If you can’t figure out what you want, it usually isn’t because you’re missing information.
Have you ever tried to figure out what you want to do next and you just can’t?
Most people assume they need to think harder, get more input, analyze it from every angle, and ask more people for their advice.
But here’s what’s actually happening.
There is a deeper part of you that knows what feels aligned. That part isn’t gone. It’s just quiet. And right now, you’re out of range of its signal.
You’re disconnected from the part of you that knows how to respond to what information you already have.
So, if the signal is there, why can’t you hear it?
In my experience, it usually comes down to three things.
When You Can’t Figure Out What You Want, Overthinking Takes Over
Number one—and this is a big one for a lot of people—overthinking.
You have a big question in front of you about your life, your work, or your future, and your mind kicks into gear. So, you start circling around this issue.
Unfortunately, what usually happens is the more you think about it, the less clear it becomes. This is because clarity doesn’t always live in your thoughts.
It lives somewhere deeper.
But that part doesn’t shout at you. And when your mind is in overdrive, it drowns out everything else.
It’s not that your thinking is wrong. It’s just that it’s too loud to let anything else come through.
When You Can’t Figure Out What You Want, Identity Lock-in Tightens
The second reason you might be disconnected from this signal has less to do with what the answer is and more to do with how you feel about yourself.
Every one of us carries certain identities that feel familiar and safe. You might be the responsible one in your family, the good employee who never rocks the boat, or the person who keeps everything running. These roles start early and, over time, they shape the choices we make without us even noticing it.
For example, imagine someone who has always been the reliable, career-focused person at work. They’ve built a reputation on being steady and dependable. But lately, part of them is drawn towards something more creative.
The moment they sense that desire, another part of them tightens up or immediately rejects the idea. What would that mean for the image they’ve spent these years building?, they think.
Would people take them seriously? Would they disapprove of this new direction? Would something in their life have to change?
The Case of a Caretaker
Or maybe you’ve been the caretaker in your family for years, the one who holds everything together. But now, deep down, you feel a pull towards something that’s just for you—a class, a project, or some other type of change.
But the moment you imagine taking a step toward that, your body feels heavy. You might have a lot of guilt going on. You might picture someone rolling their eyes or saying, “You? Really?”
And suddenly the desire that was clear a moment ago goes quiet again.
That’s what we call identity lock-in. It’s the internal pressure to keep being who you’ve always been, even if that version of you doesn’t fit anymore.
So, you feel the weight of who others expect you to be. And even if a new path is pulling at you, part of you hesitates, because following it might require a change in how you’re seen by others or even by how you see yourself.
And that’s enough to make your inner knowing start to back away so that you can’t hear what it really wants you to do.
When You Can’t Figure Out What You Want, External Scripts Get Loud
Even if you get past the overthinking and you’re ready to let go of an old identity, there’s still one more thing that can block your clarity. And it often shows up without your even realizing it.
It’s the influence of external scripts.
These are your expectations and beliefs you’ve picked up from the people around you. That could be your parents, teachers, mentors, co-workers, and even your culture.
These don’t always come in the form of direct advice. Sometimes they’re just things you’ve absorbed over time.
Things like:
- You should stick with what you’ve started.
- It’s risky to leave a good job.
- Creative work isn’t a real career.
- You can’t just do what you want. You have responsibilities.
When you hear those messages often enough, you start to use them as a filter. So even when something inside you comes to life, you can immediately run it through those inherited rules.
And a lot of times, that new idea doesn’t pass.
The Desire for an Identity Change
Maybe you’ve always been praised for being practical and grounded, but lately you’ve been drawn towards something less conventional—a new project or a lifestyle shift that doesn’t quite match how people see you.
Even if it energizes you and makes you feel more like yourself, you might dismiss it right away because it doesn’t fit these rules.
Or maybe you were raised to value stability above all else. And now you’re drawn to something less secure, but more meaningful. Suddenly your brain floods you with all the reasons it doesn’t make sense. All the voices you’ve collected over the years start telling you what’s smart or right or realistic. They suddenly get really loud!
And just like that, the thing that lit you up starts to look irresponsible. So you tamp it back down until you forget what it even was.
The “Mars” Moment
When you add it all up—the overthinking and the pressure to keep being who you’ve always been and the weight of these rules and expectations—it makes sense that you feel stuck.
I was watching the fantasy series “Sanctuary” the other night. There’s a character in it named Kate who had a checkered past. She had been involved in crime and was trying to correct her life.
At one point in the series, she gets to leave and go to a completely different world to help them start over after an apocalyptic event. She comes back to regular Earth for a visit, and she’s talking to one of her friends over coffee. She says something like, “Down there I can be anyone. Everyone has a blank slate. There’s no past there, just opportunity. There’s just the future, and we’re all building it together.”
There was such light and joy in that idea, in that opportunity.
Imagine it for a minute. If you could go to Mars—if Mars were habitable somehow—with a blank slate and become anybody you wanted to be, you can imagine what kind of freedom that would give you.
There wouldn’t be all these expectations, all these rules of the family or the friends or the co-workers or the culture. You could just start fresh.
