Direction in Life – 11 Best Ways to Find Your Way

If you are looking for direction in your life, you are not alone. Many people are looking for the meaning of their lives, uncertain about what paths to take.

I’ve been President of the “Directionless in Life” club for years, only now certain about my footing in life, and what steps I need to take in the future.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to the iconic spirit tune, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To,” sung beautifully by Diana Ross. The song underscores the importance of self-reflection, thinking about perspectives along life’s journey.

Are you happy where you are at present?

Can you see the direction you’re heading going forward?

Ross’ character realizes that fame and fortune may not translate into happiness. But now you have to decide what’s best for yourself, tuning into your own head, heart, intuition, and resolve.

This article describes how to best find your direction in life — one where you’ll find happiness along the journey, and perhaps even in the destination.

1) Refuse to Overthink, Especially About the Obstacles

On the surface, it might sound like overthinking is no big deal… how will it hurt to just sit around for a while and mull over all of your options?

The truth, however, is that it’s quite an insidious problem because when you’re in the thick of it, you can’t see your own thought patterns or pick up on the red flags that are usually pretty clear in hindsight.

For example, when you’re attempting to reach any goal, it’s easy to focus on the challenges ahead of you. These roadblocks (real and imagined) become barriers to why you can’t achieve a goal, leading to immobilization.

When you feel downtrodden or think that you can’t do it, you’ll have thoughts of giving up. That’s when the negativity takes over.

But you have to remember that it’s not even complex.

All you have to do is stay focused on the finish line, the prize. You have to master your mind and change your thoughts to ones of success and not failure.

Many of us have been conditioned to believe that more thinking is always better, so we often find ourselves asking, “What else can I do?” or “In what other ways can I look at this problem?”

Yes, have a plan, consider potential issues, but don’t overthink a quest to the point that it leads to inaction or deferred dreams.

2) Let Your Voice Resonate Loudest

Many times in life, we become afraid of taking a leap of faith for ourselves, and instead, follow paths dictated by others.

We believe what our parents tell us, what our friends tell us, what the college we go to tells us, and worst of all, what the world tells us about ourselves.

How can you know your best direction when you place others in the driver’s seat?

Life is a curvy road, and each curve is a new “you.” It’s a journey of discovery that can’t be followed with a map.

Life takes us to places we didn’t expect.

But when you find your voice and trust your instincts, you’ll be able to more easily find your right direction.

3) Work on Yourself as You Follow Your Best Direction

The route to reach any benchmark is by first finding your worth. That’s what having self-esteem and self-regard is about. You have to make a conscious choice to act on this.

If you have a poor self-concept, you may find yourself underemployed, in a relationship that doesn’t suit you, or engaging in behavior that harms you or others.

Life is a journey we must embrace and we need to believe in ourselves to make this happen. We cannot avoid getting knocked down, but how we get back up is what matters.

Confidence is like a muscle that gets built with every challenge that we overcome.

The critic within makes you think you can’t achieve something. It might not be clearly discernible in your head. It may even be in your subconscious, but it’s the voice inside you that stops you from trying.

This attitude becomes more pervasive in certain aspects of life—such as money, education, and relationships.

Practicing self-love, adhering to faith in yourself, can help you veer in the right direction.

4) Be True to Yourself, Your Values and Beliefs

Your values are like a compass, your personal North Star. They guide you toward your purposeful life.

It’s natural and healthy to question our values—to try on different lifestyles and different ways of living—but at some point, we need to settle into a pattern that is truly authentic to us.

As children, we start out by absorbing the patterns of those around us as something like a cultural zeitgeist. But as we mature, we need to create our own way of looking at things based on our core values.

We all have cultivated core values, but most of us act as though we don’t. Instead, we allow our lives to be determined by external pressures and demands. If I had my life to do over again, I would know what my core values are and align myself with them.

And when values conflict (e.g., going for your dream job or pleasing parents), I suggest going with the one that resonates most with you.

5) Stop Dwelling in the Past or Living in the Future

You make your future by what you do today. You can not control your life for more than 1 day at a time. A common mistake is to relive the past, again and again.

