What to Do When You Feel Lost in Life: 5 Simple Steps to Find Your Path

Do you feel lost in life? Are you struggling with understanding your purpose or what you are meant for? Do you feel like you don’t belong? Feeling this way may cause you to slip into depression, isolate yourself and feel unmotivated to do anything in life. Everyone has faced this at one point or another during their course of life. It could be that you are at a stage of life where you are required to make big decisions or you are faced with a big challenge or failure, or you have recently lost a loved one. Any significant change that you perceive as being negative can trigger the emotion of self-pity where you may feel like you have been victimised by situations or people. This is then followed by a sense of betrayal and bitterness; as if what you have depended on for so long has abandoned you. You end up experiencing this as a feeling of being disconnected from what you have known so far. When this disconnect is not addressed soon enough in the right way, feeling lost and confused becomes your norm before you know it. But with the right knowledge, the right company and the right mindset, you can pull yourself out of confusion and find your path.

A Root-Cause Analysis

Before we start looking for the solution, we need to understand the root cause of the problem. Feeling lost is only a symptom of a much deeper problem. So every time you feel confused or lost, it is a knock on the door of your consciousness. It is your mind telling you that you have not fully addressed the root cause yet. What is the root cause then? As humans, we always require a sense of security and belonging to be able to live happily. Some of us may think we find that security in our family, our close relationships, financial assets, career and a myriad of other things. However, since these are all subject to change, our sense of ‘security’ is also dangling by an extremely thin thread. So, everytime our sense of security is attacked, we are confronted by the temporariness of the things we wish were permanent and this is a painful experience. Often we have not equipped ourselves to deal with this sudden confrontation and pain. So, we have collectively accepted that feeling this way from time to time is normal and we have found ways to temporarily help us cope with this feeling; like complaining to our confidante about the issue, distracting ourselves from it, blaming others for it etc. Not all the ways are detrimental. Sometimes, we channel all our focus towards positive things in life as well. But none of them still address the root cause which trying to find a sense of security in temporariness. When we have run out of distractions or become tired of distracting ourselves, we start to feel confused and lost.

Finding your way out of confusion

Now you are feeling lost and want to define the purpose of your life in your head so you can move forward. If you are looking for that one feeling, that one career path or that one person to define your purpose, I hate to break it to you but, there is no one Eureka moment that will solve all your confusion. We are not meant to live life for or based on one particular moment or thing. Life is a journey, a sequence of many moments. So if you are uncertain about the moments to come, that is natural and absolutely okay. Not everything in life goes as per your plans anyway. But having clarity in your current moment, in the present, is vital because this determines the course your life will take.

Redefining purpose

What is purpose? Why do we need purpose? We feel like we need meaning in life to live, and purpose in life to be able to define the direction in which our lives will go. But what we fail to realise is that life goes on irrespective of whether we have found our purpose or not. Our state of mind and actions in the past have determined what we encounter in life today. So our current state of mind and our actions today will determine what we encounter in the future. Life already has momentum and direction. So what we need to be looking for is not purpose. We need to be looking for clarity, a clear state of mind in the present moment. Finding clarity is not an activity you can set out to do, nor is it something that just comes to you. So what is it that you can do to find clarity?

5 essential steps to find your path:

1.Surround yourself with the right company

‘As the company, so the colour.’ – Shubha Didi

It is only through spiritual wisdom and spiritual experiences can we address the root cause and truly gain clarity. Expose your mind to this wisdom regularly and bring it into practice. This will help you understand the realities of life, heal from the past and adopt productive thought processes. As you grow spiritually, you will feel more secure within yourself, gain more clarity and become more confident.

2.Understand that confusion is an opportunity.

Whenever you find yourself at a crossroads, you actually are not at a crossroads. It is just that you have more to learn about yourself or the reality of life. So, it is not about whether you are meant to pick path A or B or C, rather it is about understanding yourself enough that there is no choice left to make because you now know your path and this path is uniquely yours. This is the state of mind of clarity. Once you adopt this mindset, the feeling of being lost will gradually start becoming alien to you. However, at this moment, this feeling of confusion is an opportunity for you to learn more about yourself. So embrace it and stop trying to run away from it or feel bogged down by it.

3.Come into acceptance and gratitude.

Most of the time we find ourselves confused and not yet ready to take a step when we are in denial of who we are and what we are capable of. So if you find yourself trying very hard to be someone you are not, then you are moving farther away from the truth and this will inevitably cause a lot of confusion. Also, we may often be stuck in the past, holding on to a lot of could-have-beens. If you do not accept the way things are in life, that will lead to a lack of clarity. So, accept yourself and everything in life as is, and be grateful for every moment.

4.Inculcate Faith.

‘God can do no wrong.’ – Shubha Didi

Your belief system drives your thoughts, decisions and actions. When fear is the one driving your decisions, there will be no clarity. So take a step towards building an unquestionable and unconditional belief in the idea that nothing can every really go wrong and that you are always protected. In time, as you move through your internal journey, your mind will begin to witness this idea to be real. The more you experience that nothing ever goes wrong, the more your faith will grow. The more your faith grows, you will feel protected and secure irrespective of the situation. Clarity will become the space you operate from.

5.Enjoy your Present

‘In the deep intense present there are no thoughts.’ – Shubha Didi

Confusion is a by-product of overthinking. The present is not given to you to think about the past or future. It is given to you to use this opportunity to just be and enjoy the moment irrespective of where you are or what you are doing, with no complaints. The more you truly enjoy your present, you think less and clarity just becomes a by-product.

Feeling lost and confused is okay. But if the next thing you do to address this feeling is to look within your mind, then you are already on the right path. As long as you have defined your Internal spiritual path, your path in life is taken care of. Everything begins from your state of mind in the present moment.