How did you decide what you generally wanted to do with your life?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨GrumpyCat@leminal.space⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

I know im young and stuff but i feel lost like i have no sense of what i want to do now or later. How did you decide what to do with your life? What free wisdom can you share?

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Cruxifux@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I chose something that I respected other people who do it. I always thought construction guys were super tough and manly, and I always wanted to be that tough manly guy. So that’s what I did, and now I own my own construction company at 35.

My advice is look to people you like and respect. Who do you idolize? Who do you want to be like? What does that person do? Then go do that.

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kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I started with basic goals:

I want to make enough money that I don’t have to worry about money. Not like “annual tropical vacations” kind of money, but “if my car is stolen tomorrow I can buy a new one without having to worry about covering other expenses” money.

Do work that is creative and technical.

Do work that somehow benefits society.

When I got to university I pulled up the list of majors and started highlighting ones that sounded interesting and would likely fit those goals. I ended up going into engineering. And after bouncing around in industry, for a few years, I found a niche that fits me well.
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blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Well, I grew up depressed and with constant thoughts of suicide, so that had a pretty big impact. I was kind of naturally good at schoolwork, but was hamstrung from the fact that I disliked actually doing homework at home (if felt too boring and I would get distracted), and that I constantly stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning, so I was always exhausted. And while I sometimes found the actual learning or schoolwork engaging, I hated the school environment, where it seemed all my teachers found me, at best, to be a kid who was safe to ignore and, at worst, an annoying burden; while my peers would bully me constantly and exclude me from basically all social activities.

Eventually it got to the point where I was actively looking forward to the day when I would kill myself so that I wouldn’t have to suffer living anymore. But that day kept seeming far away. Eventually I had a kind of gradual waking up, where I realized that if I wasn’t going to kill myself, I had to find a way to make my life worth living - because I couldnt accept living like this for another 70 years.

So I started trying to figure out why I was so miserable, what would make me happy, and how to change my life to achieve those ends.

My nerdiness led me to studying the sciences, which eventually led me to software, where I got a job.

But my loneliness and depression led me to discovering that spending time in nature, exercise, eating healthy food, and having good social interactions made me happier.

When I got my first software job, I realized that the florescent lighting and grey cubicals reminded me of my school environment, and I hated it again. So I found the concept of early retirement. At this point, my experiences in the outdoors and being friends with outdoorsy people served me well - I knew that I could endure and excell in conditions of physical discomfort, and that I could figure things out for myself with enough tinkering.

So I built out my own camper van and lived in it while working as a software developer, saving up a bunch of money and putting it into index funds. When covid hit, I was able to buy 2 houses, and now I rent those out for some passive income.

Once I had all that done, I quit my software job. These days I live off of those passive investments, doing the repairs and property management myself for the most part. And then I supplement that income sometimes with some part time work as a concert rigger. A lot of the time I’m just in my van travelling around, spending time with friends, and rock climbing.

It’s hard to give advice to an internet stranger, but here are some of the things I think would have been useful for me to know.

First - learn how to look good. Get a good haircut, wear good clothes that fit, and keep yourself clean and groomed. In all of these things, look for ways to express your values, personality, and lifestyle. First impressions matter a lot, and how you present yourself is your first first impression.

Second - there is a lot to be said for working hard, being smart, never giving up, and committing to the grind. But the two biggest gaps I had were mindset and social skills, which are inextricably linked.

Sometimes you really just have to embrace the suck and grind it out - but things tend to work out much better if you have a positive attitude, are happy with your life and where it is going, like who you are as a person, and expect your life to be full of excellent opportunities. I dont believe that “everything happens for a reason”. But I believe that everything that happens can be a valuable lesson - so you can be grateful for the good things that happen to you because they are good, and grateful for the bad things that happen to you because these are the things which help you learn and grow as a person.

And when you have a light-hearted, can-do attitude, you tend to find you are rarely short of friends. Get comfortable meeting new people, push yourself to find the people you really click with, and deepen your relationships with the people you find. Always keep going out and finding new connections, and try to find something positive about every person you meet - even if you might not want to spend a ton more time with them. These people will form your social support network, who can pick you up when life has beat you down. They will imbue you with their own energy and ideas, so you can see how many opportinities you really have. And on a practical level, they will open up professional opportinities for you to advance your career or switch careers. In particular, try to get out and meet people outside your normal peer group age-wise. Older people can often be a wealth of knowledge and opinions gained from a lot more life experience than you have, and younger people tend to have a lot of interesting ideas and energy from not being encumbered by some of life’s harsher blows.

Third, take care of yourself. Drink water, eat protein and vegetables, avoid junk food, avoid excess screen time, exercise regularly, sleep well as often as you can, get out into the fresh air and sunshine.

A good question to ask yourself:
What do you love or want?

Just ask yourself this question, and answer honestly. Then ask yourself - “how do I do that?” Then, try something to achive your goal. You can take this exercise as far as you want, planning a whole life for yourself that is truly amazing - but it should be noted that this only works if you actually get started on the work. Sometimes we get paralyzed, thinking that our ideas for how to get from A to B arent good enough, or will obviously fail. But often, just by standing up and getting started, we find new, better ideas coming to us as we work.

If you find that question really difficult, then here is an easier one:
What do you HATE?

This one tends to be easier, because the things we hate tend to be a lot more concrete and easier to bring to mind. Maybe you hate sitting in traffic, or not having a new video game you really want, or sitting under florescent light bulbs. Good! Now ask yourself: how can I avoid these things as much as possible? The answers to these questions often won’t lead you to a life you want - but they will often lead you in the right direction.

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whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Don’t let yourself become a caricature of yourself, step outside your self expectations and find ways to face your fears.

