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Feeling lost in life means that you’re unable to find your way. You don’t know what to do next, where to go, or you may be unsure how you got to where you are.
It can be one of the worst feelings in the world when you are stuck in it and can leave you paralyzed, spinning in your thoughts, just trying to get through each day and seeing no way out.
The presence of social media and the seemingly endless amount of information available to us today can perpetuate these thoughts. You may find that you’re comparing yourself to others who seem to have it all figured out. You let yourself get overwhelmed by the information available to you feeling that there’s so much you don’t even know where to start and what would be helpful.
When you’re feeling this way, you’re not able to show up as your true self. Many times, you tend to be so focused on yourself and getting rid of this feeling, that you’re not present for the important people in your life and you end up missing out.
If You’re Feeling Lost in Life, You’re not Alone
Everybody has felt this at some point in their lives.
In fact, I felt this way for a large part of my life and understand what you may be going through.
I got to a point where I felt really discouraged and helpless and felt I would never figure it out or be able to just feel at peace with my life as it was.
Through my education, life experience, and incessant need to know myself, I’ve gained some insight into this feeling. In following my inner guidance and trusting the wisdom within, I realized some simple things that changed everything for me. I structured these into 5 steps that I believe was the key to finding my way and getting out of feeling lost in life. I’m hopeful they may also help you!
“When you do what is easy your life will be hard. But if you do what is hard your life will be easy.” -Les Brown
This quote has stuck with me for years. I remind myself of this in moments where I’d rather watch tv than do the hard thing that would actually move me forward. I remind myself of the life I want and choose to do the hard thing.
These steps are simple, but they do take work. You get to decide whether or not the work is worth it for you in the long run.
Consider what will change for you when you decide to do the work. When you’re not showing up as your true self because you’re feeling lost, you may be irritable, reactive, may experience feelings of anxiety or depression. What is this feeling costing you in your life?
Maybe you’ve tried things in the past that haven’t worked, and you’re not sure change is possible. But these 5 steps will help make things stick for you. They will help you experience a better life and find your way when you’re feeling lost.
My hope is that you choose to do the work! By building awareness, recognizing your power, looking at your thoughts, identifying what you do want, and taking action, you can overcome the feeling of being lost in life and create the life you truly want.
5 Steps to Take When Feeling Lost in Life
1. Build Awareness Around Feeling Lost
So you feel lost in life. You found this post so you must be aware you’re feeling this way and are trying to take action to do something about it. Are you doing this because you’re trying to make the feeling go away? Or are you trying to gain awareness and understand the feeling you are experiencing?
This is an important distinction as a ‘yes’ to one will get you closer to the result you’re after, and the other will keep you spinning in circles. The more you resist an emotion or try to get rid of it, the deeper it lives inside you. In order to truly process a feeling, you need to allow it to be there.
So often we are resisting or avoiding emotions instead of allowing them without even realizing it. The reason we feel lost, aimless, or stuck is often because we aren’t willing to go deeper. But when we can sit with it and allow it to be there, we can discover the true cause of our feeling. Without knowing the cause we have no real direction to change it.
The biggest thing here is to become familiar with the feeling. Learn how it feels in your body. Feel the sensations and see them for what they are-simply sensations in your body, that’s it. Get to know the feeling and truly live instead of letting it control you and do things you don’t want to do just to escape from feeling it.
If you want a different result in your life, stop running from your emotions. Have the confidence that you can handle any uncomfortable emotion. You’ll be amazed at how your life will start to change.
Read more about the importance of awareness and how to allow your emotions here.
2. Take Back Your Power in Order to Find Your Way
To find your way when you’re feeling lost in life, it’s important to take back your power.
You must understand that the reason you are feeling lost is because of your thoughts. You may come up with a thousand reasons why the circumstances or events in your life have caused you to feel this way. Your job is unfulfilling, you lost somebody, you’re a busy mom with no time for yourself, and on and on.
