What if the reason you don’t know what you want isn’t confusion, but the fact that you’ve been taught to ignore yourself for so long that your own truth feels unfamiliar? In this episode I’m talking about how to figure out what you want… even if your brain tries to tell you that you don’t know. So, Let’s Talk About Mental Health!

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Episode Overview:

How do you figure out what you want when you’re feeling lost in life and your mind keeps saying “But I don’t know what I want!”? 

In this episode of the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, I’m talking about how to figure out what you want when you feel stuck, overwhelmed, unmotivated, or scared to admit what you want in the first place. If you’ve been asking yourself “why can’t I decide what I want?”, trying to work out how to figure out what to do with your life, or wondering how to know what you really want without spiralling into pressure and self-doubt, this episode is for you.

I’ll explore the fear of going after what you want, the messy truth about being honest with yourself, and why knowing what you want but being afraid of it is a lot more common than you might think. You’ll learn practical mental health tips for feeling stuck in life, finding clarity, and understanding how to move forward when you feel stuck, so that you can find balance and peace… and take steps forward, one step at a time. 

👉 Ready to learn how to figure out what you want and start moving towards it? Then let’s talk!

💡 TL;DR: If you’re feeling lost in life and thinking “I don’t know what I want,” this episode shows you how to figure out what you want by getting honest with yourself… so you can finally start moving forward, without waiting for perfect certainty. 🙂

New here? Hi! Let’s Talk About Mental Health is your weekly dose of practical mental health advice for real life. I’m Jeremy Godwin (hello! 👋) and I keep things simple, honest, and doable so you can feel more in control of your life and your mental wellbeing. If you’re not already a free subscriber, sign up below to have episodes and transcripts land in your inbox every Sunday:

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Episode Transcript:

Figuring out what you want… and why it scares you

How do you figure out what you really want?

It’s a big question, I know… and if you clicked on this episode, then I’m going to guess that you might feel like you’ve got no idea.

And that’s OK.

Because you’re in good company, since most of us say that we don’t know what we want and that we’re still figuring it out or we just need a bit more time… a bit more clarity… a bit more head space.

But what if that’s not actually true?

What if, deep down, you already know what you want?

And today, I’m going to help you identify it.

So, let’s talk about… how to figure out what you want.

Hello and welcome! I’m Jeremy Godwin and this is the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, full of practical advice to help you understand and improve your mental health.

So, if you’ve ever felt stuck on the “What do I want?” question, sort of circling it for months or even years without ever landing on anything, then you know just how exhausting it can be. You want to settle on something, right? You want a direction. You want clarity. And you want to stop feeling like everyone else got handed a map for life that you somehow missed out on.

And the longer that not knowing goes on for, the more you start to wonder what’s wrong with you. Now, there’s nothing wrong with you… but before we go any further, I just want to be really clear about something. For some people, genuinely not knowing what they want is bigger than what we’re going to talk about today. So if you’re coming out of a period of burnout, or grief, or a stretch of depression, that is a very real thing… and it deserves patience, not a kick up the backside.

I am going to be covering that kind of feeling, that sort of feeling lost, in a few weeks’ time in Episode 346. So this today is not aimed at you if that’s the case. So please make sure that you subscribe or follow so you don’t miss out on that upcoming one.

This one today is for the much larger group of us who say, “I don’t know what I want,” when, if we’re honest, we actually do on some level… we’ve just buried it somewhere so deep down that we don’t have to look at it.

Because what I’ve learned, both from the work that I do as a counsellor and from my own life, is that most of the time, “I don’t know what I want,” isn’t this empty space where an answer needs to be found… it is a door that we’ve quietly decided not to open. And we don’t open it because the moment we do, the moment we admit what we want, then we’re responsible for doing something about it.

So in this episode I want to show you how to tell the difference between really not knowing versus being afraid to know, and what to actually do once you’ve worked out which one you’re dealing with. I probably will be pushing you a fair bit… but stick with me because, trust me, by the end of this episode you’ll have a much clearer idea of where to go.

Now, before we go any further, I just want you to try one really simple thing for me. It’s for you actually! And it’s deliberately simple… because let’s be honest, the last thing that you need when you feel stuck is a massive project to have to work on.

So the next time you catch yourself saying to yourself, “I don’t know what I want,” just stop for a moment and then ask yourself this follow-up question: “If I did know, what would it be?”

That’s it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t try to force it. Don’t reach for a ‘sensible’ answer, or the answer that other people might approve of. Just notice whatever floats up first before your brain has a chance to talk you out of it.

Because most of the time something does float up: a career you’d actually want, or a lifestyle, a conversation that you’ve been avoiding, a place you’d rather be, a version of your life that looks different from this one. And the speed at which that thought arrives usually tells you that the answer was never really missing; it was just waiting for you to stop pretending that you couldn’t see it.