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Lofi_Haze@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You need to find a good job. Work to find that. What YOU want to do is irrelevant if you are poor and don’t have disposable income. Work hard in your youth to get a good job in Education, Aerospace, Healthcare, or the Government. Those are your options

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user224@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I didn’t.

I have no fucking idea. I just finished HS, still don’t know. So I’ll go to college. Something in IT, I didn’t even check the specifics or subjects until I was already accepted and signed up. All I know is the program is regarded as one of the hardest, described by past students as “Vietnam war”, with one of the first recommendations to pass being “Get a therapist.”

I’ll probably get kicked out after 1st semester due to math. I am not good at it, and it’s apparently quite hard there, though not the worst either.
Hopefully not. I don’t know what else to do.

Now, if my future paycheck wasn’t a problem (i.e. not living in capitalist society), I’d know precisely what I’d want to do, and I known so since 1st year of HS. I wouldn’t even need college.
Step 1 is getting a driver’s license (just for regular cars), probably just due to bureaucracy. Step 2, sign up for train driver’s course at ZSSK. The course itself is 6 months, then 720 hours of practice and after finishing the state exam, you finally become an actual train driver. So around a year.
But it isn’t paid so well.

In IT, preferably something around wireless telecommunications and networking. The faculty I’ll be going to apparently has their 2G, 3G and 4G networks students can play around with (from their website). But when I asked about it on open doors day I was met with “We have that? Maybe.”
Asking about telecommunications, I got ping ponged between 2 faculties of the same university. Students from faculty of electrical engineering told me that if somewhere it’s something offered on faculty of informatics. Staff of faculty of informatics told me it’s most likely to be found on faculty of electrical engineering.

So I don’t fucking know what I am getting myself into.

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- naught101@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Pretty good approach. Most of the most interesting people I know started adult life doing one thing, and eventually switched to another thing. Maybe after one or two years of an undergrad, maybe after 15 years of a career.
  
  I’ve got one friend in his late 30s who has been a highschool teacher for over a decade, and is still thinking of switching careers to be a train driver. He does public transport activism a bit too. I reckon you could head into the train network with IT skills anyway - maybe as some kind of network operator. Not quite the same thing, but aligned…
  
  I would say that you should absolutely take maximum advantage of any electives offered to get as broad a taste of what’s available as possible. That’s what will give you ideas about where to head next.
  
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Mnem667@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Hell, I’m approaching a half-century, and I still don’t know what I want to do. :P
Mostly fell into what I’m doing now. Never would have guessed that this is my life, when I was younger.

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naught101@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
By doing the next obvious thing until I’d tried enough things to be sure where I wanted to be. Took until my late 30s, but the stuff before that was fun and/or interesting too.

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DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Still deciding tbh.

So many options:

On one hand, I could be a corrupt lawyer that works for the rich. Or a politician taking bribes.

Or I could consider becoming a drug dealer, and maybe eventually become a mob boss?

I always wonder what’s it like sailing the high seas, maybe visit Somalia to experience that a bit?

Maybe be a Corrupt CEO?

Revolutionary?

Maybe a bit of Terrorism?

Nuclear Dictator?

Hmm idk man…

Choices, choices… hard to decide… 🤔

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DarkFuture@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Well. First my body made it clear I had to eat and drink. Then it became clear I had to have shelter. Then I realized I just have to do whatever I can get my hands on doing to not die. So that’s what I’m doing.

Unless your mommy and daddy have a lot of money, you’re not going to have a whole lot of choice in the matter. You’re just going to do what you have to.

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AlexLost@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
College. You have no idea what jobs are even possible to do until you put yourself out there. Learn a couple skills, find an avenue that interests you and dive in. I’ve just stumbled into most things but wanted to do something that would be useful in everyday life too. Became a cook then a chef, went to trade school for auto mechanics. Now I run a marina?! PSA: Don’t buy a boat!

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partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
How did you decide what to do with your life? What free wisdom can you share?

Try things. Experience everything open to you. Seek out even more experiences. You will find lots and LOTS of things that you don’t like, but the more you do, you’ll start picking up pieces of concepts you like. Those will guide you to making the next set of choices. Rinse repeat until you have a partially formed direction, then follow that direction and see where it leads you. I am shocked how many little “dead end” skills or experiences allowed me to take a next step into something moving me forward. There’s no way in hell anyone could have given me a list and said “these are the experiences that will pay off”.

Also there are some hard truths to life and you identify skills/talents/affinities you have when talking about your career:

You can be good/talented at ThingX

You can like doing ThingX

There is a market for ThingX and people will pay you good money to do it.

For a very few number of people, they get all three. Most people have to settle for two and muddle through. You cannot move forward with a specific ThingX if you only have one.

Also, trying to be the best at something professionally will be nearly impossible. Even if you get there for a moment, the world is just too big, and there will always be someone better than you at a specific thing professionally soon. Trying to scrap to stay at the peak is an unsustainable road to ruin. However, being just pretty good at two different things that intersect is VERY achievable, and you will be competing against a tiny handful of people that have those same two skills. Thats the sweet spot. Your skills and ebb and flow between your two specialties over your career and you can ride the wave professionally when one starts waning, you can lean into the other one. At times, both of your skills will be in demand, and you will be extremely valuable and employable. Cash in when that happens and take the work with the full knowledge that it doesn’t last. Save during the good years and your lean years will be an easy ride.
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hperrin@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It was the only thing I was really good at, and I enjoyed doing it.

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tisktisk@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Find what you love and let it kill you.
For me this was philosophy which is the opposite of convenient or helpful especially in our current era. It led to me consistently blundering my way forward but it serving as an initial point is the critical lesson to be learned, I think.

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baggins@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It was an accident

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