CONSCIOUS LIVING

Existential Crisis: What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do With Your Life?

Sadhguru responds to a hard-hitting question with keen insight and a rare assurance.

Questioner: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. Lately, the more I look at it, I feel I really do not know what to do or how to do it. I do not even know why I do certain things, and why I do not do certain other things. Perhaps you could say earlier I wanted to be a Yogi in the marketplace. But if you ask me now, I do not even know if that is the case. What should I do?

Sadhguru: At certain moments, everyone becomes a bit honest. But if I tell you to do a few things, by tomorrow morning, you will come up with reasons why you cannot do them.

“I really do not know,” should mature a little more and become a culture within you. It should enter every cell in your body. Then, if you come to me, I have a solution for you. Because all those who think they must become a doctor because someone told them so at the age of 5 are bloody idiots. It is a very good thing that you do not know what to do. Your family may not think so. But if you are a genuine human being, no one knows what to do.

Only when you realize that you do not know what to do with this life, do you become a real seeker. But you stopped seeking what this life is about. By the time you were 12 or 13, you knew what you wanted to do. “I want to become an astronaut. I want to become this. I want to become that.” This is just social rubbish. If you were a caveman, what would you be thinking? “I want to kill this. I want to kill that.” You do not know what to do because you do not know what you are. If you do not know the nature of your existence, how can you know what the nature of your action should be? When you become a seeker, it is because you genuinely do not know.

Only when you realize that you do not know what to do with this life, do you become a real seeker.

If something you wanted to do was not working, so you started this “Yogi in a marketplace” business, but then, the marketplace or the Yoga collapsed, and now you do not know what to do – that is not what I am talking about. What I am talking about is, you genuinely do not know what to do with this life because you do not know what this life is, first of all. When you do not know what this life is, how do you know what to do with it?

If you come to that kind of “I do not know,” then I have a powerful and life-transforming answer for you. But if you are just confused because the marketplace is not working for you, then go on and struggle in the marketplace – that is your business. Or if you do not know whether you should continue Yoga or not, then go on and struggle even more. Because to get up every morning and do it without knowing what it is doing to you, is quite a torture. You probably need that torture.

But if you genuinely do not know, “What do I do with this life? What is this all about?” If such a question has emerged, do not kill it with a silly answer. Deepen the question. When the question becomes very profound, I am there for you, no matter where you are. I normally do not give such assurances, but I am telling you, if you genuinely come to such a question within you, no matter which part of the world you are in, I am right there next to you, 100 percent.