Why You Feel Lost in Life

okay so why do people feel lost in their life I think the way we can think of this is if you imagine you are lost in a forest you'd be lost if you don't know where you're trying to go that's reason number one you'd be lost if you don't know where you are that's reason number two and even if you did know where you are and where you're trying to go you would still feel lost if you didn't know the path to getting there so it's kind of those three things you don't know where you're going you don't really know where you are you might not know the path for getting from A to B now this is something that so many people struggle with and so in this minseries of videos what we're going to be doing is breaking down exactly how to figure out where you're going how to figure out where you are and how to figure out the path of getting from A to B and what I'm hoping is that if you do the exercises and stuff that we're going to be talking about in this video series you'll kind of have more of an idea of what you actually want once you know what you want like everything else sort of takes care of itself but I think a lot of us really struggle with this thing of like we just actually don't know what we want and it's so easy to get hung up on this stuff because when it comes to figuring out what to do with your life and what direction your life is going it's easy to think of it as something that you need to know with perfect clarity but trust me at this point I've interviewed hundreds of like ridiculously successful people none of them know what they're doing with their life I've given talks to thousands of people literally none of them know what they're doing with their lives the thing with this is that finding Clarity and kind of reorienting to what we want and where we're actually trying to get to and like how we're going to get there it's kind of like a moving Target it's a thing that's always going to change over time the point isn't that you need to have your entire life mapped out none of us have our entire lives mapped out the point of all these exercises is really an idea called wayfinding which is from a book called designing your life by Bill burner and Dave Evans which pretty good but way finding is the process of figuring out where to go even when you don't have a clear destination in mind this is sort of what Christoper Columbus did when he was like sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to get to the Americas he was like I know there is something out there I don't exactly know where it is and I don't exactly know what it is but I know if I sail in a general that way Direction and keep on taking steps and keep on sort of adjusting my course to make sure I'm kind of continuing to sail in a that way Direction I know something good will happen and so really all of this stuff it's not about being fixated on a destination it's about really kind of figuring out what is your direction and recognizing that you can always change direction in life whenever you feel like it because life is about the journey rather than the destination but thinking about the destination a little bit ahead of time helps us go on the right Journey all right so in this video in particular we're going to go over five different methods that you can use to sort of get at this question of like where are we trying to go then in video number two what we're going to do is we're going to look back on our past and we're going to figure out where we are and what we can learn from our past about what we want and where we want to go and then in video number three what we're going to do is try and convert that into a tangible plan so that by the end of the series hopefully you'll know where you are you'll know where you're going and you'll have a vague sense of how you're going to get from A to B okay so the first method for figuring out where you want to go is to brainstorm what service you would like to offer to the world now there's a couple of different ways to think about this and I'm just going to tell you the sorts of questions that I like to think about and then you can kind of try this exercise and I'd recommend you actually do this exercise right now while you're watching the video maybe afterwards here a few different ways of thinking about what service you would like to offer to the world the first one is the future Ted Talk prompt now for this one I want you to imagine that you are attending the Ted conference like the official Ted conference not Ted X or anything like the big deal Ted conference you've been invited you've got a custom invite to this conference and you and everyone else in the audience is deeply moved and inspired by what the speaker is talking about and the speaker is you but 20 years in the future what are you 20 years from now talking about at the Ted conference that's inspiring so many people for for all these exercises don't overthink it just like think you know what's the first thing that comes to mind or the second or the third and you can write down a few different options now at this point it's worth saying that you know again people get hung up by this idea of service like the reason we're talking about Service First is because generally having a kind of meaningful mission in life and having a sense of meaning and purpose to your life involves service in some kind of way the more you kind of serve yourself and think oh I want to get rich I want to get famous I want money all all this kind of stuff that that's not really the recipe for a meaning F and fulfilling life the thing that's a recipe for a meaningful life is a sense of service which is why we're thinking about this Ted talk but the thing about a sense of service is that it does not have to be world changing you don't your Ted Talk does not have to be about how you cured I don't know cancer or global warming or things like that it can be if you want but it would be just as inspiring perhaps even more so if your Ted Talk was about how to be a really good parent or some things that you learned in your life that help you connect more with the people around you or how to be a great father or how to be a great teacher there's all sorts of ways to provide service and they don't have to be big and they don't have to be grandiose for you to have that sense of meaningful mission in life now I'm going to share with you what three of my personal example TED Talks