For When You Feel Lost

In this episode, I talk about how to deal with feeling lost and why this is a beautiful space to be in. This episode also dives into the idea of "finding your purpose" and the antidote to the pressure that comes with that. I also talk about how to begin to feel better.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Freewell podcast.

I am recording this just at the start of the holiday season and I am recording it because it feels like a really appropriate time to kind of dive into some deep feelings.

I think that there's a lot of kind of influence I guess around this time of year to really like go inward and to reflect on the way that 2022 unfolded and to kind of gear yourself up for the new year and I really love it.

I am so 100% here for that.

But I wanted to talk a little bit about the other side of that which is this feeling of kind of being lost.

And this is something that's really personal to me because I'm going on I think year four now of the fall season just like October,

November,

December being really difficult months for me.

And I'm not really certain why that is.

I'm not really sure why there seems to be this like sort of pattern.

I've really only uncovered it this year but if I look back over the fall season of the last four years it's been something that I've kind of struggled with in terms of like mental health and just general well-being.

And there is for me this sort of pervading sense of being lost and I actually rolled my eyes as I said that because I think that there's – it's almost hard to describe but it's almost like saying that,

In saying that I'm giving my power away.

And I know that I'm not the only one that feels this way and I think that in my generation in particular where there's I think a lot of pressure and there's also a lot of judgment about what people from my generation like do or don't do and our willingness or unwillingness to work and all of these things.

It does add like an extra layer of pressure to the pressure that I think we already inherently put on ourselves.

And so there is like I have been kind of feeling even this season again this kind of like well what am I doing and why am I doing this and feeling a little bit hopeless honestly and a little bit lost.

And I know that for now this is a different tone than what the podcast normally takes and I do try to be positive but I think that there's no point in denying like the reality of the human experience.

We are full spectrum beings and our emotions are full spectrum and we're never going to be happy all the time which I promise you is something I still struggle to like actually comprehend.

I understand it in theory.

I understand that it doesn't make sense if we were happy all the time because if we were happy constantly number one we would be wouldn't I think we wouldn't understand what happiness was if that was the norm if we didn't have the opposing emotion of kind of sadness or whatever.

But also just as humans and we see this so often in our own behavior like if you look back at your life but when we are really,

Really happy we or really anything when anything becomes sort of the norm we tend to either self-sabotage when things are going good or if we get bored we tend to shuffle up some drama because we need certainty and uncertainty in equal measure.

And so if things were good all the time we would find a way to kind of create a shitstorm just for something to do unfortunately.

So I think that embracing the full spectrum of human emotion is really,

Really important.

And yeah going back to this feeling of being lost I just think that it's something that we need to sit with and something that's come up for me is really the fact that I mean one you're not lost and it's okay if you feel that way but objectively speaking you're not lost and I think that those feelings of being lost come from a somewhat fundamental denial of where we are right now and the fact that we don't maybe like where we are right now and that we want things to change and perhaps things aren't changing in the sort of at the speed that we want them to and obviously there's a lot of pressure even with that because we live in a sort of instant gratification era and so we do tend to expect things to happen quite quickly and sometimes when we're in the void or we're in this space of just being kind of I don't know in the ether or floating around or in between or trying to figure out what to do next or trying to understand the next evolution of who we are it can feel like we're lost and I think that in these moments this is something that I'm realizing going on years of feeling this way repeatedly I think it kind of goes back to the story of the two wolves inside of you and this is I think I believe a Native American story but please correct me because I could very,

Very,

Very well be wrong but where a young kid asks his grandfather what's good and evil and the grandfather says you have two wolves inside of you one is good,

One is evil and the boy says which one will win and the grandfather says the one that you feed and I think that there is a little bit of this so if we take any emotion and in this case we're focusing on this idea of being lost if we take that idea,

If we're feeding the negative side of it which is I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know where I'm supposed to go and I don't know what's next and all of these things then that's what we're going to feel,