As long as you are placing the cause of your feelings on something outside of yourself, you are giving your power away and your ability to change the way you are feeling. You’re choosing to be a victim of your circumstances, even though many times this is unconscious.
Think about another person in your same situation and imagine them having a different thought about the same thing. This would not be possible if the situation truly was the cause of your feelings. If it was, every single person would feel the same way when a situation occurred.
The bottom line is, your feelings are your responsibility. This is great news because that means you don’t have to go changing your external reality or wishing that people or things outside of you were different. All the answers you need are within you and within your own thoughts.
Stop giving away your power and remember the powerful creator you truly are.
This understanding alone will lead you to live an empowered life as you step into taking full responsibility of your life. Remind yourself frequently as you find yourself blaming others or circumstances outside of you. Take your power back, and I assure you, you will start to move forward into the life you want.
3. Identify the Thoughts That Are Keeping You Lost
To find your way when you’re feeling lost in life, it’s important to identify the thoughts that are holding you back.
If our thoughts are what create our feelings, and not our external circumstances, we now need to identify these thoughts. A big reason why you may feel lost is simply because you haven’t taken the time to truly know yourself. You haven’t examined or questioned the thoughts that have caused you to feel this way.
This makes total sense as it’s human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Our brain has evolved with the primary goal of survival, so any pain we experience may be perceived as a threat. Avoid the pain, and we avoid the threat to our safety or survival.
We also need to understand that a lot of our thought patterns and beliefs are unconscious and have been programmed and wired into our brains when we were very young.
Until these thoughts are questioned, they will continue to play in the background.
Your job now is to bring them into your consciousness. When you do that, you are taking a step towards lasting change.
Let’s do this now!
Take out a sheet of paper. Bring up that feeling of lost and think about the last time you were experiencing that. What were your thoughts in that moment? Write down as many thoughts as you can, whatever comes to your mind.
This will be different for everyone, but here are a couple of thoughts that may resonate with you to get you started:
Once you have the list, you now need to go deeper. Choose one thought at a time and do as many as feel helpful to you.
The idea is to get as clear as possible on the thought. You do this by getting curious and asking yourself as many questions as necessary until you get to a place where you feel you found the real underlying thought. The thought or belief that is triggering the threat response from your brain.
Ask yourself questions like “Why?” “Then what?” or “So what?” Any question you can find that will take you deeper.
This takes practice and it can be hard to come up with the actual thoughts causing this feeling for you. But once you identify the underlying thought, now you have something to work with.
Take a moment to really reflect on what this thought is creating in your life.
Do you want to keep your thoughts? Regardless of whether or not you believe your thoughts, are they serving you in your life?
My guess is no, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now.
Now that you know the thoughts that are holding you back, let’s look at what we can do next.
4. Focus on the Bigger Picture to Know Your Way
To find your way when you’re feeling lost in life, it’s important to focus on the bigger picture.
The goal here is to figure out what you do want, and focus on that. We know you don’t want to feel lost in life. So what is it you do want?
It’s so much easier to move through the feeling of lost when you know where it is you want to be. Getting clear on your bigger picture will ensure that you’re not on a wild goose chase. That the actions you take will be productive.
Think of it like a GPS. In order for it to work, you need to know two things. First, it needs to know where you currently are. This is the work that was described in the three steps above. Second, it needs to know where you want to go.
Oftentimes, we have an uncomfortable feeling and we want it to go away. Again, this is human nature, seek pleasure, avoid pain. The problem is this doesn’t give you your starting point or your destination. All you know is, “I don’t like feeling lost, I want it to go away.” You need to understand why you feel this and where you want to be. You can’t put “not lost” in the GPS, it won’t take you anywhere. Or if you do start to drive, it will take you many places, just driving around reacting to your environment. Even though you’re moving, you’re not any less lost.
Remember the law of attraction. You create whatever you put your attention on. We don’t want to focus on all the things we don’t want in life. If you’re thinking about how you’re feeling lost and you’re never going to get past it or figure it out, you will continue to create this for yourself.
