14 Questions to Ask Yourself When You’re Feeling Unsure of Your Purpose

Beat the existential exhaustion

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

What do you even want out of your life? What is worth wanting? Is there some path you have yet to uncover? Some deep well of meaning that can serve as a constant source of motivation?

Some of us deal with these kinds of questions all the time. A “rolling existential crisis,” you might call it. But they never hit harder than when the world around us seems to be in turmoil, facing numerous existential threats of its own.

Possibly, it’s just baked into our personality. Sometimes, though, we just need the right questions to ask in order to get our mind right — even if that’s a temporary state. Below is a partial list of questions that have helped me claw my way out of depression or confusion about what I wanted at the time.

Now, the key to these questions being useful consists of two parts: first, you have to answer them honestly. Secondly, once you’ve decided on an answer to one of the questions, you must then ask yourself “Why is that the answer?” and try to uncover as fundamental a reason as you can.

1. If I somehow had total control over my fear and anxiety, what would I do, or how would I be different than I am now?
2. If I didn’t struggle at all with being disciplined, what are the things I would care most about being disciplined in?
3. If all of my worst traits were suddenly gone, what differences would I see in my life?
4. What problems in the world make me feel the most upset?
5. If I was to wake up tomorrow and read the most amazing news about the world, what would that be?
6. What is the absolute best gift I can imagine ever receiving?
7. What is the most beautiful thing to witness in the whole world?
8. Of all the things I’ve ever done, what made me feel the most excited?
9. If my life was ending now, what would be the thing I was most proud of looking back on?
10. If I could pick one thing to not feel ashamed or guilty of, what would that be?
11. What is something in life that has always come naturally to me?
12. What do I enjoy doing even when I fail at it?
13. If I had an endless supply of money, but could only use it to support two or three causes, what would they be?
14. If I could choose five real-world skills to have immediately, what would they be?

Answering all of these questions — and even understanding the why behind your answers — won’t necessarily give you an exact picture of where you want to be or go or what you want to do. Even if you do get a suddenly clear vision of where meaning is going to come from next (or permanently), the path to that source might seem difficult or obscured. You may feel unsure what the first steps would look like. But in fact, the work you’ve already done in building that self-awareness is the first step. And even if you never reach a particular goal that you have in mind for yourself today, the self-awareness alone is capable of enriching and deepening your experience.

I hope these questions and ideas can be helpful for some. If you’d like to see a longer list of similar questions (and indeed, the blog post that inspired this article), check out the amazing Daniel Schmactenberger’s website, Civilization Emerging.