That's going to be our prevalent experience but the other side of that is acceptance and being okay with not really knowing where we are right now or where we're going or how things are going to unfold because even if we did have an idea it's not like we can ever predict what's going to happen in the future anyways we can control our side of things and we can try to create as best as we can but we can't ever know with 100% certainty what's going to come so it is about kind of stepping into this space of surrendering to the moment and just being like okay I feel like this,

I feel lost and that's okay and maybe I'm not really lost at all,

Maybe this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and that's something that I've settled into a little bit more too is accepting that I'm just meant to be here right now and it is not easy,

It is not easy I don't want to make it seem like this is like sunshine and rainbows it's not,

It's not fun to be in this space especially because what's valued of us in our modern day society is our productivity and when you're feeling lost it's quite often associated with a period of lower productivity and like in a capitalist society when you're not producing you're just simply not worthy because the only thing that's valuable to you is what you produce and so there is that societal pressure to kind of quote figure it out quote and that's tough too because that doesn't come from us and it doesn't belong to us but you can't necessarily escape it because that idea is one of the foundations of the society that we live in I think more or less regardless of where you live because if you are listening to this right now it means you have a certain amount of privilege and so you are likely affected by the constraints of a capitalist society as well so yeah it's just been really interesting though and even on the other side of things like talking to clients and this is kind of part two of feeling lost but a lot of clients come to me and they're like I just really want to figure out what my purpose is I just I really want to figure out what it is because there is a sort of obsession right now in the self-help industry in general but I think in society as well to kind of understand that one thing that you are meant to be doing in life and to turn that one thing into a job and I have lots of opinions on this but I think that that's a lot of pressure just that whole idea figure out your purpose tons of pressure and then make that said purpose your main source of income whoa that's just you're just a tiny human you're just a little human and that is a shit ton of pressure to be putting on yourself but then there's this idea like the fundamental idea of finding your purpose and this kind of active searching for it which is what we tend to do when we feel lost we tend to actively search for I suppose we could also wallow but we tend to actively search for a solution or like you know a path forward if we are sort of personally personal development minded and I think that I mean this is something that I point-blank refused to work on with clients and I've talked to clients about this when they come to me so we'll have like our initial calls to like make sure that we're a good fit and they're just like okay I really want to find my purpose and you know that's a goal that we're that I want to work towards and I just think like we can talk about what lights you up and we can work with the things that you are inherently drawn to but that's not a goal that you're going to be able to reach in a three six month year long container and I certainly don't think either for me my personal truth in this matter is that you don't find your purpose by actively searching for it I believe that you find your purpose by living and living is the thing that I think we are all collectively doing the least so we spend and like I mean take a second and look into this for yourself and like really have a moment of honesty with yourself about how much time you're spending on your phone you're spending a ton of time like in this kind of matrix let's say and staring at other people who have different lives than you and like you know maybe look differently or live different like realities than you do and I think that a certain amount of pressure comes from that as well but we are kind of like inundated with this idea of like you know figure it out find your purpose and whatever and it seems like other people have a lot of pressure to make sure that that's true like I know lots of people who my partner for example my partner has known that he is not academically minded he's not academically focused he does not love that area and he's always been really active and he loves to move body his body and he loves to help other people learn how to move their body and there is nothing that he wants to do other than work in that area and he's not even super picky in what capacity that happens my partner is a personal trainer but he also works at a physiotherapy studio he's worked at a pool he's worked at gyms he's like I'm pretty sure that if the opportunity came to like coach a sport or like to train with a team he'd probably be cool with that too like as long as he's in this area and he has known this for a very very very long time and he is so unapologetic about it it's just really awesome and then there's other people who don't know what they want to do or who know what they want to do but are having trouble making it a reality I know I've definitely been that person like I know what I want to do in life I know the person that I want to be and sometimes I get tripped up on the making that happen and that's okay too but I don't think that he or I or any of these people who have found this purpose have found it by like browbeating it out of themselves they have not like sat there and thought about their purpose they have not you know like really focused heavily on it they were busy living and something came to them and sparked this idea in them and in whatever way it could be like watching a TV show or it could be out in the world and you're traveling or you're walking around town and you have a random conversation with somebody how many times has that happened that you've been inspired by a conversation that you had with someone you know I came into coaching because I worked with a coach I had no idea what the industry was I've done therapy in the past and with varying levels of success I would say I've done therapy with varying levels of success and I knew that I wanted something different and I knew that I needed help kind of getting from point A to point B and coaching sort of showed up and I just thought wow this is so cool like who even knew and then through doing the coaching series I understood like wow there are so many areas of my life where I'm already embodying this role and this like energy of like guiding and supporting people and like being a leader so I came into it quite naturally but I didn't come into it because I was sitting at home like what is my purpose and like kind of typing that into Google and whatever and I think that if we actively search for it if we're sitting there and we're trying to kind of force it out of ourselves that perpetuates that sense of being lost because we're trying so hard to figure it out that we're not really taking proactive steps forward we're kind of just fostering that cycle of like I don't know what I'm doing I'm going to search for more I don't know what I'm doing I'm going to search for more instead of just being okay easier said than done 100% but instead of just being okay with kind of where we are right now and it's so interesting because like first off I've had so many ahas listening to myself say this right now like please please like let this be like a lesson and like we're never figured out I do not have all the answers and I have like as I've been saying this out loud and recording this podcast I'm thinking like oh man like how am I not doing this in certain areas of my life like where am I like kind of forcing something to happen or forcing it to be a certain way and not really just like a letting it unfold so I think that going back to this topic of like where we started of being lost I think that when we're feeling lost it feels really big and it feels really scary and it feels deeply uncomfortable doesn't it?

