What Do I Want In Life? 7 Strategies to Figure Out What You Want in Life

Do you struggle to figure out what you're meant to be doing with your life?

Are you met with crickets when you ask yourself the seemingly simple question, “What do I want to do with my life?” despite knowing that you have a greater purpose waiting for you?

I personally know how scary it can be to have an inner knowing that you’re meant for more in life, but have no idea what you can do or if there is anything that you would really enjoy.

Thankfully, there are many things you can do to not only gain clarity on what you want to do with your life but actually start bringing more fulfillment into your life overall.

It all starts with creating a foundation of self-awareness and mindset, and creating a habit out of the skills within those pillars so that identifying what you want becomes second nature.

Read on to see 7 strategies that I used and have used with my clients to help them start building that foundation and gaining clarity on what they truly want in life.

How to Approach Self-Discovery

Before jumping into any of these strategies, I want you to keep in mind that figuring out what you want is a life-long journey.

I don’t want this to discourage you. That doesn’t mean that you won’t reach a point where you feel clear on what you want, you will!

It just means that as we grow and change, our desires and what we want out of life also change.

What’s important right now is to start creating a foundation to understand yourself so that even as you grow and change, you will have the tools to continue figuring out what you want when you do.

3 Tips to Keep in Mind Before Applying These Methods

1. Remember that there are always more ways to figure out what you want in life. While there are 7 strategies here, they’re just some of the many ways to start learning about yourself.

2. Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying all of these strategies at once. Pick one that seems the most manageable right now and bookmark this post and come back to try the others later.

3. There is always more to learn, even if you’ve tried an approach before. I encourage you to revisit any techniques you might have tried before with a set of new eyes. Approaching familiar information with a beginner’s mindset is one of the best ways to not only master something you already know but to start developing the habits you need to continue discovering what you want, even as what you want changes.

1. Reflect on Past Work Experiences

At the beginning of your journey of figuring out what you want in life, when you have no idea what will bring you a deep sense of fulfillment, oftentimes, the easiest place to find clues is in your past experiences.

Your work experience is not an exception to this. It can be a great way to uncover your wants and needs when it comes to how you want to spend your time.

Back when I started my self-discovery journey in my early 20s, when I first journaled on my past job experiences, it brought unexpected insights and clarity about what I wanted when it came to not only work but life in general.

This is an exercise I’ve had my clients do to gain similar insights about their own desires in life.

WHY THIS HELPS

Most people spend the majority of their time working. We have to work for most of our lives; whether it’s work that we’re doing to pay our bills or volunteering.

Because of this, reflecting on the common themes in your work experiences can give you a very clear idea of how you do and do not like to spend your time, what things you value in work, and what kind of work or service you want to offer the world.

Whether you uncover a common theme of caring about helping others or learn about your aversion to authority, this can be a great exercise to find clarity on what you want to bring into your life, and which things you can phase out (where you can!)

2. Make a List of What You Enjoy and Why

This one seems obvious but taking the time to write out the things that you enjoy in life is a great way to get an idea of what you want to do with your life.

Now, you might be thinking, “I don’t have any hobbies,” or “I just watch The Last of Us all day.” But I want you to do your best to think deeper about the things you spend your time doing. Even considering the “little things” and why you find enjoyment in them can go a long way.

WHY THIS HELPS

At first glance, this might be self-explanatory. Of course, if you want more out of life and don’t know where to start, it can be helpful to understand what parts of life you already find enjoyment in.

However, if you let yourself dig even deeper into these things, and start to dissect the underlying reasons for your enjoyment, it can be a great way to start to identify your deeper desires.

Once you have an idea of what those deeper desires are, you can start to piece together some of your deeper values.

3. Make a List of What you Don’t Enjoy and Why

Even more than listing the things that you enjoy, you can really get to the root of what you want when you examine what you don’t enjoy. In fact, this is one of my favourite ways to find clarity around what I want.

It might sound counterintuitive, but making a list of the things you don’t want and reflecting on the reasons why can be extremely powerful.

WHY THIS HELPS

It’s actually natural for people to focus more on negativity than it is for them to focus on positivity. We’ve evolved to weigh negative information heavier than positive as a way to quickly identify threats to our safety. So, I like to think of this approach as a way to hijack that developmental instinct.

One of the most common ways you might see people focusing on the negative is when their conversations with others are focused on complaining or seeming to only know how to relate with others through the things they can both agree they dislike.

It’s easy to think of the things you don’t like about your current job or the different traits you disliked about your ex-partner or friend. So, I’m sure you can imagine how powerful this can be when you take the time to list them out, reflect on the reasons why and then begin to identify what you want instead!

Additionally, what you might discover is that the thing itself isn’t the problem after all, but the feeling that it brings you because of past experiences.

4. Reflect on major experiences and their impact

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “When life gives you lemons…” Well, this strategy is one of the many ways I’ve come to learn how to make lemonade in my life, and it’s something I’ve shared with my clients in their journey of finding their purpose.

When identifying what you want in life and finding your life purpose, one of the most valuable strategies and habits to cultivate is the ability to reflect on and learn from your life experiences.

When you’re able to look at everything you experience as an opportunity to learn, you become a powerhouse of self-discovery and purpose.

WHY THIS HELPS

Often, we go through major life events without consciously considering the lessons hidden within them. Instead, we might focus on our immediate reactions or how the experiences make us feel.

Life has a way of speaking to you through the experiences you have, and before you know what to listen for and how to examine what it’s saying, you might feel like you’re wasting time, or floating through life with no clear direction.