would be I'm going to put them on screen now so if you're interested in Reading you can pause the video right now and so if you have a sense of oh I'd like to give a TED talk about X Y or Z then that's one way of figuring out in what way you'd like to be of service to the world and Service as we talked about is a major component of having this sense of direction the sort of north star that we're trying to get to to figure out what direction we want to go in life and incidentally one simple thing that I do that helps me be a little bit more in control of my life and reach my full potential is Hu who are very kindly sponsoring this video now I've been a paying customer of hu since 2017 since my fifth year of medical school and that was actually when I first started this YouTube channel so can't believe it's been over 7 years now and I've been eating hu fairly regularly since then because in moments where I'm very busy in the day there's lots of stuff going on and I don't have time to have a particularly healthy or nutritious meal heu helps me save time and also reach my nutrition goals especially in terms of protein and they actually have a new bestseller bundle which is a collection of all of their bestselling items including the heel black edition which is my personal favorite because it's got really high protein 40 g of protein for 400 calories and the bundle also has instant meals nutrition bars and also Daily a toz vitamin cans which are actually quite tasty every single healed product contains 26 different vitamins and minerals and is 100% vegan as well and so overall the whole point of heal is that it makes nutrition easier obviously it's ideal to have a healthy balanced meal with Whole Foods and stuff every single meal of the day but if you have a particularly busy lifestyle or if you're sort of on the go quite a lot it's super useful to be able to have some heuel instead to know that you've covered your nutrition bases if you're interested in checking heel out I've personally recommended it to so many of my friends my cupboard is teaming with heel products cuz I just love them and use them so much then you can check out the link in the video description and the bundle also includes a free t-shirt and a Shaker for your first order and you also get with that bundle a guide that will help you out with your nutrition and teach you how to use heel in the best way so thank you so much heel for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it so the Ted Talk prompt is one way of figuring out what kind of service you'd like to offer to the world another way of figuring this out is the talent service prompt and that is that if you had all of the money and all of the time in the world how would you use your talents to serve others now this is really nice because you know part of having a meaningful mission is to serve other people but if we can use our own strengths and our own skills and our own talents that's what's going to make the process of serving people in that way feel particularly engaging and energizing for us it's not just about thinking oh I should for example be a doctor because that's what you should do to serve other people it's like I want to serve people in a way that's also going to light me up I want to use my natural talents and we know that when we're using our natural talents and our natural skills and our natural strengths we enjoy our work a lot more and therefore the path to getting there you know that whole North Star is going to be a lot more sustainable and then option number three again I'm just giving you multiple different ways of getting at the same problem because again like it's it's worth saying that for for all this stuff there's no right answer there's no one way of doing this but what I'm hoping to give you is a bunch of different prompts and you can see which ones resonate with you the most and then as long as just one of them resonates with you you'll have a clearer sense of what direction you want to take in your life and then hopefully you'll feel less lost and all that fun stuff but the third prompt is that if you were to imagine your funeral and at your funeral various people are talking about you you know your friends and family are saying nice things all that stuff but someone whose life has been impacted by your work is speaking at your funeral what is the person saying like what are they saying is the impact that your work had on them for me personally I hope that people will say my funeral Ali's work impacted my life because it helped me achieve my potential or he helped me do more with my life or realize what what really mattered to me or helped me build a life I love when I asked myself that question a few years ago I realized that practicing medicine wasn't the thing I didn't want people at my funeral to say his work transformed my life because he did this life-saving operation on me that no one else could have done and he saved my life that would appeal to a lot of people but it didn't really resonate with me for me being a teacher and helping people build a life they love through achieving their potential or figuring out what they wanted that appealed to me somehow way more than the thought of saving someone's life so again there's no right or wrong answers here it's just all of these prompts just help you figure out what is the thing that resonates authentically with you so that you can find your own Northstar rather than necessarily copying what someone else is doing or like what Society is telling you you should be valuing now one thing to say with all of these exercises is that it's very much worth writing this stuff down I know you're watching this on YouTube I know you're going to be tempted to do it in your head I know you're going to be tempted to say oh I'll just do it later but if you can write write down the answers to all these things you cannot solve a complex mathematical equation without writing it down you cannot build a bridge or a building without writing it down this is us trying to figure out where you want to go with your life this is a big ass question it's really really really hard to answer I would even recommend handwriting it if you can that would be gold standard it's up to you but I think writing it down is way way more valuable than trying to do all of this stuff in your head okay so method number two for broadly trying to figure out where you want to