 I've coached over 250 people, one on one, who are specifically millennials in their 20s, that are trying to figure out how to figure out what to do with their life. In their career, in their love, in their fun and excitement, to build that most epic, awesome life. Now, one thing I've learned is that there are a couple ways we get ourselves feeling lost in life. In fact, I had a whole website dedicated to what to do when you feel lost in life. But in this video, I want to share three of the most important journaling exercises I would do with my clients to help them figure out and get clarity on that exact question. Hey guys, Alex Hine, author of the book, Master of the Day. Now also, FYI, if you haven't gotten my book yet, if you get it and send me the receipt to alexanderatmodernhealthmonk.com, I've got about an hour of free bonus training and some free worksheets that come with the book. Just buy the book, show me your Amazon receipt, I'll send you them. Now one of the things with figuring out what to do in your 20s is this process of journaling and kind of plotting out your most epic life and getting clarity. The first link in the description is for a free journaling worksheet and it's also a weekly journaling email you're going to get on how to get clarity on what to do with your life. So sign up there below, the first link in the description and check it out. So I really got myself screwed in my 20s, okay? What happened was I was unclear on what I wanted to do. That seemed simple enough. But I was sitting there like a little mister intuitive monk. I'm like, God send me a message, send me a message. And no message came, you know? And then six months went by, a year went by, two years went by. And I was like, shit, this is not good. I'm living with my parents, I'm not happy. I don't like where I live. I don't like what I do. So I forced myself, I forced myself to find the first open door I could go through and I just told myself I'm going to grind and push even if I hate it until a better door opens up. And ultimately that led me to a much better place. But I wish I had these three exercises back then because they would have helped me quite a lot. So the first exercise here is writing out what I call your five year filter. So I found that many people in their 20s have this list of things going in their head that they want to do. And it seems like a ton of things or sometimes not a lot of things. But when you write it down, you realize it's really not as many things as I thought. So just going from idea to clarity on paper is dramatic in the difference it makes in terms of how you feel with the overwhelm. So take out a piece of paper and you're going to write out the things you want to do. So here's an example. You want to move to Paris and study art. You want to become an au pair in Switzerland. You want to go back to school. You want to take a year off to travel. You want to write a book. You want to become a YouTuber. You want to start a blog. You want to apply for that engineering job. You want to study dance. Or maybe you want to stay at the same job and see what happens. So you have a list of things you want to do. Now you're going to evaluate them through this key question. Which one of these could you see yourself doing every day for five years? So now step two is you go through this list and you just say, could I do one of these for five years? You know, could I be an au pair babysitting for five years? Probably not. So maybe it's something I do for the short term or I could do it for a month or for a summer. Maybe I like dance but I don't want to do that professionally. So you don't write down the five year filter next to that. Step two. You want to label them as either events or careers. So what I find, especially with us in our 20s is that there are these things we want to do and we fail to differentiate between what is something cool to do once or have this experience and what is cool as a daily career, okay? Events versus careers. So we look at that same exact list again. Now we label them. We go through and we're like, okay, you know, I want to take a year off to travel. Is that what I want to do for my whole life? Do I want to be a travel blogger? Do I want to be a travel vlogger? Do I want to be on the road all year? Really think about that. Is that an event? Meaning it would be cool to do once, have that experience? Or is it a career where you want to do it every day for five years? When you say apply for that engineering job, would that be a cool thing to have or is that what you really want to do every single day for five years? When you say move to Paris to study art. Is that a cool experience you want to have? Or is that something you really want to do long term for years? So now you have a list. You've labeled it event, like an experience, or you've labeled it career. I want to do this daily for multiple years or longer. And the third step here is you're going to do gut yes or gut no, okay? So we look at that list again. Travel become an au pair, get an engineering job, apply to my masters and go back to school. And then we say intuitively, right now, do I feel excited when I look at go back to school to be a teacher? Is it? Yeah, that would be really awesome. Is it? Or is it in between? You know, it would be cool, kind of lukewarm. I want to be an au pair and au pair in Switzerland that would be so cool. I would get to live in Switzerland, I'd get paid. I've got my summers off. Is that like, yeah, this would be really cool. This is like getting more exciting to think about it. Or is it, I don't know, kids are kind of annoying and I just wanted to travel and, or is it in between? Yeah, maybe. I mean, we'll see. I'm kind of feeling it now. So you go through your list, you put the gut filter, hell yes, hell no, or lukewarm in between. So now you've taken your list of all of these things that you're confused about. You're conflicted. You now have a filter. Is this something I want to do once or a career? And what that means is that you can have a career and do all these experiences. You can still take two weeks off to be an au pair in Switzerland. You can still go skydiving, go do whatever you want to do on the side. Or you can eventually quit your job and then take a designated time period of your life to do those things and then go get another full time job. That's the first thing. The second thing is you know what's an event versus what's a career. An event is something that's cool to do. A career or something is you're going to do long term daily. So you really need to be feeling, do I want to do this long term in the years and not just for a week, okay? No career is a final destination. You can always be changing and evolving and you should be, but use that filter to evaluate it. And finally, you've gone through the intuitive filter, which is just, do I feel excited about this? Do I feel passionate? And once you do that, now hopefully you've taken your list from 20, 30, 50 things down to probably less than five. And now you know, this is kind of a career. Like I do want to go into art as a career. I do want to go into graphic design or medicine or engineering as a career. And on the side, I want to do these things. I want to go to Paris for three weeks one summer and paint. I do want to be an au pair for a short period of time just to see. I do want to write a book, but I can do that with a full-time job. And now you should have some clarity regarding what steps to do next, because you should be focusing on a career as a baseline consistent thread throughout your life. And on the side, other things you're passionate about. So I hope that helps you guys. These kind of journal exercises have been indispensable for me now at this phase of my life and also working with people and coaching them because I didn't have these resources figured out when I was in my 20s trying to piece together my path forward. And again, if you want to help doing this, the first link in the description is for a free journaling worksheet. Now what this worksheet is going to help you do is plan out exactly what to do to get clarity in your life. You're also going to get an email every three days on how I use this process of journaling to know exactly what to do in my life, what's my passion and to really plot my path forward. So you can check it out the first link in the description. And from there, check out the video related to this right there and right there.