Will underachieving and being directionless alienate me from people?

A young woman lacks direction in her career and is becoming unsure of herself. Mariella Frostrup says finding a sense of purpose is central to our feelings of worth

The dilemma I am desperately struggling with a lack of direction in my life. I'm 28 years old and have worked in low-paid, low-responsibility jobs since I graduated five years ago. All my ideas have been short lived and my CV is starting to look a mess. A friend observed that I don't seem to have any "passions", which I found deeply upsetting. I am now so unsure of my skills and interests that I'm reluctant to commit to anything. I recently left a Master's degree course because my determination to study waned. I'll decide I want to train as a psychotherapist, then decide I should move to rural France and live off the land, within one afternoon. My mood flies wildly between morose resignation and intense frustration. I feel teary, anxious and argumentative. In every other aspect of my life I am doing well. I live in a lovely flat, have wonderful friends and a supportive partner nearby, but feel I will make myself unwell and ostracise the people around me if I continue to fixate on my directional failings without resolution.

Mariella replies So stop. The great advantage of being human is that we can employ rational thought and resolve to change our circumstances. You need to get out more. There's a big wide world brimful of people who would kill to have the luxury of your choices. There are two ways of approaching your time on this planet: one is to sit around waiting for something to happen that will make sense of your existence and the other is to get out there and find purpose for yourself.

With signs from on high rather rare the latter tends to be the more constructive approach. Having been forced by circumstance into industry from a precociously early age I'm all for ambling gently toward the career ladder, accruing knowledge about the workings of the world before you have to fully engage with it. Nevertheless, by 28 your idler days must be losing their allure and I'm not sure what you're waiting for unless you plan to ride pillion forever.

Maybe you're financially independent, as otherwise how can you afford to dibble and dabble as you describe without bankrupting yourself in the process? My own get up and go, as for most of the population, was inspired by the need to support myself. It must be so much more challenging to instil a work ethic if you're awash with dosh. Some nights I can't sleep for worrying about Bill Gates's offspring!

The world of work is also full of confusing messages. We spend most of our time complaining about the pressures, the unsatisfactory remuneration and the toll it takes on our lifestyle, but very little dwelling on how purposeless we'd feel without something to occupy our days. I know we should aspire to be higher philosophical beings, contemplating the universe and becoming more refined humans, but if all we did was think then arguably we'd never have invented the wheel.

As a species, we tend to be doers, forever shaping and reshaping the world to better suit our purposes. Obviously very few of us are blessed with the kind of occupation that makes us leap out of bed with a spring in our step and a song in our heart. But ask anyone who is unwillingly unemployed and they will illuminate you on the desperate sense of worthlessness that having no purpose instils. It's not that we should be defined by our jobs, but work is a simple means of evaluating our progress through the world and the perfect way to highlight the pleasure of indolence as a comparison.

You can't lead your entire life like some tragic lovelorn lover waiting for the phone to ring. The substance of our lives is the grind and graft between dramatic and pivotal punctuation points. Such watershed moments occur very seldom and certainly aren't the foundations on which to build hopes and dreams.

I've started the New Year for the past decade with a note to myself in the present tense, describing the state of mind and environment I'd like to be enjoying a year hence – trimming my aspirations to the bare minimum, then projecting myself into that place. It's a fascinating exercise. Looking back on those annual scraps of wish fulfillment, it's surprising how much my life resembles the one I've fantasised about, including the two children hollering in the next room!

Maybe you ought to embark on a similar bout of positive visualisation… and why wait for New Year? Sometimes it's only by isolating what you care about that you realise what you need. Waiting for a thunderbolt to propel you from apathy requires patience, so how about you take a step forward? Once you're in the driving seat life can be quite a ride.