It feels really uncomfortable and we have to I think as a society as a culture really embrace the discomfort which sucks it sucks because it doesn't feel good if it felt good it wouldn't be a problem right?

It's specifically because it feels like crap that we don't want to do it but I think that we need to embrace the discomfort and we need to find a way to be okay with not being okay and we need to cut ourselves some slack and sink deeper into surrendering and surrendering for me has always been a really triggering word because whenever I've heard that I've always felt like okay I get it I understand on a theoretical level that I need to surrender but what is the practical of that like how do I surrender?

And if I was to give any advice in this particular situation for anyone who's also feeling this kind of lost feeling I would say that the best way to surrender in this case is to talk kindly to yourself when you get out of like when the thoughts kind of become out of control or when you're feeling that sort of chaotic energy come up so if you're feeling really lost and you've got a lot of these emotions you've got a lot of this kind of energy coming up just to kind of be like okay like in this case Alacia okay Alacia you know it's fine that you feel this way like it's normal that you feel this way and you don't have to do anything about it like you can just be with this emotion like it's totally fine and really kind of sinking deeper into it like really sitting in it sitting with it and just kind of embracing it and I think from there once you've reached a space of acceptance you can kind of begin to ask yourself like okay what do I need and not necessarily need in terms of what do I need in order to not feel this way because we're not trying to like fast forward through the experience as much as we'd like to I'd like to too I don't like sitting in this space and I certainly don't like like I said the cyclical nature of it for me which seems to be around this time of year every year I yeah I don't I'm not getting a kick out of it let's be let's be totally honest but I do think that it's like okay well what do I need and if I was to answer that question personally what do I need right now I need to I need to cut myself some slack because I definitely put way too much pressure on myself all the time I would say that I am a recovering overachiever and I definitely suffer from perfectionistic tendencies I don't want to but I do like things done at a certain level and that's particularly difficult for me to let go of and so then it's a huge cause of like most of my suffering is the fact that I want things done a certain way in a certain timeline etc etc so and then if I was to ask myself again like okay well what do you need what do you really need I think that the next thing that I would tell myself in my particular instance is I need to just do something so what I mean by that and it's interesting because I said like don't try to actively move forward but I think that I've been sitting in this space for a while and so if I was really honest about how I feel and what is holding me back or what is kind of keeping me trapped trapped in this cycle it would be the fact that I'm sort of afraid of taking action and so I'm paralyzed I'm not really moving forward and so moving forward would actually be the antidote to how I'm feeling to this like kind of lost feeling so just doing something and really accepting this idea of like done is better than good so if I do something and I finish it that's great and the quality not that it doesn't matter but it's not the main focus because otherwise it's too easy to get caught up in like well I did it but it wasn't that great or I did it and it wasn't perfect and that kind of idea so going back to what I said like what about how to deal with like feeling lost and these kind of emotions is really sitting in and sinking into the feeling and really surrendering to what it is that you're feeling and surrendering to what you need now I said not to be focused on taking action and then when I answered the question for myself taking action was actually the most aligned thing for me just because I've been sitting too long in this space and you may find that too but it's not necessarily about taking action and I think from there the next thing would be to really