This is called living in regret. Take action toward goals and spend no energy on remorse or blame. Life moves on. Let it go.

Some people are so busy trying to avoid making mistakes that they don’t do anything. They wind up regretting their failure to act more than any action they took.

The past won’t change, so there’s no sense in wishing you had started earlier.

But the present is still yours to shape. You can begin right now to prepare for what you hope will be your future.

Today, worry less about what might happen if you fail and more about what will happen if you succeed.

Still, looking backward does have its uses because it enables us to imagine how we might act differently in the future to avoid the same types of errors committed once upon a time.

But focusing on the past, or only dreaming about tomorrow, negates action today..

6) Prioritize

I have found that it is very hard to go in two directions at once. The only way I know to keep the balance between meaningful work and my other commitments is to accept that I can’t do everything.

Success requires taking regular, concerted action on a single most important task. If you’re always jumping around for several tasks, none of them will get your full attention.

You’ll be an inch deep in too many things at once — which means that you’ll be a mile wide and an inch deep in nothing. No one can create quality while coping with too many tasks or distractions.

When opportunities arise, consider your abilities, wants and needs, the potential rewards, your sense of personal fulfillment, and other important criteria.

Eventually, you have to choose one focused direction.

Life for most of us is like a game of chess. We’re all trying to figure out the best move at any given time, but it can be overwhelming with all the information coming at us.  

It’s easy to lose focus and look for immediate gratification; something outside of yourself to fill an internal void instead of looking within.

Think about the priorities in your life, and the path you need to take becomes more apparent.

7) Take Consistent Action

I remember being indecisive about what to major in during my college years. I spoke at length with my father about my uncertainty about what to pursue.

One day he told me, “If you are ever having trouble deciding on something, it can be frustrating, but indecision is sometimes worse than making a bad decision. If you are feeling hesitant about something, do one thing so that you can work on it steadily.”

I decided to major in math, took one calculus course, and found that it came naturally to me. My success in that course became a springboard for many University math classes.

It actually ushered me into an actuarial career until I decided to pursue other avenues.

The key is to start formulating even a short-term goal and take consistent daily action until you achieve it.

Procrastination is one of the most detrimental problems faced by students, workers, business people, and even entrepreneurs. I’m sure you know what it feels like to procrastinate.

You plan out your week or month, make a list of actions to take, and then when it comes time to execute them—nothing happens. All of your good intentions melted away like snow in the heat of the sun.

“Starting is the hardest part,” as the saying goes. Once you do it, though, and any further procrastination and mental blocks fall, the road ahead of you becomes crystal clear.

So if you’re earnestly looking for your life’s direction, take action, cultivate work-oriented habits, and do.

It sure beats the alternative of wasting away the day in an unfocused, unproductive, and unhappy state of procrastination.

8) Stop Looking for Perfection

Perfection is elusive. The more time you spend trying to grasp it, the further you fall behind reality.

Though perfection may be fundamentally unattainable, progress is very much achievable. For instance, rather than diving headfirst into a pool of mediocrity, searching for the perfect chocolate souffle, take baby steps towards creating your masterpiece recipe.

Build something real and tangible every day, and spend less time looking back, wishing you’d done things differently.

I can remember a time in my life when I wanted everything to be perfect. I would agonize over small details and nothing was good enough for me.

This pursuit of perfection prevented me from taking action and making progress. Had I continued with this frame of mind, it may have led me to a life of stagnation where I accomplished little and had little or no direction in life.

Life can be challenging and testing at times, but it doesn’t have to get the best of you. It isn’t always easy figuring out who we are and what we want out of life.

Life doesn’t always give us the answers we need. Instead, it makes us go outside the box and figure them out on our own.

Whether it be a problem at work, or some other situation in life that we encounter, we all have moments of self-doubt and questioning our lives and choices we make in everyday life.

We look for some direction and something more to direct us along this winding road, otherwise known as life.

But if perfection is the barometer, we’re destined to lose our way, and never find the path of progress.