If you knew, what would it be? Don’t worry, you don’t have to act on whatever comes up! Not yet, at least. Right now, I just want you to notice that something came up at all, and we’ll build on that as we go along. Don’t stress if nothing comes to mind, because later on we’ll talk about how to tackle that. But just give it a go.

Alright, so let’s take a moment to get ourselves on the same page and let’s talk about…

What “I don’t know what I want” really means

So let’s be clear about what we’re actually talking about here, because this is a phrase that gets used a lot. Now… when most of us say, “I don’t know what I want,” we’re not describing a genuine blank mind; it’s more like a kind of fog that we’ve allowed to settle over something that we’d rather not look at directly. It’s not that the answer isn’t there, it’s that we’ve put it somewhere out of focus… out of sight, out of mind. Because focusing on it would force a decision.

So “I don’t know what I want” becomes a kind of holding pattern. It lets us off the hook. It buys us some time. And it sounds so reasonable that nobody, including you, will ever question it.

But on the inside, it’s still there… and it’s a sort of low-level nagging restlessness. You feel stuck, but you can’t quite say what you’re stuck on. You feel like something’s missing, but if someone asked you what it is you’d probably just shrug. You might look at other people who seem to know exactly what they’re chasing and feel a quiet mix of envy and confusion, as though they got some sort of instruction manual that you’ve never received.

And underneath all of it, there’s often a faint and uncomfortable sense that you’re not where you need to be… although you couldn’t tell me exactly where that place is. And that feeling, by the way, is definitely worth paying attention to, because it’s usually right. You’re not where you need to be.

Now, the challenge is that we tend to treat “I don’t know what I want” as a thinking problem. So we just assume that if we just analyse harder, or watch the right video, read the right book, or wait until life calms down, then the answer will eventually reveal itself to us. Right? So we go looking for more information. It’s probably why you’re here with me today!

But more information rarely ever fixes it. Because the answer was never really missing in the first place. This was never a thinking problem. It’s a feeling problem. And more specifically, it’s a feeling fear problem.

We don’t lack the answer. We lack the willingness to face what the answer would ask of us. And that’s the part that I really want you to sit with before we go any further… because it changes everything about what comes next.

If not knowing what you want were truly a lack of information, then the solution would be to go and get more information. But… if not knowing is actually a way of avoiding something, then no amount of research and analysis is ever going to shift that. You could journal until your hands fall off and you’d still be stuck. You could watch all of YouTube… twice… and you’d still be stuck. Because you’d be using all that thinking to circle the thing rather than naming the thing.

So the real question here isn’t, “What do I want?”

The real question is: “What am I avoiding by telling myself I don’t know what I want?”

And I’m very sorry if you feel a bit attacked right now, but we do need to talk about it honestly… because it has such an enormous impact on your mental wellbeing. And with that in mind, now let’s talk about…

Why staying stuck in “I don’t know” wears you down

So why does figuring this stuff out matter so much for good mental health? Well, it’s because living in that sort of fog has a real cost… and it’s a cost that most of us enormously underestimate.

When you tell yourself that you don’t know what you want, you get to avoid the scary stuff in the short term. You don’t have to risk failing at the thing. You don’t have to disappoint the people who’d rather you stayed exactly as you are. You don’t have to find out whether or not you’re actually capable of getting what you want. Staying in the fog feels safe.

And I understand the appeal, truly I do, because I’ve done it myself until quite recently. There were years where I told myself I didn’t know what I wanted from my work, from my life, from any of it. And looking back, it’s almost embarrassing just how clearly I did know. I just wasn’t ready to admit it. Because admitting it meant I’d have to change things. And the idea of changing things was terrifying.

But the fog is not protecting you. It’s postponing you. Every day you spend pretending that you don’t know what you want is a day that you don’t spend moving toward the thing you actually want. And that has a way of quietly grinding down your sense of self.

Because some part of you knows. Some part of you always knows. And when you keep overriding that part, when you keep telling yourself a story that you know isn’t quite true, you create this low-level friction inside yourself; a sense of being slightly out of step with your own life.

That friction has a name, and the name is self-betrayal. It’s the specific and destructive discomfort of knowing one thing, but living another.

This stuff is like a loop. You sense what you want, but acting on it feels risky, so you retreat back into “I don’t know.” That retreat gives you relief, which makes it the easy choice next time. But the want does not go away. It just gets quieter and more buried while the discomfort of being stuck keeps growing. And so you reach for the fog even harder, because now the gap between where you are and where you want to be feels too enormous to face. The very thing you’re using to feel safe is the thing keeping you stuck.

The fog is not protecting you, it’s postponing you.

And this is why it’s not a small thing, and it’s not just “a little bit of indecision” that you can just shrug off.

