Feeling lost, not physically but mentally, is very common. Regardless of your age, career, values, and whatnot, feeling you don’t know what you are really supposed to do with your life is more normal than you think.

We are all born different, but we all want to find our purpose, our goals. We also want to be happy. But our minds are clouded with worries.

We don’t even know what to worry about most of the time. It is just a constant feeling of despair that our life is passing us by and we’re not being able to live it to the fullest. But more often than not, we can’t even define the fullest we blindly aim for.

The beginning of figuring out what you should be doing with your life is- stop looking at your situation with despair and star looking at it from a problem-solving perspective.

The situation can be emotional, but the biggest characteristic of our day-to-day life is that it’s practical.

Getting analytical with your situation, taking on one problem at a time, and dealing with life like you’re solving issues one by one will completely change your situation and perspective regarding life.

To figure out what we should be doing, we can look at these simple 5 steps.

Get the Basics Right

Our problems push us into despair and we forget to take care of ourselves. But the prerequisite of finding what you need to do is to keep your body and mind healthy.

Simple things are often overlooked, but when followed can have a huge benefit. Our bodies have been conditioned to follow certain guidelines. When we ignore these little things, we ignore the well-being of our physical and mental health.

So our very first task is to get ourselves ready before we make decisions that change our lives. A mind that is not doing well cannot take decisions that will lead to good things.

As mentioned already, you need to look at your situation as problems to be solved. But you can’t solve everything at once. You need to split them into bite-sized segments. Then, you can start to attack them and fix them one by one.

Our body has some basic needs such as food and sleep. There are more things we need, but remember? Bite-sized pieces.

It is preferable that we get 8 hours of sleep, during night time to be more specific. This can be affected by what type of job you do and what shift you work. But the best part is, you do have all the information you need.

Figure out the best possible schedule for you to sleep in, do your best to make it at night time. Then you need to go to bed at that very time every day no matter what.

It is going to be hard at first, but we humans are slaves of habit. Once you make yourself do it 3 weeks in a row, your body will automatically condition itself to fall asleep and wake up in that specific schedule.

Next, you need food, although you are dividing the problems into pieces, you should start executing a lot of them simultaneously. Fixing your food with your sleep is a part of that.

When feeling hopeless or worried, we often indirectly take it out on our body. We end up binge-eating or starving ourselves, neither is healthy. We treat ourselves unfairly and throw us deeper into a hole.

But these little things will fix that. Self-awareness works wonders when solving personal problems. Like your sleep, put yourself in 3 strict meal schedules along with 2 or so light snacking sessions.

You can take help from Google and online resources about what you should be eating and how much is healthy. If you can take professional advice then that’s a bonus.

Proper sleeping and eating habits will make you feel a lot more stable. But there is one very important thing still missing, it is exercising.

Exercising can seem hard at first. But once you make a habit of it, it will change you in ways you couldn’t imagine. There is no need to push your body harder than you can handle. Start small, remember to warm up and do some stretching.

Regularly exercising and slowly increasing the intensity in accordance with your physical situation will release a lot of stress and drastically improve your physical and mental health.

Our physical and mental health is tied very closely, more than you might assume. But once you fix these things, you have fulfilled your prerequisites of finding and making the right decisions for yourself.

Ask and Learn

The second step comprises of two parts. As the header suggests, the first part of it is asking. But it isn’t asking just anybody. It is asking yourself.

No one knows yourself better than you. Once you divide your situation into small pieces and start asking the right questions for each part, you will start moving towards finding out what you need to and should do.

You need to ask what things make you feel good. It can be literally anything. From studying finance to watching movies, literally anything and everything can be a part of it.

Then you need to ask yourself what are the things you have done so far. Simply jot down anything and everything once again.

Once you do that, try to compare and ask yourself how many of the things you have done align with what you enjoy. How many of the things you do are there just because you believe you should do them.

