I Don’t Know What To Do With My Life! | Gala Darling
Adorn Yourself, Adore Your Life
I recently received an email from a very sweet girl, asking me for my advice on choosing a career, & working out what you want to do with your life. She said,
“I just ended my four-month contract with a company that paid well and had good prospects just because it really bored me to death and now I feel like I should’ve tried harder to make things work.”
Dear Brave Girl,
First of all, congratulations on doing what is best for you! Quitting a job which makes you feel like you’re decomposing is an INCREDIBLY liberating feeling.
Secondly, please, my darling, don’t feel bad about leaving your soul-sucking, spirit-crushing boredom festival. I mean, uh, job with good prospects! Do you know why you shouldn’t feel bad about leaving it? A boring job is not like a boring pair of jeans — with boring jeans, you can throw on a red sequinned bolero, tease your hair to the heavens & wear a pair of shoes so magnificent that your jeans will suddenly seem invisible. But a boring job is not as versatile. Those bastards have you chained to a desk, eight hours a day. It’s such a huge chunk of your life gone, & if your boss suddenly turns into a monster (among other possible worst case scenarios), it can really cast an ugly pallor on everything else.
Simply put, it is impossible to be happy when your job makes you want to throw yourself out the window.
Oh baby, I’ve been there! I know how bad it can get. Four & a half years was my limit. “No more!”, I said. After travelling for a few months with my boyfriend, I realised that the last thing I wanted to do was go back to an office, or work in a shop. The boring corporate brigade versus standing on my feet selling rubbish… hmmm, difficult toss-up!
So, how did I know what I wanted to do? Well, I didn’t really. For a couple of years prior, I had this idea that I wanted to start a magazine. I’d taken a publishing course, picked out a name, registered domains & everything. But the closer I looked at the industry, the less I liked it. For one, magazines are totally wasteful — I don’t think I could bear the guilt of killing so many trees. Secondly, you have to kiss advertiser butt — not my style. Thirdly, magazines are just a terrible concept! You can never find anything in a stack of magazines, the indexing is awful, & once August is over (for example), no one’s going to buy it. The expense in starting up a magazine (on any decent scale) is HUGE & it just started to look more & more unstable. I didn’t really know what to do.
My boyfriend recommended I read the website of this guy called Steve Pavlina. I think the first article I read by him was . (Read it! Please!) I couldn’t believe what I read. It made me so angry, as I realised everything he said was true. Then I started to work through his other stuff — my second read was . Then I listened to his podcasts while I exercised at the gym upstairs & surveyed the city below me. ,
are all great bits of audio.
I started to make a list of possible things I could do to earn money. I have always known, instinctively, that writing is what I should be doing. I’ve been writing stories, poems, journals & anything else I could think of since a very young age. I think, though, that someone had convinced me that writers don’t make any money, so I had decided that I wasn’t going to do that. Pfffttttt! I should have listened to my mother, who always told me, “do what you love & the money will follow”. The idea of starting my magazine, NOW, online, on a smaller scale, occured to me. I started turning it over in my head, thinking about how I could do it. I wrote my first article, , & was instantly hooked! My boyfriend & I cobbled a site together… & here we are today.
I wouldn’t do anything else.
So — here are my tips.
Make lists of things you think you would enjoy doing. Show them to your friends & family, get their opinion. There might be something obvious that you forgot to put down. If they make rude comments or act negatively, please don’t listen! They’re just jealous that they’re not as brave as you are… (If that’s not working, .)
Focus on what you WANT! What would your dream career be like? (For example, I never thought that taking narcissistic photos of myself, one of my favourite ever things to do, would generate income… & yet!) If you have fears (“I’m not capable of making any money”; “I’m a failure”; “I have no skills”; “I’m a talentless hack”; “no one will ever take me seriously”; “I fear that branching out on my own will prove how lame I really am!”), use
to get rid of them.
Start now, if not sooner. If you don’t want to start without a nest-egg, start working towards building up that money. Get a couple of extra jobs if you can. Make that nest-egg your top priority.
Do your research. Check out other people doing something like what you want to do. How professional are they? What do they charge? Make a list of ways in which you are going to be better than them.
Know when to throw in the towel. Everyone has bad days, even in their dream career — for me, sometimes I can’t think of a single thing to write, can’t dress myself & feel like locking myself in a cupboard — but it’s not because I hate my job, it’s because I’m moody. Learn to differentiate between a bad day & actually disliking what you’re doing.
You will make mistakes. Make them quickly! In my experience, the more things you try, the closer you get to doing what you REALLY want.
Be brave. Have faith in yourself. Know that you can do it! ‘Cause you can, baby!
Now that you have read this, I would like you to do yourself a favour. This favour involves getting your hands on a whiteboard pen. Take this pen, go to the mirror or window you look at most often, & write upon it three quotes. (If you like, you can write the quotes on different windows. Wild, isn’t it?!)
“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.” — Andy Warhol
I would say good luck, but you don’t need it, you little genius!
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“He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.” ~Chinese Proverb
Here’s the thing: I don’t know what to do.