Left alone, this pattern does not stay still. It builds and builds. The longer you tell yourself you don’t know what you want, the more your world will narrow to fit that smaller and safer version of your life… and the harder it becomes to remember that you ever wanted anything else. That’s the real cost. It’s not just the unmade decision, but a slow shrinking of what you believe is possible for you. I think a lot of us are walking around calling ourselves ‘confused’ when what we really are is scared. And there’s no shame in that. But there’s no progress in it either.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

And naming what you want honestly is the first real step towards making it happen. And we’re going to talk about how you actually start to do that right after this quick break.

[AD BREAK]

And welcome back! So now let’s get into the ‘how to’ part of today’s episode, and let’s talk about…

How to figure out what you want

Right… let’s get into what you can actually do about this, and I’m going to keep it simple, practical, and realistic because nobody who feels stuck needs a 45-step life overhaul plan being dumped onto them. And as always, everything I talk through is written up in the episode transcript on my website at ltamh.com/episodes and it’s linked in the description so you don’t need to scramble to take notes.

Now, the first thing to do is what we actually started with at the top of the episode. So let’s go and build on that. And it is…

Run the honesty test.

When you catch yourself saying “I don’t know what I want,” I want you to stop and genuinely ask yourself: do I really not know what I want? Or is this avoidance? And here’s how you tell the difference, because it isn’t always obvious.

A real mental blank around what you want, the kind that comes after burnout or grief or depression, tends to feel heavy and flat and murky across the board. It’s kind of like your whole windscreen has misted over and you can’t see a damn thing.

Avoidance feels different. Avoidance feels specific. There’s usually a particular area that your mind keeps shying away from, or, you know, veering away from. A topic of thought that you just quickly change in your own head. A question that makes your stomach tighten a little. If there’s a subject that you keep ‘not thinking about’ with a lot of energy, that’s not fog. That’s a door. Right?

Fog is quiet, and it’s heavy. Avoidance flinches. Avoidance feels like resistance and fear and a whole bunch of thoughts saying, “Oh no, you couldn’t possibly do that!” Right? So learn to feel the difference between the two… because once you can, you can stop wasting effort looking for an answer in the wrong places.

And by the way, if avoidance tends to be a pattern for you then check out Episode 99 where I dig deeper into that topic. And it’s linked in the episode description. OK, next…

Stop trying to think your way out of it.

And I really do mean stop it. If you’ve been researching the same question for six months, or reading yet another book about finding your purpose, or waiting for some calm and clear moment when the answer will finally descend on you, then please hear me loud and clear: that approach has already failed you.

It’s not because you’re doing it wrong, or because you haven’t listened to the right podcast yet, but because you’re using thinking to solve something that thinking cannot solve. You can’t reason your way out of a feeling that you’re avoiding.

So, stop adding more information. You almost certainly have enough already if you’ve been doing that much research! What you’re missing here is not data, it’s honesty… and you don’t find honesty by thinking harder. You find it by being braver. Next…

Name the fear, not just the want.

So… once you suspect there’s a want that you’ve been dodging or trying to avoid, don’t just try to name the want but instead name what’s frightening about it. Because the fear is the thing that’s actually keeping that door slammed shut… so that’s the thing that you have to actually look at first, right?

Ask yourself: If I admitted that I wanted this, what would I be afraid of? And then, be specific. Am I afraid that I’d fail and look foolish? Afraid of disappointing someone whose opinion I rely on? Afraid I’d have to give something up? Afraid that I want something I’ve decided I’m not allowed to want? Afraid of things changing?

When you name the fear out loud, two things happen. First, it gets smaller… because fear almost always shrinks the moment that you say it out loud plainly, instead of just letting it lurk in the corners. And secondly, you finally start dealing with the real problem instead of the distraction. The fear is the distraction. The want was never the hard part. The fear was. Next…

Listen to your heart.

Deep down, you probably know what you want. Or at the very least, you know what you don’t want. So, start there.

You’ll hear a million bits of advice in the self-development industry to research and follow your passion… and that’s lovely. But my passion is reciting lines from nineties British sitcoms, like Absolutely Fabulous, in my day-to-day life, but… it’s very tough to make a living out of that. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I would if I could!

Instead… listen to what your heart says about what you want and need, as well as what you don’t want, and allow that to guide you as you explore what your options are. Even just identifying what you don’t want is a great starting point, and it helps you to slowly take steps from there. OK, next…

Say it out loud, plainly.

This sounds simple… maybe almost too simple… but it’s one of the most powerful things you can do. So please don’t skip it! Take the thing that you’ve half admitted to yourself and say it out loud as a plain sentence.

“I want to leave my job.”

“I want to end this relationship.”

“I want to try, even though I might fail.”

“I want a different life than the one I’ve built.”

