People I’ve been coaching lately have been stuck in indecision about what purpose they should pursue. At this kind of crossroads, we can become plagued by doubt.
And that makes sense: If you’re not sure what your purpose is, then going after a single choice can feel really uncertain. How do I know if this is the thing? What if I suck at it? What if I fail? What if I make the wrong choice?
But getting stuck in this kind of doubt and indecision is often much worse than making a single choice and failing at it. If you fail at something, at least you gave it a shot, and you learned something valuable. You practiced taking action. You practiced working with fear. You empowered that choice, and now you can empower the next one.
If you’re stuck in inaction and doubt, you often just feel lousy about yourself. You get zero results staying in this kind of false safety.
So making a choice to pursue a single purpose—even if you’re unsure about it—can be one of the most powerful things that we can do.
The Effects of Being Stuck
Although it makes complete sense to be afraid of making the wrong choice and hence wasting time or money or looking like an idiot and being judged by others if we fail, staying stuck guarantees bad results:- Indecision can have us waffling back and forth between various options, which means that we’re giving only partial effort to each option, if that. We’ll get crummy results from this partial effort.
- Doubt can mean that we make zero decisions and take zero action. We'll get crummy results from this, of course. Not starting that nonprofit means that you help zero people. Not creating your art means that you’ll never express yourself fully, never improve, and never light people up.
- Not pursuing a path means that we don’t learn anything. This might be the biggest downside of them all—taking action is a way to learn, both about how to pursue this particular purpose and about whether this is the right purpose for us. If you pursue the path of teaching music, you'll learn much more about teaching music than you would by doing nothing. For instance, if you have fun in the process, you might learn that teaching music feels like your calling.
- All of this leaves us disappointed in ourselves. And this might be the worst part of all. We feel terrible about ourselves for being stuck and not pursuing a path that feels meaningful. Sometimes, people will resign themselves to this and say that they’re content with it, but in my experience, they’re actually feeling bad about themselves for being resigned.
- Inaction and indecision is a choice. It’s often much worse than making a bad choice.
- There’s rarely an entirely wrong choice. Making a decision is a way to learn something, so even if it turns out that the choice you made isn’t right for you, you can only learn that by making that choice and taking action.
- Our biggest fear is often that people will judge us for trying to do something we’re not good at. This assumes that people actually care about what life choices we make. Most people don’t, and we let ourselves be controlled by our imagination of what their opinions are. So it’s often better to assume that no one’s opinion but your own matters in this kind of choice.
The Results of Single-Minded Devotion
Let’s contrast those kinds of results with what happens if we pursue a single purpose with full devotion.- You’ll learn a lot about the craft. If you wanted to make craft jewelry, by pursuing it wholeheartedly, you’ll get much better at making jewelry. You’ll learn about tools, materials, methods, what people like, and how to express yourself.
- You’ll learn a lot about yourself. You’ll learn what lights you up, what makes your heart sing, what struggles you still have to learn about, what you don’t know, and what you love. You’ll learn about whether this is what you’re called to do if you listen to your heart as you do it.
- You’ll learn about dealing with doubt, struggles, and fear. These are necessary lessons for pursuing any calling.
- You learn about taking action and single-minded focus.
- The results you get from this action and focus are incredible—if you’re creating art, you’ll create more than ever before. If you’re producing movies or writing code, you’ll have a greater output and better quality than you could ever hope for otherwise.
- You’ll help way more people.
- You’ll feel so much better about yourself through taking action than you would otherwise.
- You‘ll have more mental energy. By no longer waffling in indecision, you’ll free up mental energy that’s wasted in trying to decide. The cost of constant indecision on our mental health and energy is often unnoticed and incalculable.
Taking the Leap of Faith
So how do we choose a purpose to pursue when we’re not sure?You remove certainty as a condition for action.
Ask your heart what your calling might be. What makes your heart sing? What have you always been afraid to pursue but secretly wondered if it’s your thing? What possibilities have you shut down? What have you been waffling about?
Whatever answers come up, write them down. Look at the list, sit with it, and give yourself space to actually feel in your heart what you’re being called to do. Give yourself a one-week deadline to sit with it. At the end of the week, feel in your heart what’s calling you the strongest. Then trust that.
Commit. You’ll have doubts and fears—commit anyway. Tell someone what you’re going to do, and commit for a period of time. Let’s say a year, or six months if a year feels impossible. If even that feels too much, you could commit for three months, but commit.
Take a leap of faith. This is required. Ask yourself how you would pursue it if you knew for certain. Then give yourself completely to this purpose, as if your life depended on it.
