How Do You Change Your Life When You Don't Know What You Want?

You don’t need to know where you’re going to get there.

One of the most frustrating feelings I’ve ever experienced is wanting my life to be different but having no idea what a different life would look like. My life had all those things lined up that you’re supposed to have, like career and family. From the outside it probably looked great. But I was deeply unhappy. I could barely drag myself through the days, doing the bare minimum to get by, stuck in an endless loop of self-recrimination and paralysis. Something was very wrong with my life, but I had no vision of what I might want instead. This is a common experience for intuitive feelers like INFPs and INFJs. The things we’ve been taught to want are often unfulfilling, but there aren’t many good alternative models for how life could be different. And because we tend to all be unique in our own ways, it’s doubtful that any model would ever suffice. We have to make our own way.

It’s not an easy path we walk, and it often looks dark ahead. But there are some things we can do to help us move forward and that may open up some surprising doors we didn’t even know were there.

Experiment with doing things the wrong way

We are all socialized to think certain life choices are the “right” ones. Even those of us who have rejected conventional mores have internalized certain beliefs about the things we should pursue in life. A big one for me was career success – I always thought I needed to get a good job that made use of my education and talents. And this isn’t wrong. But it’s also not right. 

You know what is wrong? Not making use of my education and talents to get an amazing job. So you know what I did? That. I did not get an amazing job. I did not make good use of my education and talents. I know – it’s cringy, right? And I wouldn’t have made this choice if my mental health issues hadn’t precluded me for a long time from doing much of anything other than a freelance gig here and there. But in the end that turned out to be a good thing, because it taught me that sometimes the wrong way is the right way. I realized that my education – which I am deeply grateful for, and recognize for the privilege that it is – is valuable because of the experience of it, not the specific credentials it confers. Understanding this opened up so many possibilities for me that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of.  

Consciously making choices that go against what we’ve been socialized to think is good or right is one of the hardest things to do. You don’t have to do it in a big way. In fact, at the beginning it’s helpful just to do a deep dive into examining what parts of your life exist only because you are doing what you are “supposed” to do. The best way to do this is to confront your fear of judgement. Ask yourself the question: am I doing this because I want to, or because if I don’t, people may criticize me?

Put away those big dreams

Some people do achieve big dreams – but not as many as you’d think. We’re inundated with bootstrapping stories about celebrities, sports stars, and social media millionaires, so you can forgive yourself for thinking that the formula is “big dream + belief in self + hard work = success.” But it’s not, at least not for most of us. Beautiful dreams are nice, but mostly they’re just dreams. One day you wake up and realize your life is just…normal, and you’re, well, you’re just average. Sure, you’re special, but in the way that everyone is special. Which is to say, not really that special. This can be a hard reality to accept for INFPs and INFJs, because while we may not be “special,” we are different, and we inherently believe our destinies are different as well. And they often are.

Here’s the thing: destiny isn’t something you decide on ahead of time. It’s an emergent property of how you live your life and the small choices you make along the way. So think small. Think today. You don’t need to know what big possibilities are on the horizon – you just need to know what you want to do now, and trust that it will turn into possibilities in the future. Find something that piques your curiosity and explore it. Always wanted to know about raising backyard chickens? Start researching. The trick is to get your mind busy on something that inspires it. Soon enough new ideas and inspirations will pop into it – and they may have nothing to do with chickens! Or who knows, in a few years you may find yourself buying a small homestead out in the country and starting up a chick-hatching business. (Chickens are my latest obsession….)

Very rarely does someone’s life change because they made a big change out of the blue. Usually you build up with little alterations until you reach a tipping point, and then suddenly a big change occurs. It may seem to come out of nowhere, but in reality the ground was prepared over time.

Practice radical faith in the process

You’ve probably heard the phrase “trust the process” before. But trusting it isn’t enough. Trust is based on a hoped-for or predicted outcome. You trust the sun to rise tomorrow. You trust your friends or partner to (hopefully) be there for you when you are struggling. Trust is safe. Faith is an entirely different prospect. It’s based on confidence in the face of uncertainty and confusion regarding outcome. Faith is inherently radical, because it isn’t attached to specific outcomes. And this is radical in our results-oriented culture. You can’t go into work tomorrow and tell them your new philosophy is to only do things that feel good in a way that also feels good, end product be damned.

But you can live your life in a process-oriented way. We’ve talked about putting away big dreams – which are results-oriented – and focusing on doing small things that spark interest and excitement in you. The radical faith part is believing that you are headed somewhere, even if you feel like you’re treading water. Even if the path ahead is dark. In times when you feel a need to change your life but don’t know what you want, having faith in the process frees your mind from obsession over trying to figure out where you are headed. Eventually you’ll probably arrive at more clarity regarding what you want, but more likely one day you’ll look up to find that your life changed without you noticing how. It can happen faster than you think.