Say it out loud to yourself, in the car, wherever… maybe not the middle of the supermarket, but you know, hey, you do you! Because there’s an enormous difference between a want that’s still vague and floating around in the aether versus a want that you’ve said to yourself as a clear sentence in your own voice. The vague version lets you keep pretending. The plain, honest version makes it real. And once it’s real, you can finally do something with it.

So, be honest with yourself.

That phrase gets thrown around a lot, “be honest with yourself,” but this is what ‘being honest with yourself’ actually means in practice: it’s saying the true thing plainly, even when the comfortable thing would be to just keep it blurry and vague. Next…

Take one small step, not a giant leap.

Now, here’s where a lot of people start panicking because they assume that admitting it out loud and saying what they want means they have to immediately blow everything up: quit the job tomorrow, end the relationship tonight, sell the house and move to the coast by next week. And because that feels enormous and reckless you slam the door shut on the idea again, and retreat right back into “I don’t know what I want.”

But that’s a false choice. You almost never have to detonate your entire life to honour what you want.

What you need is one small and honest step in the right direction.

So for example, if you’ve admitted that you want to change careers… great! The step here isn’t resigning immediately. It’s having one conversation, or sending one email, or spending one evening looking into what it would actually take to change your career. If you’ve admitted that a relationship isn’t right or isn’t healthy, the step might be letting yourself acknowledge it fully rather than forcing some sort of action. Small steps are how you test the water without drowning, and they’re how change actually happens for real people with real responsibilities.

Now, sometimes, yes, things genuinely do need to be blown up, and you’ll know if that’s you, but for most of us, most of the time, the path forward is to shake your life up a bit, bit by bit… not torching it entirely. Because nothing changes if nothing changes… but ‘change’ doesn’t have to mean chaos. Next…

Build the habit of being direct with yourself.

And this is the longer game, the thing to build over time. Now, the reason why the fog settled in the first place is that somewhere along the line it became easier to not know than to face things honestly. So the work here isn’t just answering this one question. It’s to build a different relationship with yourself, one where you don’t let yourself get away with the comfortable lie anymore. Where you notice when you’re being vague in order to avoid discomfort and where you gently call yourself out on it. That’s an ongoing practice, not a one-off thing.

Every time you choose the honest answer over the comfortable fog, you make the next honest answer a little bit easier… and you make it that much harder for avoidance to disguise itself as confusion ever again.

And before you talk yourself out of all of this stuff, just sit for a moment with the cost of not doing anything. Because if you keep telling yourself that you don’t know what you want, then you’re not going to stay still. You’ll go backwards. The want becomes quieter. Your world gets smaller. And one day, you’ll look up and a lot of time has passed with nothing changed except for your age and the number of regrets that you carry.

You’ve got one life and it’s happening now… not later when you feel ready for it.

So this week, here’s what I want you to actually do: catch yourself in one “I don’t know” moment. Run the honesty test. And if it is avoidance manifesting, then name the want and the fear underneath it as two plain sentences. That’s the whole task for you for the next week, right? It’s not about solving your entire life, just stopping the pretending… because everything else grows from there.

Conclusion

So here’s what I want you to take away from this episode. There’s a very good chance that you do know what you want, and that what you’re really wrestling with isn’t a lack of clarity… it’s a fear of what that clarity would require of you. And the way forward is to be honest with yourself about the want and the fear, and then take one small and honest step towards the life that you actually want.

So, what have you been telling yourself that you don’t know when the truth is you’re just not ready to admit that you do?

Because when you boil it all down, the moment you stop being scared to admit what you really want is the moment everything starts to change.

Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you. This week’s quote is by the late actor Mae West, and it is…

Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it.

Mae West

Let me repeat that.

Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it.

Alright, that’s it for this week. If you found this helpful, please share it with someone who might need to hear it and leave a rating or review on your favourite platform because it really helps more people discover the show and the advice I share. And if you’d like to support my work, you can join my Patreon. It’s linked in the description below.

Thank you very much for joining me today. Look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness out into the world… because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!

Join me next week when I talk about how to stop feeling miserable. And check out my episode on how to stop existing and start living next. It’s linked in the description. I release new episodes every Sunday, so follow or subscribe to never miss an episode.

Join me next week when I talk about physical anxiety symptoms, and check out my episode on being kinder to yourself when you’re struggling next. It’s linked in the description. I release new episodes every Sunday, so follow or subscribe to never miss an episode.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program. Discover more at ltamh.com.

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Find more content at www.ltamh.com

Let’s Talk About Mental Health.
Making Mental Health Simple.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health. © 2026 Jeremy Godwin.

The information provided in this episode is for general awareness on the topic and does not constitute advice. You should consult a doctor and/or mental health professional if you’re struggling with your mental health and wellbeing. You’ll find additional information on the Resources page of this website.