just have faith which sounds so trite and it may not if you're like really religious or spiritually minded that might fit really well but it's really easy from a space of privilege and like there's no denying that I have that obviously like white cisgender there's a lot of things that I have going for me from that point of view unfortunately and fortunately I suppose but yeah just to really have faith that you're going to be okay that this moment will not last forever because it won't no moment does neither good nor bad so just kind of having faith that it'll all work out and then I think that an asterisk to all of this the kind of being okay accepting surrendering and having faith I think an asterisk to this would be at the same time finding a way to focus on feeling good and that doesn't need to be at all at all related to figuring out like what to do in life or finding your purpose or moving out of this space of feeling lost but about finding joy in your day to day life and like whatever that looks like for you so joy for me would be like going out for coffee with friends I love it I love it please don't ask me to go for a drink I just don't it's not my vibe but if you ask me for coffee at any time of the day the answer will automatically be yes so I love going out for coffee and I love traveling even like if it's just like a weekend away or someplace close by new experiences I love eating out like little things like that and just like maybe putting myself in a situation to like meet new people when the energy feels good to do that but really finding ways to like oh cuddling with Mila how could I forget about my little Mili my dog so yeah she's like a huge source of joy for me so just finding ways to incorporate some more joy into your life and finding a way to feel good while feeling bad and I know that that sounds counterintuitive but we are dualistic human like we are dualistic beings and we actually do very much have the capacity and the power should we choose to embrace it to hold both realities we can actually feel bad and good at the same time or we can certainly oscillate between the two of them right and obviously we want to tend towards feeling good but in those moments it's like about finding creating pockets of joy in whatever it is that you're going through and just finding ways to kind of I think find levity in life so like maybe finding ways to laugh finding ways to move your body finding ways to have fun and kind of release the energy and then that will all ultimately serve you in moving out of the space of being lost and feeling stuck whatever else is going on for you so I'm gonna cap that here I really hope that this was useful for you I'm gonna be like really I guess like kind of egotistical and be like yeah for me this was super helpful saying this out loud and this was just me having a conversation with you I didn't write anything I didn't prepare today because it felt so like I could just feel it that this needed to be shared and that this needed to be shared ahead of the holiday season ahead of yeah moving into that time of year but I really hope that this was useful and that it's created some space or gave you some direction if that's what you needed whatever you needed I hope that it provided that for you and if you have any questions for me please feel free to reach out I'm always happy to answer them and I love connecting with you guys so even if even if what you have to say is like maybe you didn't really enjoy it I still want to hear why that is because you know criticism can be constructive and it can help us improve so I'd love to hear what you think and yeah I just hope that this finds you well and that you have the most beautiful holiday season with your loved ones and that you are infinitely blessed and just yeah I wish you nothing but happiness so have the best time and thanks for listening

Reviews

Thanks for sharing, many points you raised resonated with me. When your in the mindset you can’t see the wood for the trees ..!! I’m going to sit with it, it will be the first time ever, and a learning curb. You hear of older people who finally grasp the concept at that age, they instinctively know what they need to do..!! It took a lifetime ..!! But they got there 🎉 I’m going to stop giving myself a hard time and become kinder to myself. Thanks 🙏