Do You Ever Feel Like You Should Know Where You’re Going?

By Caroline Davis, Inner Freedom EFT

There was a period in my life when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I had recently moved back to the United States after living in France, and I didn’t know what came next.

I didn’t know what kind of work I wanted to do.

I didn’t know what direction I wanted my life to take.

I didn’t have some clear sense of purpose pointing me toward the next chapter.

And I put a lot of pressure on myself to figure it out.

What am I going to do with my life?

What do I actually want?

Where am I going?

Shouldn’t I know by now?

Looking back, I think there were really two things happening.

There was the uncertainty itself.

I didn’t know.

And then there was everything I made that uncertainty mean.

I should know.

For a long time, I kept trying to answer questions I simply didn’t have answers to yet.

And rather than helping me find my direction, all that pressure seemed to make it harder to move at all.

Eventually, something began to shift.

Not because I suddenly figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

I didn’t.

I gave myself permission to just do something.

I Didn’t Need to Figure Out My Whole Life

I started working at a café.

It wasn’t my calling.

It wasn’t the beginning of some carefully mapped-out career.

It was simply something I could do.

Later, I started working at a grocery store.

And that’s where I met the man who would become my husband.

Of course, I didn’t know that when I took the job.

I didn’t know what that choice would lead to.

I didn’t know what my life would look like a year later, much less ten or twenty years later.

I was just living it.

There were still plenty of periods when I didn’t know where I was going.

In fact, when I look back, I think there was more than a decade when I didn’t have a clear sense of what I wanted to do with my life.

And then, in 2023, I found EFT.

I couldn’t have known then everything that would grow from that discovery either.

But I was curious.

I kept learning.

I kept exploring.

I began working with EFT myself and eventually training to work with others.

And over time, something began to feel different.

I started to have a clearer sense of direction.

Not a complete map.

But a direction.

Today, I feel more and more like I’m stepping forward into work that has meaning and purpose for me.

And yet…

there is still so much I don’t know.

Sometimes We Know the Direction Without Knowing the Destination

My life is in another period of transition now.

There are things I feel increasingly clear about.

There are things I want to build.

Things I want to learn.

Ways I want my work to grow.

And there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

I don’t know exactly what my work will look like several years from now.

I don’t know where every new interest will lead.

I don’t know which possibilities will become important and which ones will eventually fall away.

I don’t know exactly what this next chapter will look like.

But somehow, that feels different from the uncertainty I experienced all those years ago.

Maybe part of the difference is that I know more about myself now.

But I think there’s something else, too.

I’m not asking myself to have the whole thing figured out before I move forward.

I can know something without knowing everything.

I can feel a sense of direction without knowing exactly where it leads.

And when I don’t know?

Maybe that doesn’t have to mean I’ve lost my way.

The Pressure to Know

It’s made me think about how often the hardest part of uncertainty isn’t actually the uncertainty itself.

It’s the pressure we put around it.

Maybe you don’t know what you want to do next.

Maybe you’re not sure how you feel about something.

Maybe part of you wants one thing and another part wants something completely different.

Maybe something that once felt right doesn’t anymore.

Or maybe you keep turning inward, hoping for clarity, and all you find is:

I don’t know.

And then another voice enters the conversation.

Why don’t I know?

I should have figured this out by now.

Other people seem to know what they want.

I’ve done so much work on myself. Shouldn’t I understand myself better than this?

Sometimes even the invitation to listen inward can quietly become another expectation.

We can start to believe that if we’re really connected to ourselves, we should be able to look within and find the answer.

We should know what we want.

We should know how we feel.

We should be able to tell which direction is right.

But I’m not sure that’s always what listening inward looks like.

Sometimes what we find when we listen may genuinely be:

I don’t know yet.

What If “I Don’t Know” Is an Honest Answer?

There’s a difference between ignoring ourselves and simply not having clarity yet.

Sometimes we need more information.

Sometimes we need more experience.

Sometimes something is still unfolding.

Sometimes we have conflicting feelings because there really are different things that matter to us.

And sometimes we may not even understand why something is affecting us the way it is.

Maybe we don’t always have to turn that uncertainty into a problem.

What if I don’t know isn’t necessarily evidence that we’re disconnected from ourselves?

What if it can sometimes be an honest description of where we are?

I don’t know how I feel yet.

I’m not sure what I want.

I can see more than one possibility.

I need some time.

I know this much, but I don’t know the rest.

