What Am I Going To Do?! 5 Ways To Figure Your Life Out After You Graduate

Congratulations. You’ve graduated. Now what the hell are you going to do? You spent four years pretending like you knew where you were headed, but now that no one is looking, you’re being faced with the hard truth: You have no idea what you ought to do with your life.

You’ve studied a single subject or two for nearly half a decade and you’ve come no closer to understanding what your purpose in life ought to be.

Don’t get discouraged – you’re not alone. Unfortunately, the truth is that you have yet to start actually living your life. The good news is that you’re about to get your chance.

The only thing left is to decide what to do with it. Choose carefully because the choices you make from here-on-out are what define you for eternity – if you’re lucky enough to be remembered for that long.

1. Forget everything that you’ve learned.

Some of the information that you found in books may be useful. And all the writing that you did surely formed some handy habits.

Everything else, on the other hand -- all the other habits you created, all the things that you are used to and the life that you are used to -- can basically be forgotten. The world that you enter after college is a much bigger bubble than the one that you are used to.

If you were ever given any handouts, don’t expect any now that you have been stamped with the seal of approval to enter the workforce.

The life that you have been living for the past four years must be left behind you and doors are opening to a new journey. Now it’s time to choose a path actually worth walking.

2. Don’t be too eager to jump into the workforce if you don’t have to.

Most people are excited if they’re "lucky enough" to land a job straight out of college. I’d question how lucky these individuals really are. Think about it – what are the chances that you land the job or position that is meant for you?

The truth is that you don’t yet know what is meant for you and jumping into a job simply because it was offered to you can only end in three ways: It’s either not the right job for you and you soon quit, possibly with a non-compete hanging over your head for the next year; it’s not the right job for you and you end up hanging around for too long wasting your precious time; or you somehow are the luckiest person who ever lived and started your journey from the best place you could start it.

You may not be able to reach your goal from the start, but where you start can very well decide whether or not you will ever reach your destination. Sometimes it is better to take the dead-end job if it brings you closer to your goal.

3. Take some time to reflect and question.

Now that you are off the educational assembly line, it’s time to be introduced to the world you actually live in. We close ourselves into a neat little bubble.

Everything that surrounds us is catered to keep us sheltered from the rest of the world. It’s not so much on purpose as it is by nature. We are only capable of truly experiencing so much.

Being exposed to all the world at once would be overwhelming and extremely inconvenient. And as you very well know, humans are creatures of convenience. It’s time to get the facts.

Take a look at the world that you are really living in and try and understand the way it works as best as you can. The world and the ways of man have been set in motion a long, long time ago.

You cannot fight the way things are head on. You’ll have to learn to work with it until you can guide it in a different direction.

4. Understand what kind of change you wish to make.

There are really only two ways of living: for yourself or for others. Ideally, we wish to live for a bit of both. However, your main purpose in life will always hold one of the two purposes first and foremost.

Keep in mind that with the information age upon us, we are all starting to be scrutinized by our peers and the number of our peers is growing rapidly. No one likes a selfish bastard because those are the kinds of individuals who end up causing the most trouble – historically speaking.

Your life’s purpose, even from a philosophical perspective, should not be aimed to benefit you alone because you alone are not enough.

You are just one individual. If you die without creating change for others then others will not remember you and you will have truly died.

5. Never stop living.

Do not allow yourself to get caught up in a hamster wheel rolling down a cliff to your end. Your last day will come sooner or later; there is no hurry to get you there faster.

Don’t allow the days to slip away from you without you noticing them passing by. Don’t waste your time because your time is all that you have that has any sort of value.

Spend your time wisely and live your life in a way that will leave a smile on your face the moment after you’ve drawn your last breath.

There is nothing worse than a life lived that was a life wasted. You can’t turn back the hands of time and are stuck with the choices you’ve made.

Don’t wait until tomorrow to do what you want to do now. Otherwise, you will one day notice that you’ve missed the coming of tomorrow for decades and have yet to live the life you should have lived.

What you do with your life doesn’t especially matter as long as it makes you and others happier. All we have is time, so why not make that time as pleasant for as many living creatures as possible?

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