Try too hard to find your purpose and you might miss it, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But wait too long for it to find you and you could lose out

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I graduated from university a year ago and, while I have settled into a postgrad job that I am OK with, I have felt a deep sense of guilt and frustration since my late teens at not having an answer to the big question: what do you want to do with your life?

I realise much of this anxiety will come from pressure to be perceived as successful, feel financially secure and other factors but there remains a deep-seated belief that to be truly happy, I need to find my “thing”. As a pessimistic and anxious person, I find flaws with most career paths in terms of their alignment with the missing “thing” I’m looking for. How do I reconcile the confusion with the inner child who expected more from myself?