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5 no-cost strategies for New Yorkers seeking more fulfillment and purpose in 2025
By
Megan Hellerer
Published Dec 29, 2024
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By
Megan Hellerer
Published Dec 29, 2024
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New Yorkers are notoriously efficient, resilient and driven. Many of us are also stressed and burned out.
I would know. As a born-and-raised New Yorker, I prided myself on my ambition and hustle — that is, until I was miserable, depressed and having panic attacks at work. So, I quit my “dream job” at Google with no plan other than to find a way to do this whole “career” thing that didn’t make me utterly miserable. That’s when I discovered that unhappiness, stress and burnout aren’t requirements for success and I’ve spent the past 10 years coaching others how to build successful lives they actually love living, too.
New Yorkers, I bring you good tidings of great joy: You can indeed have your success and be content and fulfilled, too. Here are five no-cost strategies I offer to have more fulfillment and meaning in your life in 2025 and beyond.
Focus on the direction, not the destination.
Traditional life and career advice goes like this: figure out where you want to end up, reverse engineer a path to get there, then single-mindedly execute that plan. So, we spend most of our lives chasing destinations — the promotion, the degree, the award, the wedding, the dream home, whatever it is — but more often than not, it doesn’t feel like we thought it would when we arrive there.
Don’t fall into the trap of getting to your long-sought, “dream” destination only to find that you don’t actually want to be there. Don’t stagnate because you think you have to know your destination before you can take any steps.
Here’s the thing: you don’t actually need to know where you’re going in order to navigate there successfully. Many of us think we need a master plan to guarantee our success, when all we really need is a direction. You’re much more likely to end up somewhere you truly want to be and that’s uniquely well-suited for you if you iterate in your own personal right direction, being responsive to the changing internal and external conditions as you go, instead of racing to a predetermined, often arbitrary finish line.
This year, instead of asking, “where is this going to get me?” Try asking, simply, “Is this directionally right?” Instead of concentrating all your efforts on the work that will get you that promotion, try focusing your energy on the next most exciting project. Or, rather than getting hung up on your “forever home,” think about the next place that feels like home now.
Ditch the “shoulds” and get aligned.
Ever find yourself wondering, “Whose life am I living anyway?” This disconnect happens when we’re navigating our lives according to “shoulds” — what is deemed impressive, valuable and worthwhile by the collective — instead of wants — what’s particularly true to you and no one else. These pesky “shoulds” take all the *you-*ness out of your life and make it feel arbitrary and generic.
If you want more fulfillment and purpose in your life, assess whether what you’re working towards is what you actually want — what lights you up and gives you energy — and not just things what you think you “should” want or what you’ve been told matters.
In my case, this meant going from climbing the ladder at Google, which was something I thought I “should” want and looked great on paper but felt far from great inside, to a more aligned-for-me version of success that actually feels fulfilling by starting my own coaching practice.
In other words, get into alignment with who you truly are so you can build a life that is uniquely well-suited to you and feels distinctly like your life.
Follow your curiosity and your joy.
So, how do you know your aligned direction? You follow your curiosity and your joy.
Curiosity and joy are the best proxies that we have for our purpose. Curiosity isn’t a distraction and joy isn’t irrelevant. They’re showing us the path forward. Think of curiosity and joy like hunger. As hunger is meant to tell you where the nourishment is, curiosity and joy are meant to tell you where the fulfillment is.
If you’ve ever had one of those magical New York days where you set out with no agenda, only knowing your first stop — the deli, perhaps, for a cup of coffee and a bacon, egg and cheese — and afterwards just seeing where the day takes you, then you already have a sense of what following your curiosity and a “directional” approach feels like.
Maybe you stumble upon a flea market where you meet an artist who invites you to their new show. There, you find a new community of like-minded people. Or, you stop in a bookstore where there happens to be a meeting of a writing group which you decide to join. As a result, you finally start working on that memoir you’ve been talking about for years.
Approach your life like a game of warmer-colder.
A great analogy for this directional approach is the children’s game of “warmer-colder,” where one player guides the other player to find a hidden item, calling out “warmer!” when they are moving closer to the hidden object or “colder!” when they are headed in the wrong direction.
At the start of each round, you simply ask, “Is this warmer?” or “Is this colder?” — is this more aligned and directionally right, or less? Your only job is to move iteratively in the “warmer,” most aligned direction. Your goal is not to get to the end, but simply to move closer to it. In other words, test and learn, launch and iterate. So long as you’re feeling “warmer” with each step, you’re doing it right.
Ask: If your success were guaranteed, what would you do?
Often the thing that gets in the way of even knowing what we truly want in our lives, let alone doing it, is our fear of failure. We stay where we are — say, in a job you hate instead of considering applying for others — because it feels safer and more secure than trying something new or facing potential rejection.
If you’re feeling stuck, try asking yourself the question, “what would I do if success were guaranteed?” It can powerfully cut through that fear. This doesn’t mean you will be able to magically manifest your answer instantly, but it might clarify which direction to start moving toward.
Tagged
new york city
Megan Hellerer
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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