Then you need to get more specific. You need to find out how many of the things you thought you would enjoy have you really enjoyed. Similarly, find out the things you have found enjoyable that you had no idea that you would.

Finally, out of these things, you can cross out a lot of the things that are giving you no physical, mental, or financial benefits.

The things that are left need to be put through further analysis. Ask yourself the career paths you so far have had in front of you. Where do you stand so far in comparison? How far are you from each of your choices?

Do the exact same things with your education, your social life, your attitude, your entertainment. This is a drag and drop situation. Analyze keeping or pursuing which of these things provides any sort of benefit ranging from mental to financial.

You have to consider every aspect of your situation. You have to give importance to your mental health, but you cannot cross out segments that provide you financial safety.

Sometimes, it can get hard to point all these things out. Once again, you don’t have to do it all at once. Do small parts at a time until you reach the end of your analysis.

Sometimes it is also hard to understand and decide what to cross out. Luckily, the internet has provided us with free knowledge with limitless accessibility. You can look up real-life stories, classes, motivational videos, financial advice, and whatnot to take inspiration and also understand what to keep and what to lose.

You can test out a lot of the things you are unsure about as well. But as usual, do one thing at a time and don’t burden yourself with unnecessary pressure. This is your moment of self-discovery, do not rush it.

Divide your questions into relevant segments like education, career, etc mentioned above and deal with every question analytically. Look at it like you’re solving a case and acquire all the knowledge you need from books, movies, the internet, and anything else that will help you understand and analyze your situation better.

Set Goals

If you have completed the previous steps, you will actually find yourself with a list. It will be a list that will make sense to you. You will understand what things are important to you and what things are essential.

Before you get started, it might sound like a whole lot of nothing. But once you do grab that pen, you will find different segments that have come out with a lot of definitive options for you. They don’t all have to be accurate. What is important is the process of your self-discovery.

Once you have come this far. You will automatically feel an urge to go on and do better. But this is where you need to get even more practical and analytical. You need to set goals.

You need to set SMART goals. Why was that word fully capitalized? Because it has a very important meaning. SMART is actually an acronym. It stands for-

• S-Specific
• M-Measurable
• A-Attainable
• R-Relevant
• T-Time-bound

If you divide your every goal with these aspects, they will automatically look a lot more practical. So yes, the pen and paper will really help you here. You need to give everything a timeline, you need to be precise. And most importantly, you need to write down the positive impact it will have on your life.

You can write down if you want your university major completed in the next 4 years. You can write down if you want to learn more about personal finance in the coming year.

You can write down you will spend 3 hours each week practicing graphic designing as a hobby. Your positive reasons can be mental, physical, and financial.

There will be things included there that you do not enjoy. But you have already gotten very specific with your approach. You are scheduling your life at the moment. Put in time for things you like and things you don’t like for they complement each other. Once you are self-aware about your upcoming ups and downs. Life will get a lot easier to embrace and enjoy.

While setting goals, one thing that can help you out a lot is Bullet Journaling. You can check out this article to understand bullet journaling “Insert Link”. This will transform your goal setting into something very positively practical.

After all that, the steps come down to taking action. This is the step leading you towards your future. Once everything is put in a timeline and decided in a SMART way, you will see that you have a very precise roadmap in front of you.

Practicality is very important in these goal-setting situations. You need to understand how the world works in this day and age; you need to find your niches in it. Some things have become essential to understand. You need to understand the financial aspects of every situation so you can facilitate all your other choices.

Even in this stage, you can take lessons from various sources to educate and motivate yourself. There is enough content out there to enlighten you about every aspect of your choices.

There are lessons and stories out there that can and will motivate you to attain your goals. Never stop your search to learn and understand things better.

Create Contingency Plans

This step is to signify everything you are NOT going to do. Every plan is still just a plan until it is executed. And you cannot be sure how well the plan will work out until that happens. This step is where you will have to be the most practical.

There is advice floating around in books, documentaries, and articles. We have our advice for you as well.