9) Stop Comparing Yourself

I guess I was born with the wanderer’s gene. I never had a specific path in mind. The idea of having a Plan B certainly didn’t make sense to me when I was young, especially unprepared because I was so outer-directed.

Life, in my mind, is about making choices that ultimately lead you in the right direction in life. Like every other normal person, though, there are times when you find yourself lost and wondering if your path was wrong… and this also applies when you end up comparing yourself with others.

There are so many pitfalls comparing yourself to other people. But here’s the primary problem: instead of looking for your personal areas for improvement–where you can steadily improve and feel more confident (which is what self-improvement should be about)–you end up focusing on other people, where there’s always someone better.

This actually can make you feel worse about yourself, where you lose the confidence to make important choices in your life.

Again, accept this truism: There will always be someone better than you at something. That’s just life. That doesn’t mean to give up your passions and goals though.

When we compare ourselves to others, we need to remember we’re all different and we all have different objectives and journeys.

However, if you do feel an urge to compare yourself to others, try to compare your journey and personal growth with previous iterations of yourself. This will give you a much clearer picture, and might even motivate you further.

10) Visualize and Have Positive Expectations

A great deal of self-improvement occurs in our subconscious minds. The fact is, most people are aware of their own failings and shortcomings, but are not aware of their strengths.

Remember the former so that you may avoid mistakes. But concentrate on what you are doing right to build upon your strengths.

There is nothing more empowering than believing in yourself, visualizing success, and taking action to accomplish your goals.

Imagine how it would feel to be in the place you want to be, doing the things you want to be doing, with the people you want to be with.

Imagine how it would feel to live a life that is calm, confident, and free from your feelings of frustration, anger, or stress for at least a few minutes during each day.

Your current circumstances do not matter in this exercise. What’s important is how you feel when you imagine a positive scene, a happy scene.

Contemplate what makes your heart sing. What excites you? What gets you going? Watch a scene in your mind where everything seems to flow easily.

In this mental movie picture, see yourself as successful as possible, playing your ideal role as if it is already a reality.

It’s so much easier to follow a direction when you see the process as a smooth, gratifying one.

It’s been proven that correcting our internal dialogue from negative to positive can improve overall health, well-being and even performance in business, sports and other aspects of life.

In fact, correcting self-defeating thoughts is a powerful way to ensure greater success in life.

But visualization and correcting thought patterns alone don’t get us where we need to go. Positive expectations are important too. Expectations determine what we do, how we feel, and how we perform in various situations.

People have two types of expectations. The first type is optimistic, because the person believes that something will happen and that they will be able to deal with the situation effectively if it occurs.

The second type is “pessimistic” expectations, which are the opposite of the first.

You won’t want to walk any path when you believe the end result will prove unfavorable.

In contrast, if you feel that results will be favorable, you’re inclined to go in a beckoning direction.

11) Think of Life as an Adventure

Knowing your life’s purpose helps you stay on track. But when you worry non-stop about it, you become less inclined to notice all available options.

Life is an adventure. It may seem to be a deadend path, but it may be a road you must traverse through in order to get the life lesson you need.

The ultimate goal of a human being is to find his/her way in this universe and lead a happy and free life.

Although it may appear that we’re out-of-control individuals, whatever life throws our way is probably what we need in order for us to reach enlightenment, which is happiness from within.

We all have different lives and journeys. Although we might get sidetracked from time to time due to unforeseen circumstances, these interruptions are often blessings.

But when you are in the middle of the adventure, it can be hard to see the path ahead. That’s why you need to focus on what’s around you, not just in front of you.

Look around and enjoy the process.

Adventuring has different meanings for different people. Some see it as risk taking. Others see it as discovery. And then, there are those that just want to enjoy the journey that is life.

In all these contexts, life’s direction becomes more visible and magnificent!

Summarizing Important Questions Related to Direction in Life

What is a sense of direction in life?

Life direction. A simple phrase that can be used in many situations. It can mean finding life’s purpose, following your dreams, or it could mean finding out what you want to do with the rest of your life.

