What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do
Here are six helpful guidelines for when you feel stuck in your life.
Posted April 22, 2026 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
We all have times in our lives when we feel uncertain about what to do—whether to take that new job, move to Ohio, buy that dress, or tell your partner about trauma from your past. Whether the decisions are big or small, our stuckness is often tied to our personality , default behaviors, assumptions, and attitudes. Here are six foundational guidelines, along with action steps for implementing them, that you can always turn to when you’re not sure what to do:
1. How you do anything is how you do everything.
This is a well-known quote from Buddhism. Life can be divided into what and how . What is the content of our days—what we ate for lunch, decisions like taking the job. How is about the process—how you go about deciding what to eat for lunch, the job.
The quote essentially says that how you handle problems and decisions, manage stress , and run your life follows a regular pattern and process. You may, for example, be emotionally driven or impulsive, or overly cautious and fearful of making mistakes or upsetting others; though the content may change, your process is consistent.
Action: Your how can often be your Achilles’ heel, the very thing you struggle with most—the impulsiveness, your fear —that limits your life or leads to bad decisions. Step back and reflect on what gets you in trouble, the moral of the story of your life. Work on changing that one thing, and your life will change.
2. Problems are bad solutions.
Whatever you label as a problem in someone else, or even in yourself, is often a bad solution to an underlying problem. Your partner may procrastinate; you may procrastinate; they may smoke too much pot; you may drink too much. While procrastinating or overusing seem like the problems you need to somehow fix, this concept says you’re looking in the wrong place. Procrastination is a solution to the problem of having to do what you really don’t want to do, or to being overwhelmed by a task; smoking and drinking are bad solutions to underlying anxiety or depression .
Action: Ask yourself how the problem you see in someone else or in yourself may be just the tip of the iceberg for another problem beneath the surface. Identify that underlying problem and tackle it head-on.
3. Look for the holes.
This concept comes from family therapy and is analogous to the concept of negative space in art: If you’re looking at a painting of an orange, the orange is the positive space, and the background around the orange is the negative space. When a family therapist sits with a family for the first time, they look not only at what is said but also at what is not said or expressed—the holes: No one talks about the divorce or expresses any anger or grief ; the parents never mention what they appreciate about their children and talk only about what they do wrong. The holes—what is not said, where they don’t go—are often where they get stuck and where they eventually need to go most.
Action: What are your holes? What do you never talk about? What emotions do you rarely express? What types of behaviors do you avoid? Why? How would your life change, even in small ways, if you incorporated them into your life?
4. There are no mistakes.
I’ve met them, and you’ve met them—folks who are perfectionistic , who castigate themselves for minor missteps, and are often depressed because of self-criticism or anxious because they can never meet their own standards.
Usually, those standards are not their own but are inherited from others—parents, people in authority, or influencers—and reflect their views of a good life. But life is a process of elimination, and mistakes are part of it, embedded in learning something new, whether it is drawing a picture, settling on a career , or finding a lifelong partner. As that inspirational poster says, wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from making mistakes.
Action: Experiment with learning to be comfortable making mistakes—letting go of control and anxiety, and tamping down that scolding, finger-waving, critical voice in your head. Instead, give yourself room to explore and learn to be more compassionate with yourself.
5. Empathize with emotions, not behaviors.
This is about relationships. If your partner is struggling with depression, you can empathize with their emotions, but if they become abusive or can’t ever hold down a job, don’t allow yourself to be a victim or an enabler/martyr. Both choices lead you to build your life around them rather than live your own.
Action: Empathy is about seeing the problem beneath the problem, but tolerating bad behavior is about believing you can be happy only if they’re happy. It’s ultimately about not caring about yourself. Learn to push back, speak up.
Honesty is the universal antidote to uncertainty. When you don’t know what to do, the best you can do isn’t about taking the blame or always doing mea culpa, nor is it about dumping your problems on someone else’s lap. It’s about being honest with yourself and others. Honesty is about having the courage to step up and say what you want, think, and believe. It’s about being assertive rather than walking on eggshells and setting boundaries .
Action: This is about applying all of the above: being insightful enough to see the problem beneath the problem, acknowledging and focusing on what you can’t do, learning to make mistakes, and empathizing with others’ emotions without condoning their bad behavior. It’s about living an honest life because you are clear, unafraid, and not accommodating, and about living the life that reflects you.
It is about living a life of integrity.
Taibbi, R. (2018). Boot camp therapy: Action-oriented approaches to anxiety, anger, & depression. New York: Norton.
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Bob Taibbi, L.C.S.W., has 50 years of clinical experience. He is the author of 13 books and over 300 articles and provides training nationally and internationally.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.