go in life and figuring out your Northstar is to reduce the effect of fear now there are so many of us basically everyone limits their thinking based on fear it's usually fear of failure it might be fear of judgment it might be self-doubt but fundamentally the emotion of fear is there at its core and it stops us from thinking about what we actually want and instead kind of encourages us to stick within the box of what we've already done or what Society tells us to do and so the first prompt is the Fearless dream prompt which is basically what would you like to do if you knew you could not fail just's like pause the video and really think about it what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail and if you're stuck you might like to think of this in terms of uh you know one way of categorizing this is Health work and relationships another way of categorizing it is just to think like what would I like to do what would I like to learn what would I like to try what would I like to experiment with what impact would I like to have just sort of giving your mind like different ways of like latching onto this question what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail if I if I knew I wouldn't fail I would make my own productivity app because I think that would be super fun I'd love to build something that people use every day to log their tasks or calendar or whatever that would be sick I would love to have my own oneman stage show where I'm doing like a show that I tour around the world and it's like a combination of like Darren Brown meets J Shetty with a bit of like magic and music and mentalism and like life advice sprinkled in that would be so sick and I didn't realize I wanted to do that until I ask myself that question and now I'm working towards it cuz I think it's just a cool thing you know I think it's a cool thing to do now another cool adjacent prompt for this is what would you do even if you knew you would fail what would you do even if you knew you would fail so if I knew I would fail would I still make a productivity app actually probably not for me you know there's no point making a productivity app unless it's going to be a success but if I knew my one man stage show would be a commercial failure would I still do it yeah I actually would cuz I think the process of creating this one one man stage show and learning the tricks and crafting it and doing the storyboarding and all that stuff I think that would just be really valuable in itself rather than for the outcome and so by asking yourself without question what would you do even if you knew you would fail commercially or however else it's another way of getting at what are the things that Vibe with you personally in terms of the process rather than just the outcome and then prompt number three for this is the Deferred dream prompt which goes what's one dream you've always had but never pursued why is it a dream for you and what is stopping you from pursuing it and again this is all about just reducing the effects of fear and realizing oh yeah I did have a dream to I don't know open a coffee shop someday but what stopped me from pursuing it was because I don't know how to run a business like okay let useful to know what else is a dream that you've always had but you've not pursued it's just you know the more we write these down the more we realize oh yeah and there's all these things I wanted to do and then the fact that I'm in this life circumstance that I'm currently in has actually stopped me from dreaming big about these things that I once used to think about or dream about so all of these prompts are broadly trying to get at reducing the effect of fear okay let's go into method number three but before we talk about that I just want to say up front that like there's lots of prompts here and it would be easy to let perfect be the enemy of good if you watch a video like this like you don't need to answer all 18 of these prompts that we're going to talk about like however many there are cuz it's going to take you days to do that even if you just answer one or two or three just like the ones that really internally resonate with you more the ones that feel good to answer if you just answer those I guarantee it will give you more clarity about where you want to go in your life let's go into prompt number three now which is trying to get out what would your dream life look like and one of the ways you can do this is the ideal Tuesday prompt which is what does your ideal Tuesday look like what are you doing who are you with how are you spending your time what makes this day perfect for you and you can imagine the ideal Tuesday a year from now or 5 years from now I like to imagine it a year from now because one year is like you know there's enough time but it's also like feels tangible enough where I can think hm a year from now I would love my Tuesday to look like you know waking up at 7:00 in the morning doing a workout with friends cuz it's more fun maybe playing sports in the evening maybe doing a few hours of deep work maybe having lunch with someone having dinner with like the wife and kids what whatever the situation might be there's something around trying to design what does your ideal day look like that actually again helps us figure out what are the things we truly value what are the things we truly want as an extension of this you might like to ask yourself the question what does my ideal week look like and I'll put a video up there that has more details about the ideal week method this is my personal favorite method you like create a new Google Calendar you call it your ideal week and you just block out what does your dream week look like you know when are you waking up when are you sleeping when are you doing work what sort of work are you doing when are you hanging out with friends when is it date night what time to spend with the kids or whatever your life situation is and again it just gives you a little bit of a sense of what are the things I truly value at this point in my life those values are going to change over time right now I don't have kids so spending time with the kids would be a bit weird if it wasn't my ideal week but at some point hopefully when I have kids then spending time with the kids and being present for the family and stuff is all going to feature in my ideal week a lot more the point is it's totally okay for this stuff to change