(gentle music) - You probably know
that you're capable of great things.
And if you don't know that,
let me just tell you,
you're capable of great things.
You're capable of things that you can't even dream of,
'cause we always sell ourselves short.
You can do way more than you think you can.
Hey everyone,
welcome back to the Frank James Channel.
I'm your host, Frank James.
Today we're talking about a comment
that I got on a live stream actually the other day.
And it went a little something like this,
"Frank, I'm 18 years old.
"I don't know who I am.
"I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
"I just don't know what to do.
"I don't even have any hobbies.
"What am I supposed to do?"
And this is a great question
because so many of us struggle with this.
Like the best thing about this question from this kid is
you're not supposed to have your life figured out at 18.
So that's the perfect time to be asking that question.
Good for you, the commenter.
But there's a lot of us out here who are 30, 50,
maybe you're your 90
at the assisted living community
and you're still asking the same question.
"I don't know who I am.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
And it's okay.
Like, even me a couple of years ago, a heck.
Let's be honest.
Even now in some respects
I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't know who I am,
what I'm supposed to do.
So this is an important thing to talk about.
It's a question that I think a lot of us are facing
now that we're all stuck at home.
Right? For those of you watching in the future,
we're all under the stay-at-home order of 2020.
So we've got a lot of time
just ourselves and our thoughts.
What am I supposed to do?
I don't know.
There's a lot of things at work here.
I'm talking about in the title INFJ.
What do I do with my life?
I wanna open it up a bit
because I think any intuitive when,
you know, I'm talking about the personality types here,
the Myers-Briggs 16 personalities,
any IN type, any intuitive is gonna have some struggle,
like extra struggle, I think.
I think it's a universal human thing to be like,
"What do I do with my life?"
But intuitives have this issue
where they have to understand the meaning first.
So intuition isn't about what's on the surface.
It's not about the facts or the numbers.
Intuition is about the meaning.
What's going on underneath.
So intuitive struggle with this issue of
what is my life supposed to mean
with the goals I have,
What do they mean for me?
And the intuitives, the INFJs, the INFPS, et cetera,
Feel obligated to figure that out first
before they jump in the real sensory world.
And that's where we get tripped up
and really bogged down as intuitives.
Like chewing on this thing,
"I've gotta have it all worked out.
But here's a things to keep in mind.
And then I'll just give you all the answers to life
right here in this YouTube video.
No, but I'm gonna give you the advice
that I gave to this young person
and hopefully all of us
who are struggling with this question can feel
a little bit more equipped to go out there and tackle it
because it's something we've all gotta do.
First of all, I think it's okay.
It's okay not to know what you're supposed to do
even when you're older.
You're not really supposed to just know.
Nobody ever just figures out their life,
what they're supposed to do with their life.
It seems that way
when we see people who are really successful,
especially when they're a bit older,
we're like, "Wow,
"your whole life has been leading up to this."
You are so good at what you do.
Clearly this is what you're meant to do.
You just knew that from the time you were born,
and rarely, there are cases where,
especially in circumstances of athletics
or music or something where someone's super talented,
they've been doing it since they were three years old
with the help of very dedicated parents
who were probably obsessive and overbearing,
but that's out of the scope of this video.
We can tell ourselves
that everyone else has things figured out,
but they don't.
They never sat down when they were 18
and said to themselves,
"What is my life gonna be?
"What direction should I take my life in?"
In the way that we think maybe they did
where it was just a single track all the way there.
Most people's lives aren't a single track.
We want our lives to be,
especially the INFJs, the INTJ's,
those of us with introverted intuition.
We want our life to be one track baby
because we don't like,(laughs)
we don't like juggling multiple things at once.
The INFPs are gonna be a little better at that.
Society also kinda gives us this myth
that you're supposed to figure things out
because there is something for you
that will just magically come to you.
I think about the Pink Floyd song.
The lyrics go,
"Then one day you find 10 years of got behind you.
"No one told you when to run.
"You missed the starting gun."
And that's how a lot of us are
where you just expect that life is gonna have
this Hollywood kind of story
where one day a wizard's gonna walk into your village
and say, "Oh, we gotta go,
you know, to Mordor, or whatever.
But that doesn't happen.
We don't live in a Hollywood screenplay.
We live kind of much more, in some respects,
much more boring lives.
But it's not boring.
They're just not structured.
Our lives don't have that structure.
Our lives are much more exciting actually
than a Hollywood script can be.
"Okay, Frank,
"maybe you're stretching things a bit."
But our lives are just not structured like a movie.
So we're waiting for that inciting incident
where suddenly it will be to us what we're supposed to do.
Almost like we'll get dragged on our life's journey.
But that won't happen.
Like if you don't go out and look for it,
one day you'll find that all this time has passed
and nothing happened,
no wizard showed up,
no one fired the starting gun.
But that even what I just said
is a little bit misleading
because I said you have to go out and find it.
But the thing is there's really nothing to find.
You have to create it.
It's not like a scavenger hunt.
Your life's purpose,
what you're supposed to do with your life,
how to find yourself,
figure out who you are.
It's all in your hands.
