Editor’s note: This article was reviewed and updated in May 2026 to meet The Vessel’s latest editorial standards.
It can be really stifling to feel like you’re in a place in life where everyone else around you has found their path, yet you still have no idea where you’re supposed to be going.
You’re left feeling like an imposter or an alien, trying desperately to blend in with a sea of people who seem to have a better idea of how life works.
You start wondering if you missed out on a life-manual everyone else seems to have read.
You wonder how everyone else seems born with dreams or goals, yet you still haven’t found yours.
You’re left worrying if there’s something wrong with you.
But even if it seems like you haven’t got any goals or dreams in life, they’re often buried deeper than they appear.
So if you’re lost and confused as to where you’re headed, I’ve got plenty to ease your mind.
Sometimes, all it takes is a little reset, and you’ll stumble upon an unknown interest or a passion that snowballs into your purpose.
You don’t need your job to be your hobby or dream
An MLM social media star greets you with a gleaming smile and pats the velveteen couch beside her.
“Work doesn’t have to feel like work. I was able to tie my passions into my career, and now every day is new and exciting – I never get bored!”
She then piles on the, ‘don’t get a job, make a job’ pitch and starts berating you for having joined the devilish capitalist system and labored for fat men behind grand desks sitting floors above you.
But this mentality of “Yes, you need to work, but you should feel guilty if you’re not pursuing your passion and dreams in that work” is incredibly damaging.
Mike Rowe’s 2009 TED talk provides a brilliant insight into how you don’t actually need to be working your dream job to be happy.
In fact, he highlights labor intensive jobs that many of us would frown at such as pig farming and manual sewage construction as the ones that people are often happiest working in.
So if you are in a stable job but it doesn’t light your innards on fire, don’t beat yourself up about it or let the mantra of having to work in something that involves your dream (particularly if you don’t have any dreams to begin with) get you down.
If anything, being content with your 9-5 means you have free time and spare income to try out new experiences after work and on the weekends – which might well be the key to unlocking the next step.
Getting yourself out of your comfort zone
“I don’t have any goals or dreams”, you mope and wail, before rolling over in bed to resume a 4-hour scroll through YouTube and Instagram – lit up instead by the dreams of others.
Feeling like you lack goals and dreams often equates to a lack of purpose, which is often the key to happiness and longevity.
Once you’re in the hole of I’m-going-nowhere, it’s hard to get back out, to motivate yourself, and to try new things, which makes it a fairly vicious cycle.
But if the looming feeling of not having discovered what your dream might be or know what goals you want to accomplish is hanging over you, try to suck up that dark cloud and toss it out the window.
Rather than withering in your misery, get out there.
Say yes to a friend inviting you on holiday to a destination you’ve not been to before.
Engage in small talk with a stranger (if it’s safe to do so), as you never know what you might learn.
Try painting, climbing, volunteering, or search out any opportunities in your area that tickle your fancy.
We love the comfort zone, but it’s often the least productive place for us to be when trying to grow and flourish, and particularly when trying to find our purpose and chase our waking dreams.
Jeanette Brown, a life coach and educator, offers a practical framework for this in her Reset Your Life Compass challenge — a free five-day exercise focused on identifying where you are, where you want to be, and what’s actually stopping you.
This exercise gave me the most important tools I needed for reflecting on where I was at the moment, where I wanted to be, and how I was going to get there. Worth exploring if you want a structured starting point.
Avoiding the trap of comparison
Popular media doesn’t often show us success stories of people finding their passion and chasing their dreams after the age of 35.
Instead, it’s ‘how I made my first million by 19’, or ‘21 and retired!’
And constantly being fed a diet of people posting incessantly about their own (often fabricated) success, or posting pictures of sunny (photoshopped) holidays, fast cars, and private jets, will leave you feeling far bluer than you ought to.
I could list off all the fraudsters and cons that have conquered social media, but that would take a whole other article.
But trust me when I say that on social media, many things are often not as they appear.
Think Anna Delvey, who did an impressive job at swindling upper-class New Yorkers and extorting huge amounts of money; often posting about her ‘lavish’ lifestyle on Instagram.
Or Ali and Ana Abulaban, who portrayed themselves as the happiest and most loving couple on TikTok and no doubt had many couples watching their videos and feeling jealous of how idyllic their relationship seemed.
