have a proper goal. Make it strong.
Put all your effort in doing what you are doing. Don’t make open goal, like – to be a good person, a man which honesty, a simple man. These should be the way to accomplish your goal but cannot be your goal. Make a solid goal, and possibly tangible. If you want to be a good public speaker, make a first goal to give a speech at least with few people in the public place. When you attend this goal, fix again it bigger. May second is to give a speech to about 100 people.
When you are in school, set your eyes at higher level. Don’t just think of passing. Think for a big score. No matter how much you get at the end what matters is your attitude and the knowledge you gained. When you aim high, you would gain more.
he whole process of setting goals, strategizing, planning, taking action, reviewing the results and readjusting your plans, and finally achieving the results, would be very rewarding to you. Every planned step of the journey would let you towards your goal.
Failure may bring clues you always have lots to learn even from the failure.
Thomas Edison a renowned scientist allegedly said, "I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways which do NOT make a light bulb."
You learn something new about the world and yourself, if you want to be. Learning about yourself is most important to learn something new about the world. Sometimes failure may make you more self-aware, you may then discover you more, your strengths, blind spots, your values, and most important – “what does not work for you.” You may realize those which you thought were important to you may not actually what you wanted. Sometimes, you would never have realized any single one of these things if I had never failed. Sometimes the failure may finally make you realize what you wanted to do.
Keys to find what you want
Hence, the key to know what you want to do is to get out there and gain as much experience as you can and do the following quests
(1) See what you interests doing more (which is not harmful to anyone)
For that you must have to see varieties of things in life. Have various experiences and explored the new opportunities.
(2) See what makes you feel satisfied after doing
Very important is your inner satisfaction. When you feel satisfied after doing something, yes that is what your goal should be. If you pursue what you desire you would succeed.
(3) See if you want to learn and do more in this area, without any external pressure from anyone.
This is the key element that you for what you are doing.
(4) Ask yourself once in a while, if you are satisfied and like what you are doing. You may lie the world but you cannot lie yourself. The answer from your inner self is “yes”. Then you are all set.
Then where to start first, the simple answer
“With the thing you wanted to do all the time”.
How to find it?
Take out a piece of pen and paper.
Write those things in which you have succeeded most of the time.
Write those things which you tried but failed.
Write out a list of all the things you have always wanted to try, but have never tried.
Write down what all you want to do.
Write down what you never wanted and never like to do.
Match your success and failure with that list with your wants and dislikes. See the relation of success and failure with those with you like and dislike lists. That is your answer.
Move Ahead You should not at once change your profession or the thing you are doing, if you are not made for what you are doing. But now, you seek for those things inside what you are doing without affecting the relation, your life and earnings. This is the key.