You Know What to Do With Your Life, You’re Just Not Doing It.
By: Ayodeji Awosika
Tags: Life Lessons, Mental Health, Inspiration, Psychology, Productivity

You Know What to Do With Your Life, You’re Just Not Doing It.

Just be honest with yourself.

I’m pretty sure you at least kind of sort of know what you want to do with your life. Maybe it isn’t crystal clear to you, but the foundation is there.

DNA is strange in that it just gives you your own unique set of characteristics. When you’re a kid, you’re just drawn to certain activities for no apparent reason. You develop tastes, inclinations, and desires.

During your upbringing though, you also develop fears. You’re taught fears. If left to your own devices, without learning about concepts like ‘being realistic’ or worrying about ‘risk’ you’d probably be more or less living the type of life you want to live.

I don’t blame you for going through the societal ringer and coming out the other side with a life you don’t want. That’s the default outcome.

I make no guarantees you’ll get out of it either. One of the hardest things to do in this life, in this society, is to be who you truly are and do what you truly want to do.

There are just so many incentives pointing in the opposite direction. If you want to stand a chance of making it out, you have to learn how to rediscover the real you and remember that you already know what you want.

Looking back at my past, I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer. I’ve been obsessed with words from a young age. I always had a great vocabulary without trying to have one. I’d write poems when I was in middle school.

I’d offhandedly mention wanting to write a book more times than I can count. I knew. Business always fascinated me. The idea of being free fascinated me. I was always curious about life and what it took to be successful. All the tools were there and I just had to pull the trigger.

The same goes for you.

You Already Know What You Want to Be, You’re Just Putting it Off

I remember this conversation I had with an Uber driver in Los Angeles on my way to the airport. She asked what I did for a living and I told her I was a self-improvement writer.

Of course, she began to tell me her life story and started asking me for advice. She was driving Uber because she was trying to earn extra money to solve this dispute over a debt or property taxes, something like that. She was frazzled and went on and on about how she didn’t know how to find a way out.

We talked about her past job experience, her potential dreams, options to get out of her bind. We kept going back and forth but never quite got to the root of the issue or a viable solution. She was hiding. This went on for an hour (L.A. has a lot of traffic).

As we reach the airport she mentions that she has this long track record of consulting experience and that she’d been offered deals to work with companies in the past. She says “You know, maybe I should start a business doing that.” In my mind, I thought “Yeah, lady, maybe you should.”

It’s a weird human quirk. We dodge the answers right in front of us. Why? Because it can’t be that simple, right?

If it is that simple, then you feel like an idiot for not doing anything about it. So you make up these complicated excuses for why you’re not doing the things you want because that explanation is easier to deal with than facing the truth upfront.

I have so many stories like this. Often I ask questions on my personal social media “What kind of business would you start if you were certain it would work out?” I remember once a friend of mine described her potential business to a tee — had the name and everything. I hope she starts it one day.

Hope you start your thing one day. Hope you don’t put it off forever — your bakery, your e-commerce business, your comedy career, your daycare, your jewelry shop in a tourist trap, whatever the heck it is, doesn’t matter, as long as you think it’s cool.

How do you overcome this fear that causes you to put things off? The process I use for all aspects of self-improvement is the same — diagnose the problem and try your best to come up with a solution.

Let’s take a look at some of the root causes of your inaction.