over time but it's just like right now it gives us an idea of what we value authentically within ourselves and then we have finally the Future Self prompt which is Imagine you've achieved everything you've ever wanted imagine you've achieved everything you've ever wanted how have you changed as a person and what qualities and achievements Define this future version of yourself all right now we come to Method number four which is getting at the issue of what we want based on other people as role models and there's a a really good phrase that I got from my writing coach his name is aul and he kind of said this to me whenever I was racked with impostor syndrome about writing my book which is now becoming New York Times and Sunday Times best seller so you can check it out link down below if you haven't seen it yet # plug but what a would say to me whenever I'd be like ah man is I don't have anything like there there's nothing I can write in this book that would be useful to anyone he would tell me you know Ali you can't read the label from inside the bottle we are inside our own bottle but you can't read the label of that's on the outside of the bottle from inside you know this whole idea of like know yourself it's very hard to know yourself but it's a lot easier to to see what are the qualities you admire in other people and that gives you a sense of like okay that's sort of person I'd like to be rather than just thinking what's the sort of person I'd like to be anyway prompt number one here is who are the people you most admire and why and what qualities do they possess that you wish to emulate and another way of phrasing this is that if you were to become an amalgamation of three to five people that you know or that you know of who are those people and what would you want to emulate about them you might say for example oh I really vibed with Dr maril Who was my chemistry teacher in school and I loved how he was so sincere and also funny and didn't take himself too seriously you know me personally I Vibe with a guy called Tim Ferris who you might have come across I've never met the guy but maybe one day I will but at least from his the content and stuff the books I've read the stuff I've consumed I Vibe with the fact that he seems to do what he wants without worrying so much about like the numbers and what the audience wants him to do and he seems to sort of explore interests that are authentically aligned to himself without worrying about the commercial incentives that's really cool I would love to be able to do that to be making videos about the things I want to make rather than the videos about the things that will do well on the algorithm and stuff this is an ongoing B so that's like one small thing about Tim Ferris that I particularly admire you can find like these different people in your life or people that you know of and you can think huh what do I admire about this person therefore what's the sort of person I'd like to become and again that just gives us a vague sense of like where is this North Star that we're trying to work towards and then finally we have method number five which is to begin with the end in mind now in method number one which was the the whole service thing we talked about imagining what different people would say at your funeral what would someone whose life has been impacted by your work say your funeral this is a sort of more broad version of that and the idea here is that you want to write your own obituary so an obituary is that thing that's written about you when you're dead what would it look like if you wrote wrote out your own obituary now at this point I actually want to show you what this looks like so I ran an annual planning workshop a couple weeks ago for the lovely people who pre-ordered my book as part of our productivity Club more links in the video description if you want to check it out and I sort of live coached Tintin who's one of my team members through this exercise just to give you an idea of what it might look like Tintin let's start with relationships so what sort of stuff just give me a sense of what sort of stuff you'd like people to say about you when you're dead and I'll just just write it down so I think there's something around being just with the people that I love in my life being present with them when we have conversations and making them feel like I'm very interested in them kind of being like joyful and loving with the people that I love and being very like open and expressive and always having an air of lightness and playfulness and never never being too serious about life um and always kind of allowing people to feel like comfortable and relaxed around me and then something probably around around inspiring the people around me or the people that I interact with either in my life or online or whatever to to take action on things that they want to take action on yeah inspiring others to like to do the things that scare them I think I Vibe with that because I think that's personally something that I like you know struggle with myself and always need encouragement and support to do the things that scare me so I think I'd like to do that for other people and I think tinon was a like great father and a great grandparent and a good family member like brother and a good son he was always like present and there he never neglected those things yeah something along those lines cool what about in the workf front so work achievement you know that sort of thing just a rough first draft I just want to get a sense of just some options that would be cool to maybe have in your your orbitary around like work SL achievements I think I've known for a couple years now that the thing I I want to contribute to is the world of Education um it's just something that I I Vibe with like either teaching myself or through making changes to the way that like we educate people in the world whether they're young or like adult or whatever so I probably would like people to say that I made like yeah great contributions to the world of Education through writing about it maybe writing books maybe writing articles doing public like talks um working with schools working potentially with like the government with policy or whatever around the way that we educate yeah and something that like contributed to the to shift in the way that we educate and maybe stuff more stuff around personal development as well and