"Just tell me what to do. Give me solid advice, and I'll do it."
I hear this sentence a lot. People come to me having read every book, listened to every podcast, taken every personality test. They've got spreadsheets of options, pros and cons for each career, plans for the next five years that they've rewritten a dozen times. And they look at me and say: I just need someone to tell me what to do.
Here's what I've noticed over the years. Most of the people who say that already know a great deal about what to do. And most of them, if I gave them the perfect instructions, still wouldn't do it.
Not because they're lazy. Because the instructions were never the problem.
What should I do with my life?
Start by changing the question. It's rarely about finding the right things to do. It's about doing things in a certain way: from what genuinely lights you up, as fully as you can, in each moment, without gripping the outcome. From that inner place, the next step shows itself. From the wrong one, no plan feels right.
That's not a dodge. It's the most practical answer I know.
Why doesn't more advice help me decide?
Because advice lands on the person, and the person is where the problem is.
You can hand the same excellent advice to two people. One takes it and runs. The other nods, writes it down, and does nothing, then feels worse because now there's one more thing they know and haven't done. The difference isn't the advice. It's the inner state it lands in.
If you're choosing from fear, from pressure, from a need to prove something or please someone, no option will feel right, because the choosing itself is uncomfortable. Every door looks risky. Every path looks like a possible mistake. So you keep researching, hoping that with enough information one option will finally feel safe. It won't. Safety was never going to come from the information.
This is closely related to fear of failure, and to procrastination on the things you actually want. The question looks like a question about options. Underneath, it's often a question about permission.
What does "doing things in a certain way" mean?
It means the how matters more than the what.
I once worked privately with a client who'd come to me after years of searching for the right thing to do with her life. The session went deep. Somewhere in it, I said to her: "It's not about doing certain things. It's about doing things in a certain way." I could see it land.
She realised she could stop hunting for the right things to do, because it had always been about the way she did them. A few days later she wrote to me. She said she felt she was living her dream life, that her heart was smiling all the time, and that the same sentence kept getting deeper in her. That's what she reported. Nothing about her circumstances had changed overnight. What had changed was where she was doing everything from.
Think about it for yourself. What do you hear in that sentence? Two people can do the same job, one from dread and one from genuine interest, and live completely different lives. Two people can walk the same path, one gripping every outcome and one curious about where it leads, and arrive in very different places.
If I don't know what I want, where do I start?
With whatever is lighting you up right now, however small.
For someone who doesn't give much advice, this is the one piece I give out freely. Take the thing that has the most life in it for you today, give it your whole attention, and don't ask it yet where it's taking you. Not the grand life purpose. Not the perfect career. Just the thing that has a little more life in it than the alternatives, today.
Do that, and something happens that planning can't do. One small thing leads to another. A conversation opens a door. A skill you practised for fun turns out to matter. People who find their direction rarely think their way to it. They follow a thread, and the thread turns out to be connected to something much bigger. If your fire's gone so quiet that nothing lights you up at all, how to get your spark back is the place to start first.
Why does this sound too simple to work?
Because the mind that's been searching for answers expects the answer to be complicated.
To a mind trained on plans and strategies, advice this simple can sound naive, even a bit airy. It makes no sense in a world of targets and deadlines. And yet some of the most educated, successful people I've worked with describe finding their way exactly like this, often after years of trying the complicated route first.
The simplicity isn't the problem. The problem is that you can't follow it while old rules are shouting at you. Don't take risks. Be sensible. What will people think. Those voices make the simple instruction impossible, and that's where the real work lies. Not in more advice, but in removing what makes good advice impossible to follow. That's the ground the RS Method works on. When people ask me what I do, I tell them in one sentence: I help people who understand their patterns but still repeat them finally stop, by removing what was never theirs and coming home to who they were underneath, using the RS Method. Not knowing what to do with your life is very often one of those patterns, wearing the clothes of a practical question.
How can I find what lights me up?
Try this over one ordinary day. It's gentle, and it asks for nothing but attention.
Carry a note on your phone. Every time you notice a small lift in yourself, even a flicker, write down what you were doing. Reading about something. Helping someone. Fixing a problem. Making something. Being outside. Talking to a certain kind of person. Don't judge the entries. Don't ask whether they could be a career.
At the end of the day, read the list. Then ask one question: how was I doing those things? Not what they were, how. Were you curious? Free? Absorbed? Useful? Playful?
That how is the thread. It's more reliable than any career test, because it's coming from you rather than from a list of options. Follow it into tomorrow. Do tomorrow's ordinary things with a little more of that quality in them, and see what happens.
Who can help me find my direction?
Someone who won't just tell you what to do.
If you'd like a clear, calm conversation about what's actually been stopping you, Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, holds free mentoring sessions for exactly this. There's no pitch. It's simply a first look, with someone outside your own head, at what's underneath the question.
So, when people say to me, just tell me what to do, this is what I tell them. Start with what's alive for you, do it wholeheartedly, and let the direction show itself. That's the solid advice they were looking for. The rest is letting yourself take it.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.