Just like on the GPS, when we focus on what we don’t want, we react to the environment around us. If we think our job or relationship is causing us to feel lost, we may quit our job or leave a relationship only to find that we still feel lost. When we focus on what we do want, we don’t have to react anymore, we can do the work to get the result we ultimately want. For me, that result was inner peace. I had to completely shift my focus from feeling lost to what I need to do to create more inner peace in my life.
So what is it you want in your GPS?
Take some time to figure this out.
Just like in step 3, get curious and ask yourself questions.
Why don’t you want to feel lost?
If you no longer felt lost, how do you believe you would feel instead?
Write this down. Identify the feeling you want to have.
It’s also important to explore your purpose and get clear on your values. Know what matters to you. If you haven’t done this work it may be helpful to find a values worksheet to complete online.
Once you think you know what you want, take some time to tune in. Get in touch with the wisdom within you. Allow your inner compass to lead you because this is where your answers are, not out there! If you look outside, you will always be looking, always a seeker, and never found.
Many people feel they just want to be happy, but is this true for you? You may find that after tuning in, this is not true or realistic.
While focusing on what you want can get you a long way, remember that it’s only part of the process. If you don’t do the first 3 steps and your subconscious mind is still holding onto beliefs that are in competition with the result you’re after, you’re still not going to get there. You can’t live in peace while still holding onto a belief that there’s something missing in your life and you’re never going to figure it out.
Now let’s take all this awareness and put in into action! It’s time to take the steps necessary to move forward and create the life you truly want. Remember that action is key. It’s not enough to just have awareness and understanding. You need to take action to see real change in your life. So start small, take one step at a time, and keep moving forward.
5. Take Action!
Congratulations on making it this far! You are well on the journey to finding your way in life again. What you’ve uncovered will ensure that the actions you now take will be meaningful and productive.
Now that you’ve done the work of building your awareness and identifying what it is you do want, it’s time to come up with a plan on how to get you there!
Choose a goal
The first thing you need to do is set a goal. This can be any goal, but only focus on one at a time and give it your full attention. Feeling lost cannot exist in focus and meaningful action.
It needs to be specific and time-bound. 30 days is a good place to start, but do what feels right for you.
If you already know of a goal you want to work towards, great! If not, consider what’s keeping you from already experiencing the bigger picture result you identified. For example, if the result you identified is inner peace, one reason you’re not experiencing this may be because you can’t stop yelling at your kids, or beating yourself up for drinking or overeating. Make this your goal!
You will then use this goal as a way to achieve the result you’ve identified you want in life. If it’s inner peace, the more of this you create, the less lost you are going to feel.
Then, once you achieve more of your desired result in this area of your life, it will begin to trickle to all other areas.
Don’t worry if the goal you choose seems like it has nothing to do with resolving this feeling of lost for you. If you follow these steps, I assure you it has everything to do with it.
Next steps to achieving your goal
1. Commitment
Now that you’ve identified your goal, you need to commit to it. And I mean really commit to it. Think about all the goals you’ve set in the past and didn’t achieve. You never truly committed to those. There is a BIG difference between wanting to achieve a goal and deciding to. Wanting can be easily defeated by a greater want of comfort or perceived safety in the moment.
2. Know your why
Now it’s time to get really clear on your why. Why did you set this goal? Why is it important to you? You should already have a pretty good idea if you’ve been following the steps so far. Write your why on a piece of paper and remind yourself of it often. Motivation is not going to get you to achieve your goal. We can’t necessarily control whether or not we feel motivated. But we can take action from a deeper place. Connecting with your why will take you into action whether or not you feel motivated to do it.