the importance of like all the stuff that we talk about and that you talk about on your channel um you know the kind of like the kind of spreading of of these ideas um and reforming like parts of uh the education process now we're not going to bother writing this out in full because what we're actually going to do is Chuck it into chat GPT let's just see what happens we we've actually never done this so this is all just like fully life Fully live we celebrate the remarkable life of Tinton Smith a figure whose presence was a great source of joy and inspiration to all who knew him Tintin a cherished father grandparent brother and son passed away surrounded by the love of his family leaving a legacy of profound influence and enduring affection Ton's approach to life was marked by an unwavering commitment to being present and deeply engaged with those he loved his ability to make each conversation feel significant his genuine interest in others and his joyful loving nature were the Cornerstone of his relationships he was open expressive and maintained an air of lightness and playfulness that never failed to make those around him feel comfortable and relaxed more than just a cherished family member Tinton was an inspiring figure both in real life and online he had an extraordinary talent for encouraging others to strive for more to take action on their dreams and to bravely face the challenges that scared them his support and encouragement were pivotal for many in pursuing their Ambitions professionally Tinton was a Visionary in the world of Education his passion for teaching and educational reform was not just a career but a calling he contributed significantly to the field not only through his direct teaching but also by influencing policy and reforming educational processes his writings public speeches and collaborations with Schools and Government bodies reflect a deep seated commitment to their revolutionizing how we educate both The Young and the adults Ton's work in personal development and education reform will continue to resonate and Inspire future Generations his ideas and actions have left an indelible mark on the educational landscape championing a shift towards more effective inclusive learning methods as we bid farewell to Tinton Smith we remember a man who lived with purpose love and a Relentless Spirit of betterment for himself in the world around him his legacy will continue to inspire and guide us in our Journeys we are all the Richer for having known him and his memory will will forever be a beacon of light in our lives wow so this is something you can do for yourself you can just write out these notes Chuck it into chat gbt and then you can create your own obituary if you want or you can write it out yourself if you want and I've done this exercise many times in the last few years I find it super helpful for helping me figure out my North Star and if you're interested I will I put my the thing that I've written for my own obituary in the video description so you can just have a look and you can check it out if You' like so we've gone over a bunch of different methods a bunch of different journaling prompts I would just say like to emphasize that a if you're here in this part of the video already then amazing kudos to you because probably only 10% of people who clicked on this video are actually still watching it at this point and I really hope you've been thinking about the exercises and ideally writing down as we've as we've been going through the video but like you you can always do this in your own time if you would like if you'd like to put on the video again and kind of go through it and if you haven't done this sort of structured reflection type exercises before it can seem a bit much these are not the sorts of questions you would ask at like a dinner party with like strangers you've just met unless you were really weird or you know if you could imagine being back in high school if you were to ask these questions you'd be laughed out of the classroom there because people be like whoa what's wrong with you kind of thing but actually so many of us have this feeling of feeling lost in our life and feeling like we don't have a sense of direction feeling like we're pulled in multiple different directions we don't really know where we're going and from all of the reading I've done about this all of the psychologists and stuff that I've interviewed and applying all this to my own life as well I've really realized that the more we can sit with these sorts of prompts and just really try and go within to find the answers the more likely we are to have that clear sense of our North Star like what's the rough Direction I'm aiming towards and I would just emphasize again that this is just a rough first draft it's just a version 0.1 we don't have to be w to any of these answers you're not like confined to a career path because that's what you put out in your answers to these questions this just a rough first draft the point of thinking about all this future stuff is that it gives us a sense of what do we value in the here and now which gives us that sense of where we're going and so this was episode one in our minseries about how to kind of figure out what you want how to figure out what to do with your life how to be less lost I'm sure series will have an official title thank you so much for watching I would love to hear what you thought of this session in the comments down below and if you want to watch episode two of the series which is all about kind of looking back on the past and the present to help us figure out where we are and what we actually want that video is going to be linked right over here so thank you so much for watching have a lovely day and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye

Channel: Ali Abdaal

Views: 531,162

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali abdal, ali abdaal, ali abdal, change your life, figure out what to do with your life, figure out what you want, how to be more productive, how to be productive, how to figure out what to do with your life, how to figure out what you want to do with your life, how to find your passion, motivational video, productivity tips, self help, self improvement, soul searching, what should i do with my life, what to do with my life, self development, why you feel lost

Id: PtMLCL_T2ak

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2024