You Don’t Have to Have Life Figured Out

At some point, many of us developed the idea that adulthood came with certainty. By a particular age we would know what we were doing, where we were going and how everything fit together.

The people shown in the Doing Life trailer face uncertainty about family, trust and the future. We cannot infer their final choices from a preview. We can recognize something familiar: people often have to make careful decisions before they know how everything will turn out.

Then we became adults.

Most people are working with incomplete information

People make career decisions without knowing what their industry will look like in five years. They enter relationships without knowing how both people will change. They raise children while learning who those children are becoming.

Life does not give us all the information first and ask us to make the decision second.

Changing your mind is not always failure

Sometimes you abandon a plan because you quit too soon. Other times you change direction because you learned something important.

Maturity includes knowing the difference.

Stop comparing your behind-the-scenes to somebody else’s presentation

Confidence can be real without being complete. The person who appears certain may still have private questions. The successful person may be rebuilding another area of life. The peaceful person may have worked very hard to get there.

We rarely know the whole story from the outside.

Direction matters more than having the entire map

You do not need to know exactly where you will be ten years from now to make a healthy decision today.

Know your values. Pay attention to what life is teaching you. Make the best decision you can with the information you have. Adjust when necessary.

That is not failing at life. That is doing life.

Continue: When life doesn’t go according to plan.

Explore the conversation: Tyler Perry’s Doing Life: what we know and the meaning of doing life.