There are lots of articles on the internet and in magazines that are about self-improvement or finding yourself or achieving your goals. This is because, as people, we are all often in crisis about what our purpose should be and how to go about achieving it.
As completely normal as existential crises are, they are also incredibly frustrating. With the worry that you aren’t doing the right thing comes doubt that what you are doing is the wrong thing and even depression that you will never achieve anything because you don’t even know what you should be achieving!
When you start reaching this point in life, we strongly advise that you take a breath and relax. It may not be comforting, but pretty much everyone thinks this at some point in their lives. However – and this should be a comfort – there is a way to get yourself out of your crisis and carry on searching for your purpose.
Enjoy the Novelty of Learning
Life is all about learning. This doesn’t necessarily mean going to school and getting good grades; it means experiencing new things, exploring new ideas through books or TV or travel, it means getting out there and doing stuff.
You might be the kind of person who takes this to mean now is the moment for a PhD in Philosophy, but equally doing something more novel like American accent training or clay throwing is still learning and will still shape your life. In fact, learning new things like party tricks could improve your confidence when you meet strangers or reading books on topics you’d never heard of before might suddenly give you the inspiration to guide you through the rest of your life.
The point is that you never really know when you are going to learn something or be inspired by something that could change your life. In light of this, the sensible thing seems to be to do everything that interests you and to pursue every activity with the same enthusiasm, however daft it might seem at the time and however daft it might turn out to actually be!
Relax and Let Yourself Just Be Happy
Happiness is the dream for everyone and yet so many people are unhappy all the time. A lot of this problem is down to the loss of perspective. Because we are so desperate to find a meaning or a purpose, we forget that we are allowed to just sit and laugh at cats playing the piano on YouTube every once in a while or go out with friends and have fun.
There is a lot of pressure on us from social media to appear happy all the time but appearing happy and being happy aren’t the same thing. Take time to get to know what really makes you happy and focus on the ‘you’ rather than the ‘happy’. This way you can relax, forget what other people think, or what you think other people think about what you think.
Just be yourself and do what you want.