3. Check in on your beliefs
Do you believe in your ability to accomplish this goal? Some people say you should just take action and the belief will follow. And sure, I believe it’s possible to do it this way but likely not without struggle. Let’s look at it through the lens of the law of attraction. Say your goal is to drink less but you don’t truly believe you are capable of this in the long run. You will not be successful until you change your belief in your ability. You can accomplish this through struggle and small successes that slowly build confidence and trust in your ability, or you can work directly on the belief before you even get started. You can choose what makes sense for you. Just remember that ultimately your belief in whether or not you can achieve it has EVERYTHING to do with your success.
4. Identify obstacles
Besides your belief in your ability to accomplish this goal, what other obstacles do you see that could keep you from achieving your goal? Know these ahead of time so you’re prepared to handle them. List them all now. This could be anything. What are your external distractions? What thoughts might come up to discourage you from following through? What’s hard about it? Is there anything you might need help with? Once you have the list, come up with an action plan for how you will respond. Also, list the thoughts you identified in step 3 that are causing your current feeling of being lost. You will need to redirect your thoughts when these come up again.
5. Live from your future
This is law of attraction at its finest. Picture yourself already having accomplished your goal. You are experiencing a life with more of that bigger picture result you’re after. From the perspective of your future self, what thoughts and beliefs got you there? What actions did you take? As you go throughout your day, live as though you are your future self. Let’s take the example of drinking less with the bigger picture result of inner peace. When the urge to drink arises, you now ask yourself, how would my future self handle this situation? What would inner peace do?
6. Make a Plan
Now that we have your mindset on track, write out exactly what it will take to reach your goal. Make a list of every single thing you can think of. If it’s a big task, break it into steps. List things you need to learn, things you think will support you, thoughts you’ll need to practice, and action plans for when obstacles arise. Do you need time to reflect every day? How will you bring that big picture result you’ve identified into your life every day?
7. Follow through
Make your plan a priority and schedule it into your calendar. Do everything you can to keep your commitment to this goal and do the things you say you’re going to do. Remind yourself of why it’s important and challenge the thoughts that are keeping you from following through.
8. Evaluate your progress
Like the GPS, you first need to know where you are today. Write this down. Do whatever feels sufficient for you. Either rate on a scale of 1-10 or write about how lost you are feeling right now. In terms of your goal, where are you right now? If your goal is to drink less, how much and how often are you drinking now? Keep track and log this. At the end of the time frame you identified, come back and do this again. Evaluate your progress and decide where you want to go from here.
When we’re feeling lost in life, we generally label this as a negative emotion we don’t want to experience. It can be a painful, frustrating experience and can leave us feeling hopeless at times.
Even if it feels like you have felt this way for a long time, you CAN find yourself again. Please believe this, and don’t get discouraged. Approach each of these steps with compassion and eliminate judgement.
If you’re able, try to open to the perspective that this feeling has come into your life for a purpose. Instead of it being a negative thing it is actually here to help you. It’s telling you that you have some beliefs that aren’t true. It’s leading you back to yourself and to what really matters to you. It’s an opportunity for growth and for freedom from the mental prison you have put yourself in.
Remember that life isn’t supposed to be rainbows and daisies all the time. I used to believe that all I really wanted in life was to be happy. I later realized this thought just wasn’t realistic and holding onto it made me feel perpetually unhappy since it was actually unattainable. I made a decision that instead of happiness, inner peace is what I wanted. And my purpose wasn’t to be happy, but to grow. Now any time I have a difficult emotion or a challenge, I see it as an opportunity to grow and a way to live my purpose every day.
The bottom line is that connecting with your true self and your inner wisdom is key to experiencing a better life. One that is free from the suffering of feeling lost, or any other feeling that may be holding you back.
These 5 steps are a great way to get you on this path.
If you’re looking to accelerate your progress…
Reiki is a great practice to incorporate into your life. Click here to learn more about Reiki and how it can help.
The best part about all of this is that once you learn these concepts, and truly experience their impact in your life, they can’t be easily unlearned.
Nobody can take your mindset or Reiki away from you. You have these tools forever no matter what happens in this world. Your mind is your most valuable asset. Any time or money you spend on it, is well worth your investment.