It's all your choice.
It's your making.
Sure you have some inborn talents and skills,
but it's not always gonna be obvious to you
what they are or how you should use them.
So it's up to you.
It's in your hands.
The other part of it is
that you gotta start small.
Like you can't just go out there and say,
"Okay, let me pick.
"My goal in life,
"it's to be president.
"Okay, let me start."
That's way too big.
Are you kidding me?
Don't put the pressure on yourself
when you're trying to figure out your life,
who you are,
but you pick one thing to do.
And it doesn't have to be a job.
It could be a hobby,
but what you're trying to do is
you're picking something that has a goal.
Something you can accomplish that is small,
that is manageable,
and then doing it.
And what you're doing,
first of all, there's a few things you're doing.
You're moving yourself a little bit further along
so that you can then from there,
see what the next step is.
Like you've gotta go gradual.
You can't reach the top rung of the ladder
until you've gone up a few of the rungs.
You can't just go straight for the top.
The other thing is that
you're proving to yourself just in general
that you can accomplish something.
That you can trust yourself to set a goal and reach it.
Because right now
you don't trust yourself
because you know you don't know anything, right?
And this isn't to beat you up
or be mean about it,
but it's like you probably know
that you're capable of great things.
And if you don't know that,
let me just tell you,
you're capable of great things.
You're capable of things that you can't even dream of,
'cause we always sell ourselves short.
You can do way more than you think you can.
You might already know that.
You might be like, "I can do great things,
"but you instinctively still don't trust yourself
"to execute it
"if you haven't seen yourself accomplish things yet."
Maybe you have a few accomplishments in your life,
but you need to to build on that.
To show yourself like--
I used the example
when I was answering this question in the live stream.
I told this 18 year old young person,
"How old have I gotten?"
I said to him or her anything,
just like get in shape
or get a job, make some money.
So you're gonna save up a certain amount of money.
So you're gonna build something.
I don't know.
So you're gonna learn how to play guitar.
The thing itself doesn't matter that much.
I mean it should have a little bit of practicality,
but it should be measurable,
so you can say, "I did it baby.
"It's the end of the summer
"and after three months I reached my numbers.
"I can play this song,
"I can bench press this amount of weight."
So on and so forth.
And you can say, "yeah, I did it."
And maybe it won't feel
like the most gratifying head rush in the world,
but you'll be able to trust yourself a little bit more.
You know the whole thing about,
"I know I can do these things,
"but I can't trust myself,"
might sound a little bit like an oxymoron,
a contradiction, a paradox if you will.
But it's sort of like if there's a plane
and you know this plane could fly me
from the East Coast to the West Coast.
However, I don't really trust this plane and it might crash.
I don't know.
Like I know theoretically it's capable of doing it,
but I don't know that I trust it.
You might need to take a smaller trip on the plane to,
you know, a 20 minute trip,
a jaunt if you will.
I really like extending metaphors past
where they should be extended,
but I appreciate you going along with me on that.
It's okay that you don't know who you are.
It's okay that you don't know
what you're doing with your life.
It's a big story that we've been told
that we're supposed to have this all done,
but it's great because you have the power
to take the first step today
to prove to yourself that you can do stuff,
to figure out who you are,
to build who you are.
It's not even figuring it out
as though it exists somewhere out there
and you just have to uncover it.
You are building it.
You are building yourself.
So start small, gradually.
You've got to do it for yourself.
It's not gonna feel great at first.
It's not gonna give you this high of
"I'm doing what I'm supposed to do."
At least not initially,
maybe a few years from now,
suddenly you'll be there.
Because you don't know where things lead.
You take one step.
It doesn't seem like it's going anywhere,
but that leads you to a bunch of different possibilities.
You take another step, more possibilities,
another step, more possibilities.
That's what it's all about.
Taking steps.
Even when they don't feel necessarily that directed.
You just pick out what's the next step gonna be.
Let me do that and see where I am.
Maybe you have to go back a step after that.
It's not the end of the world.
But I bet you,
it's better to do that
than to just stay where you are
and wonder "What should I do next?"
Because, for those of us who are 90 years old
in the assisted living facility,
(laughs)
you've got a little less time than the 18 year old.
So you want to,
like don't freak yourself out
when it comes to the time,
but you want to just start making moves now.
Start seeing what can accomplish.
Start proving it to yourself now
so that you have even more opportunities
to follow up on.
That's the real advantage of youth.
It's the opportunities.
You have the time to explore.
And this is a great time in the world.
I mean, except that we're all staying at home,
but just in general modern life,
it's a great time to explore all the potential that you have
and to really just follow something,
to just ride it,
to just uncover all the things that you can do,
that you can be good at,
to build yourself and do it.
Just do it.
I just came up with that slogan right now.
Just do it, right?
And obey your thirst.
(gentle music) Thanks for watching.
If you need some other stuff to watch from my channel,
'cause maybe you're stuck at home,
nothing else to do.
Check it out over here
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Subscribe if you wanna see more videos like this
that perhaps are lit a little better,
but if we haven't done what we could have done, we've tried
and until next time,
stay cool and attractive.