The Pressure to Have It All Figured Out
“Life is a journey, not a destination.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson? Lynn H. Hough? Aerosmith?
Despite its unclear origins, and despite the cliché, I say some version of this in therapy at least once a week.
Usually, it comes up when we’re talking about the very human desire to have our lives — and especially our careers — all figured out. We want to know what we’re doing, where we’re going, and whether the choices we’re making now are going to lead somewhere that eventually feels right.
And apparently, we’d like to know this regardless of where we are in our working lives. People at the beginning of their careers worry that they should already know what they want to do. People in the middle wonder whether they’ve chosen the right path. People later in their careers question what comes next, or whether they’ve spent their time doing what actually mattered to them.
The desire for certainty doesn’t necessarily disappear just because we get older or more experienced. The questions just change.
But I’ve become increasingly interested in the question underneath all of that uncertainty: Why do we want to have it all figured out in the first place?
What Do You Think “Figuring It Out” Will Give You?
When someone says, “I just want to figure out what I’m doing with my life,” I’m often curious about what they imagine will happen once they do.
What will be different? More importantly, how do they imagine they’ll feel?
For some people, the answer is happiness. If they could just find the right career, they imagine they would finally feel excited to go to work. For others, it’s meaning. They want to know that what they’re doing matters and that they’re using their time in a way that feels worthwhile.
Maybe it’s security. Confidence. Freedom. A sense of purpose. Or simply the enormous relief of not having to wonder anymore.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting any of those things. The problem is that we can become so focused on finding the right destination that we start treating those feelings as something we’ll only be allowed to experience once we arrive.
Once I figure out what I’m meant to do, I’ll feel meaningful.
Once I find the right job, I’ll feel excited.
Once I know where my career is going, I’ll finally feel confident.
But what if the destination isn’t the only place those things are available?
A Different Question to Solve
“I want to know what I’m doing with my life” is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. It’s enormous, abstract, and comes with the added challenge that there may not be one correct answer.
It also puts a tremendous amount of pressure on us to somehow predict the future. We’re trying to identify the career, relationship, lifestyle, or path that Future Us will find fulfilling, sometimes years or decades from now.
But “I want more meaning in my life” gives us somewhere to go.
So does I want to feel more excited. Or I want to feel useful. Or I want more connection. Or I want to feel like I’m growing.
Those questions are smaller, but they’re also much more actionable.
If what you’re really craving is connection, you can start looking at where connection already exists in your life and how you might create more of it. If you want growth, you can ask where you feel challenged, curious, or stretched. If you’re looking for meaning, you can begin noticing which parts of your life already feel meaningful — including the ones that have absolutely nothing to do with your career.
You don’t necessarily need to figure out the next twenty years before you can start experiencing more of what you’re actually looking for.
You Can Find It Along the Way
We spend a lot of anxious energy trying to figure out the destination. We analyze our careers, compare ourselves to other people, imagine alternative lives, and wonder whether there’s some better path we haven’t discovered yet.
Sometimes that reflection leads to important change. There are absolutely moments when we need to make a decision, take a risk, leave something behind, or move toward something new.
But sometimes our focus on figuring everything out becomes its own distraction. We become so preoccupied with where we’re going that we miss opportunities to experience the very thing we thought the destination was going to give us.
Maybe you don’t know exactly where your career is headed, but you can find work that feels meaningful today. Maybe you don’t know what your ultimate purpose is, but you can do something that makes you feel useful. Maybe you haven’t found the perfect role, but there are ways to learn, connect, create, or contribute where you are right now.
And perhaps some of those experiences will eventually help point you toward whatever comes next.
We often don’t know exactly where we’re going. I’m not convinced we’re supposed to.
But we can get clearer about what we’re hoping to find when we get there.
And once we know that, we might discover that we don’t have to wait until we arrive to start finding it.
