What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do
An Answer for Too Many Options
I’m sure we’ve all experienced the feeling of ‘not knowing what to do’ before. “What college major should I choose? What career path should I take? What is my life purpose?” It can be overwhelming.
There are millions of individual paths that each of us could take. Every day, we decide what the next step of our journey is going to be. Every day, we’re faced with choices. Will we go right or left? Sometimes it’s easy to make the decision. Sometimes it’s not so easy. When faced with a near infinite number of options, it becomes very difficult to choose one and sacrifice the rest.
It’s easy to understand this when it comes to a group choosing which restaurant to eat at. There’s just too many options. After everyone has pitched at least 3 spots each, it takes forever just to land on a final 2 to choose from. We’ve all been there. This is a small scale example, but we understand it on the large scale as well.
Personally, I struggle the most with deciding on a career path or choosing a city to live in. I think to myself, “If I can do anything or be anywhere, why would I limit myself to one thing and sacrifice the rest?” As I go on thinking like this, I stay exactly where I was all along, never progressing, never moving forward.
This is the ‘poverty of wealth’.
The ‘poverty of wealth’ is the idea that people with an abundance of choices become overwhelmed and never end up making a decision. Dave Ramsey likes to call it the “paralysis of the analysis”. It’s a dangerous game to play.
There are a few things one could do in this situation:
When overwhelmed with the macro, it can help to break your steps down into micro actions. Stop focusing on the big picture for a second. Ask yourself what the best thing to do is in the next week, day, or hour. By breaking your time frame down, it becomes easier to see the correct path to take. The macro time frame is overwhelming and filled with too many options. Think to yourself, “what is the next best step that I could take right this moment?” You’ll get an answer.
Personally, I like to feel which way reality is pushing me. This means looking objectively at what the world is offering me. It’s a logical allowance of the universe to place me where I need to be. I like this option because it’s not me making the decision (or at least, not exactly). This is nice because, in the grand scheme of things, what do I know anyways? Am I so sure that I know what’s best for me?
On a side note, this is how I ended up in the city I am in now. An opportunity presented itself to me from wherever in the universe opportunities come from. The opportunity fit well in my life so I took a chance on it. Life has a funny way of knowing exactly where we should be. We just have to let it guide us.
Flip a coin… (not highly recommended)
There is no way for sure to know that you made the right decision. You probably didn’t. But making the decision is half the battle. It’s a whole lot better than never choosing. One thing to keep in mind is that whatever path you choose, it’s best to go all in on it (unless necessity requires otherwise). When you make a decision, don’t second guess yourself. The decision has been made and you will see it through to the end. Keep moving forward.
This is something I have to work on. Committing to one thing is extremely difficult for me. It’s a curse because I never truly see the potential of any one option. Moving forward, I’d like to see more commitment from myself. I’d like to take my own advice from this article and apply it. I hope you will too. It’s amazing what can happen with a bit of focused commitment.