10 Questions To Ask Yourself When You Don’t Know Where Your Life Should Go Next

1. If you had the life you think you want, what would tomorrow be like? When you imagine the life you want, rather than focus on the elevator speech (“I am this, I do this…”) focus on the daily routine. If you had the life you think you want, what would you do tomorrow? How different would it be from what you’re doing now? What from that vision can you actually start doing tomorrow?

2. If social media didn’t exist, what would you do differently? Would you dress differently, feel bad about where you live, care about what your apartment looks like? What choices would you make if you didn’t feel they were being silently policed by the faceless mob of people that lie behind the screens of social media? What would matter? What would you do? Who would you be?

3. If nobody would know what you did with the rest of your life, what would you do? If your life wasn’t the slightest bit performative – if there was nothing you could get from doing something other than just the act of doing it, how would you spend your time? What would you be interested in doing? What would energize you?

4. If you died yesterday, what would you most regret? Forget imagining if you died tomorrow… what if you were already dead? What would you regret the most? What would you wish you had done differently, saw differently, responded to differently?

5. If you could choose five things that matter most to you, what would they be? Whether you realize it or not, your life will fundamentally be built off of the few things you care about the most. When it’s not, it will feel out of alignment at best, or off-the-rails at worst. Fulfillment is living in accordance with what we genuinely value.

6. To what in your life do you feel a subtle, unexplainable “nudge?” What gives you a feeling of subtle, unexplainable enjoyment? What do you like, even though you don’t understand why you like it? These are the things to pay attention to. These are the things that are real. Your mind is responding to what you think you like, your emotions are responding to what actually resonates.

7. If you knew nobody would judge you, what would you do with your days? If you would only be praised for your work, for your life, and for your choices – which would you make? What would you do?

8. What are you struggling with the most right now? Interestingly enough, the things that plague you the most deeply are signals toward where you must move next. If your deepest issue is not having a romantic relationship, the next phase of your life will likely need to involve at least trying to develop that. The things that you’re struggling with the most right now can tell you what you really want, and toward which direction you should step.

9. What do you already have going for you at this present moment? The mantra of any major life change should always be: “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.” There is no other way to get anywhere.

10. If you had to live tomorrow on repeat for the rest of your life, what would you do? Or, put another way: if you lived today on repeat forever, where would you be? What would you have accomplished? Would you be thriving at work? Would you have made time for the people you love? Would you have written a book, or played music, or be spending your money in a healthy way? Would you be dressing like yourself, and enjoying the sunrise, and eating in a way that will sustain you over the long-term? Your life exists in it’s days. Not in your ideas about those days. Your habits accumulate, and begin to default. Imagining that you’ll never grow out of them is the fastest way to a reality check.