Wellness author Gregg Levoy, through the very real experience of being physically lost in the wilderness, realized that emotionally he was also lost in life. This profound realization, Levoy says, helped him understand that he needed to make changes.
It may seem like a cliché metaphor but you cannot be found before first being lost. Relationship breakdowns, career failures, or other major life setbacks can leave us feeling lost and scared in life. However, we are by nature a resilient species, and losing our way in life does not mean we can never find our way back.
It Can Remove Toxicity
Imagine you are feeling lost because the job you have is miserable, and just feels like a daily grind destroying your soul. It’s never going to change and it makes every other aspect of your life miserable as well. You have lost your way in your career. This is not the end of the world, it’s a wake-up call. It is telling you that to find your way again you need to make a big change.
The feeling of being lost may be produced by a partner leaving you after many years together. You didn’t want this to happen but it has and for right or wrong there must be reasons why. If the relationship was perfect then it would not have ended.
This is the end of something but not the end of everything. Time heals and life goes on. The relationship needed to end if one of the partners no longer wanted to be there.
The message is that loss does not end your world unless you allow it to.
Being Lost Helps You Reconnect with Yourself
Often a feeling of being lost is not as obvious as you think. People plod on through daily life in jobs they hate, relationships that make them depressed, and essentially just going along to get along. They are lost without knowing it and until they admit to themselves, they are, they cannot come back.
When we know we are lost, this is when we can start to discover why we feel this way. In order to do this, we are forced to reflect on our lives and what we really want from them. This chance to reconnect with who we are or used to give us the motivation to find our true self again. Losing ourselves does not mean we can’t find a way back.
It Can Bring New Adventures
Losing our way in life often happens slowly and one day we wake up and realize we are not who we want to be. There can be a feeling of not knowing how our lives can improve and a concern of being stuck in the same rut forever.
When we decide to act on our feeling of having lost our way this opens up our lives to a whole new world of possibilities. We may choose to change our careers and maybe reclaim dreams we left behind. A toxic relationship that has continued too long can end, opening us up to finding the happiness we have been lacking. When we find our way again, we embark on new adventures in life.
You Can Rebuild Stronger
We learn from failure and disappointment and this can help to make us stronger as individuals. Our mistakes can help us build a better future for ourselves. Losing our way in life forces us to take a look at ourselves in our efforts to come back and in doing so we learn how to be better and grow.
Writer, poet, designer, crafter, and mental health advocate. I have encountered struggles throughout life with addiction, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. I no longer identify with the above struggles, however, as I refuse to be defined by a disorder, disease or diagnosis. It is through the guidance of an anxiety coach in which I continue the healing of both my mental and physical health, while in the process supporting others along their own path towards recovery.