What to do when you feel confused?

Starting Day 1 of the 30 Days Writing Challenge inititated by @dragosroua with a post about confusion and one way to gain clarity.

My experience with confusion when I was 18 years old

As a teenager I had no idea what I wanted to study next when I graduated highschool. So I ended up in a technical faculty where I realised in a few months that, although I was able mentally to deal with all the heavy duty math and physics, I didn’t like it.

So I started looking for alternatives. I discovered the Faculty of Communications and Public Relations and I liked their curriculum. I tried learning philosophy to pass the exam required to enter it.

I failed miserably. But I didn’t give up.

I knew I was not in the right place so I continued to look for options.

One day on my way to the technical faculty I saw a flyer on a light pole. It was a handwritten note of a philosophy teacher advertising his private lessons. I called him and told him I wanted to be his student. He said that after working with him for one year I should be able to pass the exam with a 90% chance of success, based on his past students success records.

At that time I had no income except a little help from my parents to cover food expenses. I had some experience giving private lessons to teach French or English to kids but I had no clients at that time. So I went to the first meeting with this philosophy teacher and I told him my whole situation, including the fact that I had no idea how I was going to pay him.

When he heard I had experience with teaching English and French he remembered about a family with a 7 year old boy who was searching for an English tutor. He called the family and recommended me.

I started giving lessons to that boy and that covered half the fee I was paying to my teacher. In a short time the family I worked with referred me to one of the classmates of their son. So I ended up teaching 2 kids who gave me the exact money to pay for my studies. And they were all in the same neighborhood, which was very convenient.

So for a whole year I kept going to my current school, gave private English lessons to the kids and took weekly lessons on philosophy to preare for the exam. In the end I managed to pass the exam with a good grade although there was a lot of competition.

At that moment I dropped the other school and focused on doing my best in my new faculty of communication and public relations. Where I discovered that I fitted a lot better than in the other one.

Was it all milk and honey the whole four years? Of course not, but having the previous experience where I felt completly misfit I could face all the challenges with a better attitude than my younger colleagues. And I had a few amazing teachers that taught me things that are still useful to me today.

What I learned

I told you this story from my confused youth years to inspire you to not give up when you realise you are not in the right place, be it a school, a job or a relationship.

The idea is that most of the times we have no idea what we want before we experience what we don’t want.

There are a few lucky unicorns who discover early on what they are passionate about and what they want to do with their life.

But the rest of us on planet Earth need to go through the plain old process of trial and error.

When confused about not knowing what to pick just pick one thing and try it out for a while.
You’ll figure out if that’s the right thing for you or not. When you realise that it’s not good for you, you’re in a much better place than before. You know what you don’t want or like, so you can now try something different.

The main takeaway I want you to have from this story is that

whenever you feel stuck because you don’t know what to choose don’t wait too long pondering the options.

As long as you’ll be stuck in your mind you’ll have no way to get out of that specific situation by thinking your way through it. No way.

The quickest, best way is to take ACTION.

Whatever that means for you and your specific situation just take a step in a direction, no matter if you are not sure about it.

The action itself will put you in a whole new situation where you’ll have new first hand information from experience not from what you imagine.

And that’s one of the ways I’ve discovered to get out of confusion and gain clarity.

I have others of course, but I don’t want to confuse you with too many options. ;)

Photo source Unsplash

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I'm a psychologist, intuitive coach, blogger and vlogger. You can find me mainly on my blog at Being Raluca where I write about communication, relationships, listening and sexuality. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @raluca.

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