There can still be discomfort in those answers.

But perhaps we don’t have to add the additional pressure of believing we should already know more than we do.

What would it be like to give ourselves permission not to know?

Looking Back, the Path Looks Different

It’s interesting to look back on a period of life that once felt so uncertain.

From where I am now, I can see connections that I couldn’t possibly have seen then.

I can see how one experience led to another.

How people entered my life.

How interests developed.

How things I learned in one chapter became meaningful in another.

How some paths ended and others opened.

But I don’t want to pretend that means there was a hidden map I simply needed to discover.

I couldn’t see the path because I hadn’t lived it yet.

Looking back, I can see a path. But I couldn’t see it while I was walking it.

And I think that’s important.

Because when we’re in the middle of an uncertain chapter, we don’t have the perspective we’ll have five or ten years from now.

We’re standing here.

With what we know now.

With what we feel now.

With the possibilities we can see now.

Maybe we don’t need to know what the whole thing will look like from the other side.

And maybe we don’t always have to wait until we know where we’re going before we begin moving.

Sometimes we may be able to take a step simply because it’s the step that’s available to us now.

Not because we know where it will lead.

Not because we’ve decided it’s part of some larger plan.

Just because it’s something we can do from where we are.

What If We Let Some Things Be Unknown?

Last week, I wrote about what happened when I stopped trying so hard to find the “right” answer to a decision I was making.

Once I gave myself permission not to decide, I had more room to become curious about what I was actually drawn toward.

But I’ve been thinking about the larger question underneath that experience.

What if sometimes the answer simply isn’t available to us yet?

Maybe we don’t always need to keep searching until we find it.

Maybe we can allow some things to remain unresolved.

We can be curious.

We can gather information.

We can listen inward.

We can notice what changes.

We can take a step when there is a step available to us.

And sometimes we can simply acknowledge:

I don’t know.

Not forever.

Not as a commitment to staying stuck.

Just as an honest recognition of where we are right now.

There may be a kind of freedom in no longer requiring ourselves to know something before we’re able to know it.

An Inner Freedom Practice

If there’s something in your life you feel like you should know, you might notice what happens when you think about it.

Maybe you feel like you should know what you want.

Where you’re going.

How you feel.

What comes next.

Or perhaps there’s simply something you’ve been trying very hard to figure out.

This week’s Inner Freedom Practice is an opportunity to gently explore some of the pressure around not knowing using EFT tapping.

We won’t be tapping to uncover the answer.

Instead, we’ll become curious about what happens when you think:

I don’t know.

And perhaps even more importantly:

I should know.

We’ll make some room for whatever comes up around that—the frustration, fear, urgency, self-judgment, or something else entirely.

And perhaps we can explore what it might be like to let I don’t know be enough for this moment.

Join me here:

Maybe We Don’t Have to See the Whole Path

For a long time, I thought I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life before I could really move forward.

But ultimately, I didn’t move forward because I found the answer.

I moved forward because I stopped requiring myself to have one.

I got a job.

Then another one.

I met someone.

I lived.

I learned.

Years passed.

I discovered new things about myself.

Eventually, I found something that felt meaningful enough to keep following.

And here I am.

I still don’t know exactly where I’m going.

But I know more than I did.

And perhaps more importantly, I don’t feel like I need to see the entire path before I’m allowed to take the part of it that’s in front of me.

Maybe there are things in our lives that only become understandable looking backward.

While we’re living them, perhaps we can give ourselves permission to know what we know…

and leave some room for what we don’t.

If You’d Like Some Additional Support

Sometimes not knowing is simply part of being human.

And sometimes there can be a lot of emotion wrapped around the uncertainty.

We may be afraid of getting something wrong.

We may have learned that we should always have an answer.

We may worry about disappointing someone, wasting time, falling behind, or choosing a path we’ll later regret.

Or we may simply feel frustrated with ourselves for not being clearer.

EFT tapping offers a gentle way to become curious about some of what’s underneath that pressure.

When we work together, we don’t have to begin by figuring out what you should do or what you should feel.

Instead, we can explore the thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and beliefs that are present now—without requiring you to already know where the exploration needs to lead.

If you’d like to explore what working together might look like, I invite you to reach out through my contact form to share the type of support you’re looking for and learn about scheduling a complimentary Discovery Call.

With compassion,
Caroline
Inner Freedom EFT
Inner Freedom. Healing Beyond.