Direction in life is the term to describe the direction you want your life to take. It’s about setting goals, achieving them, and living out your purpose.

A direction in life refers to our unique paths. It refers to the plans, hopes, and aspirations that we have for ourselves and our future.

How do you find your path when you are lost?

We’ve all had those periods in life when we’re a bit stuck. Maybe it’s our jobs, relationships, health or even our purpose.

Sometimes it can feel very hard to get moving again if we have been stuck for a long time. We may even be trying to deal with multiple areas of our lives that aren’t going as well as we wanted them to.

Sometimes it can be hard to know exactly what to do next, buts it just takes a few simple steps to pick yourself up and move toward a better life.

The Way is your unique journey, your own map you must draw.

But admittedly, it’s confusing and conflicting to be lost. There’s no rhyme or reason to how you feel. Self-loathing and self-criticizing become a way of life as you try to find purpose and pride in your life.

Even those who try to help you by encouraging positivity can come off as insincere because it’s hard for them to truly empathize with the storm that engulfs your mind and body every day.

But know that it is alright to feel lost.

Use this time to learn more about yourself, interests, and passions.

Know that you can exert more control over your situation than you realize.

Figure out a plan, take that first step, and you may find the direction in life you seek… and you may even find yourself.

How to find guidance in life?

To live our own life means to find our own way. In today’s society, that task is easier said than done.

From the time we’re born, we feel a pull from our family, friends, teachers and peers to conform to their ideals.

We soon learn there are consequences for straying from the status quo. This desire to conform can make it hard to ask for advice.

But there may be people in your life who can provide insight into possible courses of action. Seek their counsel, but remember, you need to be at the helm of the “direction ship” you will sail.

Some people rely on the expertise of life coaches. They can help you develop a vision, manage your time and stress, provide encouragement, and much more. In addition, they can help you gain perspective when you question how to make it through.

Some folks rely on self-help books, articles like this one, and personal development events. One idea may strike a responsive chord within you and lead you toward a direction you feel good about.

How do I find my path and purpose?

It is easy to get caught up in the rat race, but it’s not your life. You will always be hustling, working on your career, trying to make ends meet. It is not life.

Life is about finding fulfillment. It is about finding your place within this world and finding contentment with the idea of just being alive.

We need to step back and ask ourselves, what is our purpose? What are we doing here on earth?

We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Remember, time doesn’t wait for anyone, so start doing what you love today!

You don’t need to consult with a life coach to know your passion.

Once you know what you love, it is easy to figure out what to do. First, get in touch with your deepest desires and translate them into realistic goals. Secondly, develop skills and necessary attributes to achieve these objectives.

Keep an open mind, use your intuition, and pursue that burning interest.

And if no interest comes to the forefront, just take action toward a small goal, which can provide motivation to go after bigger goals.

How do I know if my life is going in the right direction?

The road to a good life is a long journey. It’s a course with many directions and many decision points along the way. You can start from scratch, or from somewhere in between.

Either way, figure out where you are now and where you want to go, and choose a direction with as much thought as possible.

For me, the difference between living well and living restlessly is the difference between trusting my inner wisdom, and “going with the flow.”

I’ve lived both ways. When I’m in balance, I trust my gut. I’m intuitive about my life’s direction, where to focus my efforts, and what risks to take. I’m eager to get up and start the day. Mistakes and obstacles are opportunities for growth.

When I’m taking the steps in the right direction, I just feel more fulfilled and happy!

These should be universal feelings to underscore that you’re going in the right direction in life, too.

Final Words

I met a server recently who seemed so at ease, relaxed, and happy. My wife and I spoke with her, and she shared her uncertainty about what career path to pursue.

She was not sure whether she should go for business, pursue acting, or become a model.

But she added, “Today, I’m a server. And I’m just happy with whatever role I choose today.”

This wise server highlighted the notion that you can still be happy, even if your direction in life is unclear.

In fact, happiness and optimism can better shape your future, and help make that direction in life more visible to you.

I hope this article helps to point you on your personal best path, and that you enjoy the accompanying journey, whichever way you go.