Yet, Ali is still in jail on trial for shooting and killing Ana and many instances of domestic violence and infidelity have come to light following the fatal shooting.
If I could pull down the rose-tinted goggles social media forces upon us and show you the real world, I could. But unfortunately, we often have to make that decision for ourselves – to not believe everything we see.
And if that’s still a step too far, consider unfollowing those who make you feel bad about where you currently stand in your own life.
It’s true that you might stumble upon your dream lifestyle or job after watching one rogue YouTube vlog, but for the most part, social media only bleats a constant stream of bragging and vanity – the consumption of which mostly just leads to you feeling worse about yourself.
Solving a lack of goals by making them
Whilst you might not be able to force a dream and vision for where your life is headed upon yourself today, you can set goals.
That is a very actionable and reasonable target which you’re in charge of.
What it does require is a large dose of motivation, which can sometimes be the underlying factor missing behind a lack of goals and drive, and may very well be the missing piece to your puzzle.
Too much too soon in trying to overhaul your life and accomplish an undiscovered dream tomorrow is setting yourself up for a swift failure.
However, you have an immense power within you to make small, incremental changes which add up and manifest impactful change.
Often, this involves a lot of life-admin changes such as:
- Shedding the bad habits and finding new ones to allow you to constantly see and sample more of what the world has to offer..
- Learning to let go of unhealthy attachments and instead forging new connections that open your mind and broaden your perspective.
Learning to manage and spend your time wisely in ways that maximizes your efficiency, but also allows you to unwind and relax.
Finding your motivation and drive
Those people whom you look up to and compare yourself to, who seem to be filled to the brim with dreams and goals, they’re like that because they want to have an impact on the world and bring change.
They didn’t fall out of the womb with their lives mapped out, nor did some celestial being gift them with a neatly filed-out planner detailing their fate upon their first birthday; they did it all themselves.
(For the most part, mentors and guides can be incredibly helpful in navigating periods where you feel particularly lost.)
Think of it a bit like a formula or a sequence: to find and unlock your dreams you need to accomplish goals and milestones, which can only be done with motivation and sheer will.
Without that motivation, you don’t get anywhere near the other two. It’s the base of your pyramid and your driving force.
So if you’re still dubious as to what your end goal is, start at the bottom, or with the first step, and slowly work your way up from there.
Tackling a little every day and striving for as little as 5% improvement in your routine or your satisfaction accumulates far more than expecting immediate change and perfection overnight.
Always looking out for yourself
On top of all of that life admin that might seem overwhelming right now, you need to still remember to give yourself time off and to look after yourself.
After all, it’s in those quiet periods where we let go of the frantic need to perform and deliver, that the dreams we’ve been searching for have a chance to breathe and appear.
It’s in these periods of nothingness (and no, I don’t mean scrolling on social media) where we suddenly find ourselves discovering new interests, new hobbies – both of which can also couple up with that motivation to forge a pathway.
So if time off for self-care, for hiking or dance classes, for gym or for online courses isn’t yet added into your planner, do so now. It’s just as important as setting small goals and tasks is in helping you to structure your days and set your sights on future goals.
Not everyone is born with a purpose or dream.
Finally, I want to stress that not everyone finds that innate passion, purpose, or dream we’re conditioned to think is just waiting around the corner for us.
For some, their purpose will just be living and existing, and making the most out of all life has to offer.
The idea of not finding your purpose might have you quaking in your boots, but have a real think – what if your dreams were with you all along?
This concept of stumbling upon a tall glass of red one day, tasting it and having your socks knocked off so far that you decide to quit your day job, move to the South of France and start fermenting for yourself is quite unrealistic (unless you’re having a midlife crisis).
In pushing yourself outside of the comfort zone and trying new hobbies, you might well find something you’ve never considered trying before that gets you all excited and motivated.
But it’s equally possible that you might also not stumble upon your so-called ‘life’s purpose’.
Because contrary to what we’re taught to believe, your purpose and your dreams might not be creating your own fancy start-up, or raking in millions, or owning a jet.
It might just be waking up every day feeling content and fulfilled, striking up interesting conversations with strangers, enjoying the rare streaks of sunshine on a cold winter’s day.
For many, the ultimate dream is getting to the point where you feel like you’ve done enough soul-searching and healing to actually be happy with yourself and the life that you live.
And that is a dream that already exists within you, even if it needs to be woken up.
