What to do when you have absolutely no idea what to do

Right now you’re here in life, and what you really want is to be there.

So you plug your destination into GoogleGoals and it spits out a plan. If you speed a little, you can even arrive before scheduled. Simple, right?

If only! 

In reality, we often only have vague outlines of how we’d like our life to be, and absolutely no idea how to get there.

The problem when people tell you to get started now

The problem with reading posts like Why You Need Clarity Now is that they can make you feel worse about yourself.

They tell you why you need to Seize the Day! and Get into Action! … but how are you supposed to do that if you can’t figure out what direction to take?

If you knew what to do, you’d be doing it.

Can you tell me what I’m supposed to do?

I’ve written before about the West Village fortune teller who broke my heart when she wouldn’t tell me what I should be doing with my life. (It was one of those end-of-the-rope moments. Don’t judge.)

She said that I, unfortunately, was the only one that could decide. 

She was right, of course. But it wasn’t what I needed to hear. It left me more confused than before and didn’t move me even one step in the right direction.

Here’s what I wish she had said:

It’s time to follow your curiosity.

This is how it works. 

I call it the Curiosity Concept.

If you’ve done your brainstorming, your journaling, your reflection, your research, and your meditation, and yet you’re still exactly where you started…

It’s time to get moving.

And in the absence of clear direction, the best way to find clarity is to follow your curiosity.

Here’s how the Curiosity Concept works in business: 

If you have no idea what kind of business you should launch, but you’ve been feeling curious about whether there would be demand for that thing that comes so easily to you…

If you’re struggling to decide which social media platform to focus on, but there’s one that seems more interesting…

If you’re undecided about which provider to use, but you’re intrigued by a package offered by one of them…

…then follow your curiosity.

Ask yourself, “What would I be interested in learning about, writing about, and speaking about for the next six months or a year? What would I be curious to work on or with?”

Here’s how it works for life in general:

If you don’t know what to do with your life, but you’re feeling curious about a course at the local college…

If you know something needs to change in your life (but don’t know what), and you’re feeling curious about Toastmasters…

If you want to meet the partner of your dreams, and you’re feeling curious about rock climbing…

…it just might be the stepping stone you need. 

Ask yourself, “What would I like to spend time doing? What’s something that has always seemed interesting, and keeps turning up in one way or another? What’s something I’d like to know more about, talk more about, and experience more?”

That’s way too easy!

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Next week I’ll show you why this works.

You don’t have to quit your job, invest in an MBA, then move across the ocean in order to make your dreams happen. You just need to take one tiny step forward.

Don’t do what I did. Don't waste over a decade waiting to “know.”

During that time, I talked myself out of literally hundreds of business opportunities. (And tens of potential life partners, too.)

In the end, it took a combination of thinking AND moving for things to begin to gel.  

Here’s to the power of your curiosity,

Jenna

P.S. If you'd like to speak to someone personally about your specific fork-in-the-road, let’s hop on a call and see if it makes sense for us to work together.

That time Samsung stole my homepage copy

I could NOT believe this was happening again!

But I heard it with my own ears. My homepage copy, read aloud on national TV during one of the biggest television moments of the year. All the effort, late nights and rewrites ... down the drain?

I'm sure you've been through some version of this yourself - the kind that ends with, "Wait! That was my idea!"

But even though we've all been through it, not everybody reacts the same. I used to react totally differently than I do now. And it's the reaction, not the story, that's worth talking about.

The Samsung Story 

I'm cuddled up on the couch watching the Oscars with my favorite chocolates and my puppy Skye, when YouTube sensation Casey Neistat appears on my screen and begins speaking into the camera. It's a Samsung commercial about out-of-the-box creatives who are doing what they love on a shoestring budget, each in their own way.

There's something familiar about what he's saying.

Well, I tell myself, The Uncommon Way is all about getting your ideas out there, so of course that feels familiar. But for some reason, the hairs at the base of my neck are standing at attention. What's going on?

"When we're told that we can't, we all have the same answer...," Casey pauses for effect.
Suddenly it clicks. "NOOOOO*!!!" I scream, causing poor Skye to jump off the couch in a panic.
I know exactly what his next words will be. I know, because my homepage says the exact same thing. 

"WATCH ME."

Oh no he didn't!
But he did. That was MY tagline, MY message, guaranteed to resonate with my ideal customers...! 
I'd used everything I'd learned during my years creating copy for fashion brands, together with every ounce of creativity and intuition that I could muster.

But now ... I definitely couldn't use it anymore. Now it was just some stale copy from a Samsung commercial.

Those thoughts swirled around my head for, oh, ten-ish minutes. And then I snapped out of it.  Because here's the thing: I've been here before.
Domain names, business concepts, taglines ... I've been through it all.

The Eat, Pray, Love Story

Like the time I told my friend that I was going to quit my job and travel the world, and write a book about it. I had a wedding to attend in Italy, and after that I'd fulfill my dream of studying yoga in India, and of course I'd have to visit Bali....

My friend's expression turned from confusion to pity. "Wait. You haven't heard of Eat, Pray, Love, have you?"

Here's the thing. Back then, I used to let things like this squash my dreams.

I never went on that around-the-world adventure. And there are countless businesses I never launched.

I couldn't bear the thought of following in someone else's footsteps, of being unoriginal. And I definitely never thought I could profit from something that had already been done.

Flipping the Script

This is where a lot of people get tripped up. We fail to recognize that really, there are no new concepts under the sun, only new interpretations.

Even if something exists, OUR VERSION of it will never exist until we risk bringing it into the world. All it takes is the courage - and the humility - to do it.

Here's one of my favorite quotes from Marie Forleo on the subject: "Can you imagine if Bruno Mars said to himself, 'You know what? There're enough sexy guys that can sing and dance. Why even try?'"

Contrary to what we might like to believe, ideas are pretty fluid. 

In fact, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, wrote a book almost entirely on this subject.

It's called Big Magic, and I wish she had written it earlier so that I could've read it before cancelling my trip of a lifetime.

In it, she argues that ideas are autonomous, longing to be brought into the world, and if you don't act on them immediately they'll move on to another human to get the job done.

My personal belief is that there is such thing as a collective unconscious, and it goes beyond the instincts and archetypes that Carl Jung first suggested. It's where ideas float around waiting for someone that has the balls to make them happen.

That explains why more than one person can be working on the same thing at the same time. Why independent scientists on opposite sides of the globe end up winning the Nobel Prize for the same thing in the same year.

Back to that Samsung thing...

So really, that Samsung thing? It's a great sign, and maybe even a lucky break. Without it, you might not be reading this.

And it proves that I'm on to something. Somebody else agreed with "my" idea, and also thought it would make a splash.

Apparently throughout the world there's a strong, growing desire to look doubt squarely in the eye and simply say: 

WATCH ME.

Here's to flipping your script,
Jenna

P.S. If you're struggling to gin up the courage to make your idea happen, let’s hop on a call to see if it makes sense for us to work together. Get clear on the #1 thing dragging down your confidence and how to break its power over you, so you can stop thinking and start doing.

*Full disclosure: What I really shouted was decidedly more colorful than "no."