Can you imagine doing that in the moment you’re in now? In truth, we may feel that we’re tied down by all these things, but we’re really not as much as we think we are.
These Three Things Are Getting In the Way
So if you’ve been saying, “I just can’t figure out what I want,” these three things are most likely what’s getting in the way.
But your inner sense of knowing, the part of you that used to feel when something was right or wrong, hasn’t vanished. It’s still there. You’ve just lost contact with it. But you can rebuild that connection so that you can finally find the answers you’re looking for.
The first step is learning how to quiet the noise so you can finally hear yourself again.
Figure Out What You Want Step 1: Get Real Space
First, to hear yourself again, you need space—actual space away from the constant input, familiar routines, people who expect you to be a certain way, and the roles you automatically step into without even thinking about it.
When you’re surrounded by that much noise every day, it’s almost impossible to hear what you really want because everything around you is louder than your own inner voice.
So, the first move is simple, but it’s really important: Step out of your normal environment.
If you could go to a different world, that’d be cool, right? That would solve this problem in a minute. But you can go into an environment that’s different from the one you’re already in.
This could be as small as an afternoon with your phone off and no one else around. Maybe you go to a neighboring town and stay overnight. Or you go for a weekend somewhere nearby.
What matters isn’t where you go, but that you get far enough outside of your regular life that you stop feeling like you have to respond to it.
This is about creating distance between you and the role you’re currently playing.
Get away so you can finally reconnect with your inner self.
Step 2: Rebuild the Relationship
Once the noise quiets down and you’ve stepped far enough outside your usual life to hear yourself again, the next step is to start rebuilding that connection with your inner self.
Because if you’ve been disconnected from what you want for a while, you have to gently return to the version of you that remembers what lights you up. That kind of remembering doesn’t happen in your head. It happens through your body and through experience.
So in the space that you’ve carved out, start doing things that help you feel more like you. Sit outside with a cup of something warm and no plan for the day. Pull out your guitar or your paints or your journal. Walk through an art museum. Go to a symphony concert. Browse a bookstore.
Let yourself follow a thread of curiosity, even if you don’t know why it matters just yet.
Journaling can really help here, because writing is one of the simplest ways to hear yourself more clearly. You don’t have to write perfectly. Just be honest.
And slowly, as you spend more time in that “only for you” space, you may notice something shifting. Some of your preferences, interests, or inspirations are likely to show up out of the blue.
That’s the signal starting to come back. It may not arrive as a fully formed decision, but you’re not trying to figure it all out at once, anyway.
You’re just rebuilding the trust that lets you hear yourself again.
Step 3 to Figure Out What You Want: Come Back Into Your Body
Once you’ve made a little space and started to feel more like yourself again, the next step is to shift your attention back into your body even more.
We spend so much time in our heads scrolling and thinking and planning and reacting that we forget we even have a body until it starts to complain. Maybe your neck hurts, or your jaw is tight, or you suddenly realize you’ve been clenching your shoulders for the past six months!
When that happens, it’s easy to feel annoyed, like your body is just getting in the way. But your body isn’t the problem. It’s the part of you that’s been absorbing everything you didn’t have time to feel. And it’s been trying to tell you how you’re doing even when your mind was too busy to notice.
So how do you shift back in so you can use your body as a critical source of information?
You start by noticing the little things. Your shallow breaths. The weight of your legs on the chair. The tension in your jaw that releases a little when you bring your attention to it.
Go for a slow walk just to feel yourself moving through space. See what shows up when you’re not filling the silence with everything else.
Even placing your hand on your heart when you’re journaling can be enough just to check and ask: “How do I actually feel right now?”
Not what do I think, but what do I feel in my body?
These moments bring you back to the part of yourself that holds a deeper kind of knowing. Because the body keeps score, but it also keeps wisdom. And when you start listening to it again, the signal gets clearer.
Investigation to Figure Out What You Want
If you’ve been stuck in this, I don’t know what I want place, here’s something you can try.
Block Off One Hour
First, block off at least one hour where no one needs anything from you. Turn off your phone and step away from your usual environment. Go somewhere quiet, like outside to a park bench or a library or your car or even just a room in your home where you can be alone.
Bring a Notebook
Next, bring a notebook and a pen—not your phone or your laptop. You want to work through your hand. Set a timer for 20 minutes and write whatever comes to mind, but keep asking yourself this one question:
“What do I actually want right now?”
Keep writing. Even if your answer is, “I don’t know.” Even if it loops around or makes no sense, the goal is to clear out the noise.
And you can be very simple here. “What do I want right now? I want a drink of water. I might want a snack. I might want to get up and walk instead of sitting.”
Ask yourself, “What is it that I really want right now?” Then, let the answers be really simple because that’s how you open up the conversation between you and your inner self.
Try it for a few days in a row. At the end of the day, sit down with your journal and your pen and ask yourself, “What do I really want right now?”
Just answer whatever comes to mind first.
Gradually, it’s going to start getting easier because your system is going to realize that you’re listening.
So it’s going to start giving you answers more often.
NOTE: If this stirred something in you and you’d like to explore it a little more, check out my free Signals Journal. It walks you through seven common ways life tries to tell you that it’s time for a change.