Major life experiences can disrupt our comfort zones and divide our lives into “before” and “after,” making us feel lost and unsure of what our purpose in life really is.

In my life, major experiences or hardships have always left me feeling even more restless with my circumstances; only serving as a reminder that I’m still not living a life I’m happy with.

What I learned is that these disruptions present opportunities to understand your true needs, values, and aspirations in life by leveraging your understanding of your “before” and “after.”

By reflecting on these experiences, you can uncover your interests, values and what truly matters to you in life; helping you on your path to discovering what you want.

5. Conduct a “Weekly Happenings" Audit

It isn’t only the major, life-changing events that have hidden lessons for you to reflect on.

When you go through life not reflecting on what’s happening and how it’s impacting you, you’re missing just as many (if not more) opportunities to figure out what you want.

There is something you can take away from your everyday life that can be leveraged to figure out what you want and what to do with your life.

As you navigate life's chaos, attempting to understand yourself and, more importantly, determine your life's direction, it can be easy to underestimate the importance of daily, seemingly trivial experiences.

However, much like reflecting on your major life experiences, if you take the time to examine everyday events, you can stop worrying about whether or not you’re wasting your life and start feeling like everything you do has a use and is helping you work toward your life purpose.

(Even when you’re doing “nothing” or it feels like life keeps “getting in the way.”)

WHY THIS HELPS

Becoming conscious of what you’re doing every day is a great way to:

1. Gain insight into how you’re already spending your time and

2. Find clues on how you might prefer to spend your time

I believe life is filled with signs and information that can always help you get what you want. This is the most obvious with major life events, but everyday happenings are no exception to this rule.

Making a habit out of developing your self-awareness is the #1 way to begin identifying what you want in life. A great way to build that habit is to reflect on your weekly happenings.

To become aware of how your daily life experiences can guide your self-discovery journey, uncover what you’re good at, and what you should do with your life, start with a Weekly Happenings Audit.

6. Improve Your Mindset

Self-discovery and figuring out what you want both rely on the mindset that you bring into that process.

It can be the difference between an outcome that makes you envious of others, and seeing that very same outcome and instead of feeling envious, deciding it’s something you want for yourself.

There are many ways to improve your mindset, but I want to name a few of the focuses I’ve used to figure out what I want in life and have also worked on with my clients.

WHY THIS HELPS

We view the world through the lens of our perspective. That means that for everything we come across, we assign it meaning based on how we’ve been taught to view ourselves and the world around us.

Everyone’s life, circumstances and experiences will be different and may require different efforts to improve, but I’ll share an example from my life of the power of mindset.

Between the ages of 6 and 11, I struggled in school and was made to feel by my teachers and peers that it was, “just because I wasn’t smart.”

As a result of this perception, for the rest of my schooling, through high school, I believed that I was just a lag behind everyone and so, the way I approached school was with that in mind.

I did try to pass my classes, but there was always a part of me that believed that it didn’t really matter what studying approach I took or how much extra help I could get; my grades would never compare to those of my top classmates. So, I believed that passing class was as high as I could aim.

It wasn’t until I took a few-year gap between high school and college that my self-perception changed.

(And long story short…)

I went into college believing that I could take charge of my education and even if I couldn’t get top of my class, I could at least get grades that I was proud of.

Come graduation, I had honours and now have the confidence to believe I can accomplish and learn everything I need to live the life I want for myself.

What I learned is that when you become conscious of your thoughts and understand how they may be holding you back, you can then become aware of what you can do to help support yourself in the journey of defining the life you want to live.

It just takes becoming more conscious of your mindset and making it a priority to improve in a few key areas.

7. Create a list of core values

Creating a list of core values is one of the most important steps to follow when trying to figure out what you want to do with your life.

Even if you’ve created a list like this before, it’s likely worth revisiting or even creating a whole new list from scratch.

Why? You might ask. Because we’re always changing.

With every experience we have in life, we learn more about who we are, new circumstances, new people, and new responsibilities come into our lives and with that, our values might change before we even realize it.

WHY THIS HELPS

Staying on top of these changes helps us maintain clarity on our priorities and direction, and ultimately, gives us a clearer idea of what we want.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make when trying to figure out what they want in life is looking at what other people are doing and trying to recreate those goals in their own lives without knowing if they’re something that they even want.

Think about all the finance bros with their fancy cars and luxurious apartments, preaching about the importance of hustle and all the people who follow without question.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting these things (and if you realize that one of your values is luxury, I encourage it! I support a bougie Queen!) But it’s important to become aware of our values before setting these goals.

It’s in our nature to compare ourselves to others. And while there are healthy ways to approach this comparison, when we want to figure out what we truly want and begin discovering what our purpose is, we have to look inside.

Conclusion

The journey of discovering what you truly want in life is a lifelong process. But there’s a reassuring truth: it doesn’t need to be hard.

In fact, the clues to what your deepest aspirations and desires are, often hide in plain sight, within your everyday life.

Spotting them is only a matter of following the two foundational pillars: self-awareness (self-discovery) and thought-awareness. Turning these things into habits transforms your everyday life into a powerhouse of uncovering what you want, keeping you on track, even when what you want changes.

If you’re ready to start building these foundations in your own life so you can find clarity in your life path, join the Journey to Purpose Challenge!

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Hello! I’m Naomi Dowell.

I’m a Self-Discovery and Life Purpose coach for women who know they want more out of life but don’t know where to start.

I struggled for years to figure out what I wanted out of life and realized that having the proper foundations in place makes this process easier, and I’m passionate about helping people get them in place.

In my blogs, you can find resources for the foundational pieces you need to get clear on your path and purpose in life.

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