About this thing, about that thing. About big things and small things.
About anything.
Actually, to be honest, even the smallest thing seems big when I don’t know what to do about it. The state of “not knowing what to do” is like some kind of Miracle Grow for small things in my mind.
This is not a new thing. Not knowing what to do is a particular and well-honed talent of mine. I can even juggle several not knowing what-to-dos at once.
For example, at the moment I don’t know whether to go away with my friends this weekend or not. And if I do will I take the train? Or get a lift?
I don’t know whether to take that new job. And if I do, when should I start it? What about all those other job offers that will flood through the door the minute I say yes to this one?
I don’t know whether to start the diet tomorrow. Or today. Or next week. Or not at all. I don’t know whether to call my counselor or ride this one out alone.
I don’t know what is best, what is right. I don’t know what I want to do.
Do you know what else I don’t know? I don’t know what to do about not knowing what to do.
And whenever I feel like this (which is not always, but often), I start not knowing what to do about things I did know what to do about before. Things I had already
on, things I felt excited and sure about before, now feel wobbly and wrong. Even though I know the decisions felt right when I made them.
My brain starts questioning it all: What if I didn’t really know what to do then either, and just decided on something that wasn’t really the right thing to do after all? What if it turns out to be “wrong”? What if I acted on impulse and didn’t think it all through properly?
It’s like I’m mourning all the other possible options that will never, ever happen now because I didn’t choose them.
The little voice in my head chides me: If you choose option a, then such and such might happen, which could lead to x and then that may mean y. Had I known in the beginning about y, maybe I wouldn’t have chosen that original thing. Or would I? How do I know?
And this , the worry, the , the not knowing, it isn’t picky. It doesn’t just stick to the thing I’m not sure about. It leaks. It seeps into everything else, so instead of feeling uncertain or anxious about one thing in particular, about one decision specifically, I feel anxious, uncertain, and worried full stop. I forget what started it. I just feel it.
I feel it in my chest, near my heart. In my throat. It feels like guilt, muddled with , with overtones of panic and an undercurrent of fear. It feels hard and cold, like a vice-like grip.
And I don’t like it. But I just don’t know what to do about it. So I do nothing. Except worry and be anxious that doing nothing is not the right thing to do. It’s exhausting, it’s frustrating, and it’s totally and utterly unproductive.
And the only thing that makes it stop? Is to just decide and do something. To just do anything.
And the only way to know what to do? Well actually, there is no answer to that one.
Other than to not worry about worrying. To not feel anxious about feeling anxious. To accept that there is no .
To breathe. To try to feel beyond the worry, to try to feel the answer rather than (over) think it.
To stop trying to second-guess every possible outcome of every possible decision. To stop trying to control and account for every accountability. It just isn’t possible.
I can’t know what will happen. I can’t know how I will feel about any of it. I can’t know whether the decision I make is any better or worse than any other decision I could have made because I am only ever going to experience the one path I do choose.
So I can only react with what I have, what I know, and how I feel, right here and right now. And I don’t need to I just need to do it. I just need to allow it to happen.
Back to my decisions. Well, I still don’t know what to do. I still don’t know what the “right” thing is.
But maybe that’s not so much of a problem after all.
Because I do know what the wrong thing is. And that’s to make no decision at all. Even if the decision I make is not to decide just yet—that is still a decision. Own it.
A friend once said to me, “Whenever the time is right, it will be the right time.” It helps me relax about my decisions.
I often wonder: Am I the only one like this? I don’t know that either, but if you’re with me:
Stop thinking it through. Stop making up what might happen. Because that’s what’s happening here, you’re just making it up. Just make the decision instead and enjoy the ride. Whatever it turns out to be, it doesn’t really matter—you can change it later if you really have to.
Whatever the decision is, just make it. What’s the worst that can happen, really?
Just make the decision and then be glad you did. Enjoy the freedom and the relief that follows.
Enjoy the present, indecision free. Because while you’re busy worrying about what might happen tomorrow, guess what? You’re missing out on all the great stuff happening today.
So just decide. Just relax.
Want to know the good news? The decision thing is just as leaky as the indecision thing.
Once I get going again, I know there’ll be no stopping me. I’ll breeze through decisions that floored me before. I’ll put those small things back in their place. And if it feels wrong, I’ll change it. I won’t worry about it. Things that felt a bit wrong and weird before just won’t matter anymore.
I won’t know where this whole confident, decision making thing came from. I’ll just feel it.
I’ll feel it in my chest, near my heart. It will feel like contentment, embracing joy, tickled with peace and flavored with lightness. It will feel soft and warm, like molten honey trickling through my veins. It will make me smile.
And I will love it. And I will do all I can to hold on to it.
That I do know.
So let’s just get started. Let’s just relax. Let’s just decide. And let’s never look back.
About Emma is passionate about positive psychology, avidly learning and applying its lessons to her life and work. Her own personal journey through stress, growth and discovery inform both her
with the hope of spreading happiness to others, one spark at a time. |
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