Career direction

Does anyone suffer with a lack of direction in their career? I’m absolutely terrified of messing up, receiving negative feedback, and not living up to peoples expectations (particularly my parents which is crazy because I’m 33 🥴). I’ve left so many jobs and am so scared to embark on a new career/ study etc because I have no idea what I actually like, and I’m terrified I’ll mess it up. Just wondered if anyone else resonates with this? Has anything helped you? I feel like my life is wasting away and I need to take action but I don’t know where to begin. Thanks for reading ❤️

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I am in similar situation. I have so many interests as hobbies and keep coming up with ideas on how to make money off them and be in control of my own time, but it's really hard not to get distracted from one project to another. First advice/step would be to try and ignore your parents in this sense, you can't possibly figure out what YOU really enjoy doing as long as you try to accommodate others' opinions 😅 If you are as deep in this as I was for a while therapy could help with this. Second, allow yourself to fail at things. Again this might have to go hand in hand with therapy and literaly just trying a few things with the goal to fail and try to be ok with it. Then just allow yourself some time (whatever you feel comfortable with, a couple of weeks or a year) to explore and get deeper into the 1-2 things you enjoy most, where you allow yourself to jump around. But at the end of the timeline you set you should have an idea hopefully 😊

I do find myself with similar thoughts especially with the baby that time is running out, but based on a lot of experience around this, if you don't put in the ground work first and fix the underlaying issues first, it's never gonna be ok.

Thanks for your advice, I really appreciate it! I have my first therapy session next week so I really hope things will start making sense eventually. Thanks again for taking the time to reply 🥰

I have stopped and started SO many jobs it’s a joke! Everything from a baker to a social worker. I don’t have much helpful stuff to say I’m afraid, other than I get it! I found being freelance really suited me as it’s hard to get bored and novelty is a theme when you’re freelance. But I have made no progression and feel very embarrassed about it. I think a lot of people feel like they don’t know what kind of job they really want to do, but it definitely feels harder if you’re ND!

@Ellie sounds so similar to me 😅 what do you freelance doing if you don’t mind me asking? I feel now that I have a diagnosis and understanding why I’ve been like this all my life I actually have a chance to start a fresh and make some progress. Totally understand the embarrassment thing too, I feel awful when I compare myself to everything my peers have achieved.

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