Whether you like it or not, we exist in a system that runs on money. And although there are negative aspects of it, you can still not only just manage but also thrive in this system with the right choices.

To start off, you will need to write down the negative effect it will have for every task of your goal you fail to achieve. Once you do that, create a contingency for each situation by going through steps 2 and 3 again on the specific situations. These will allow you to overcome your periods of setbacks.

But there are some general contingency plans you should create that go in perfectly with the current world. Some of these are so important that they can become your main plan in life as well. These factors can be tracked down to one thing, it is financial security.

To have financial security, one must also have financial literacy. Every action has a cost, and the costs should provide us with benefits. Understanding personal finance is not a choice but a necessity in this day and age. And believe it or not, it is not as hard you think it is.

You can study about financial aspects by reading appropriate articles, watching relevant videos, and doing other easy things. Once you understand these aspects, you will automatically get a lot better at making decisions.

Some of the simple things to do when you understand these aspects are setting up some streams of passive income. If you want to relish your life by doing things you like, only depending on your job can be risky.

You can and should definitely try to read on topics like investing in the stock market, creating a blog site, making revenue through affiliate income, and other relevant segments. These are some of the things that if done right can become from your side-hustle to your main-hustle. Understanding the trends of the world and using it to your advantage is a skill you can pick up here by learning these financial aspects.

Using modern technology to your advantage will take you far no matter what your main-hustle is. Learning new things is and should be a constant process. There is always enough time when you approach things in a bite-sized manner.

Understanding the things you should learn and do to have safe contingencies will make you a very smart player. It will help you to not only enjoy your life but also excel at it.

Execute, Measure, Adapt

This is the final step that completes your self-discovery; taking action. Once you have looked at your situation in a problem-solving manner and approached it accordingly, you will be done with all your planning and reach the most important stage; the stage of execution.

Execution can be tricky; things might not go as planned. But remember, you had already anticipated this. And being prepared gives you a lot of advantages. On the other hand, the uncertainty in life is what makes it worth living.

When you are getting the basics right, you will be in a situation to face life heads-on. You will be able to follow your schedule and the timeline that you have prepared adapting with all the deviations.

The biggest thing to do when executing is dividing your goals into tasks, and tasks into sub-tasks. You have a long-term plan helping you out. But you must work on a one day at a time basis. Follow your schedule as perfectly as you can. Don’t try to do too many things at once, but don’t fall short of your daily goals either. Action is everything.

That being said, there will be obstacles. There will be situations that do not match your plan. The first thing you need to do at that moment is to measure, to analyze the deviations that have been made. Keeping your records will help you immensely here.

Every time you fall behind, you can analyze the situation and take corrective measures to catch up again. Sometimes, you will need to execute your contingency plans. If you are playing the safe cards by ensuring your passive income streams, you will find it easier to catch up after every setback.

Another thing you need to do when executing is to make sure you don’t get overwhelmed. The process you have taken to come this far was not quick, it was not rushed. It was slow and steady.

It was well thought out and detailed. You need to follow the same pattern when you take actions according to your plans.

When you chase after 2 things at once, you end up getting neither.

It is important to make sure you are chasing exactly what you can handle. Don’t overwork yourself and set yourself up for disappointment. Good things take time, and the wait makes it worth it.

Understanding your financials, your passive revenue streams, and your bullet journal will provide you with safety and assurance.

Take your actions by following your goals and abiding by your schedule, one step at a time.

To summarize it all, you need to ensure your body and mind are doing well by taking care of your basic needs.

Then you need to get analytical, ask yourself the right questions, and cross out the things that don’t match your needs.

Then you will be setting up detailed and time abiding goals along with contingencies and follow them step by step in your execution.

This can be a long process, but you will see the outcomes of each step almost immediately. Believing in your approach and carrying on is all you have to do now. Here’s to finding out what you should be doing with your life, here’s to new beginnings.