Are You Lost?
Photo by Matt Seymour
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
Do you ever feel as though you’re a fraud, that you’re being untrue to yourself, presenting a mere shadow of who you are to the people in your life?
Do you have that disorienting sense that somehow, somewhere you wandered off your life path?
No worries. You’re in good company.
Life is so confusing, especially after a full year of lockdown. There is so much contradictory information surrounding us, we muck our choices all up with our conflicting agendas, wants and needs and the needs of everyone around us until we have a tangled mess. No wonder we have trouble seeing our way to an authentic decision—it's too noisy and crowded. We can't even hear ourselves think. Instead, we settle, and live on autopilot until something shakes us up and we realize that we’re utterly and completely lost.
Thankfully, as many of us have discovered in recent months, getting lost can be a good thing.
Yes, we may be off track, but now we have the perfect opportunity to pause for a bit and contemplate how to correct our course. As we’re exploring our options many wonderful things can happen, the biggest being that we may discover we no longer want to continue on the journey we were on up to that point.
This kind of honesty can bring us major relief.
Really? In what ways?
Getting onto yourself and realizing that you’ve been pretending to be okay with what you’re doing.
With the light shining on your motivations, you can't suspend your disbelief and buy into the game you've been playing anymore.
The squashed part of you finally has space to have a voice and begins crying out to you to “stop wasting your life”.
And recognizing, finally, that you’re following the beat of the wrong drummer.
Think about it. At some stage in your life, you jumped onto a path that you believed, on some level, might serve you. Perhaps it has, but somewhere along the way you lost sight of the purpose of this path. Now you are used to it, and you hate to acknowledge that you cling to it mostly because it is familiar.
But what if it isn't what you need right now? Maybe you’re ready for something new, something better, something that reflects your highest values and uses your talents in the more meaningful and fulfilling way.
Sound intriguing?
A little scary?
Of course, because this is unknown territory. But it is far less scary than staying lost in the consequences of choices made in a past that you’ve outgrown.
You know you’re ripe for such a change when…
Situations and relationships have grown stale. You’re bored listening to others, and even more bored listening to yourself.
You notice that you are pretty numb and hang out most of the time on automatic pilot, doing what you’ve always done.
You feel exhausted, stressed and burned out. Burn out is life’s way of saying you need to pause, rest and reflect.
You’re feeling drained because you stopped doing something because you wanted to and began doing something because you got paid to do it.
You work or relationship or living situation now feels wrong, though when you first chose it, it seemed like the right thing, perhaps the only thing to do.
Feeling lost isn’t bad. In fact, it’s the perfect time to look at your choices.
While initially unsettling, now you can truly correct your course by either re-choosing what you’re doing (probably with drastically different conditions) or choosing something new.
Like your GPS rerouting you, you can find a new way to move forward. However, like anything we experience for the first time, it may be awkward and uncomfortable for a while. The good news is that once the clarity shows up, the discomfort will be totally worth it because you’ll find inspiration, motivation, joy and passion again. The excitement of the new will help propel you forward on your journey, and you will eventually find your stride.
Before long, you’ll be glad you lost your way.