The Chapter About Feeling Lost

One day, my anxious thoughts decided to take me on a journey.

There have been several pivotal moments in my life that have transformed the next several years for me. Every time we experience a pivotal moment, everything around us starts to change. Our friends change, our communication changes, our goals change, our values change, we start to shift. Some people don't have as many pivotal moments in their lives that pushed them beyond their capacity, and they maybe can't relate to this feeling of "this no longer serves me," but if you're resonating with this, then you know.

For me, these pivotal moments are part of my growth and learning process. It gives me the chance to look at myself before it happened and see how my behavior, thoughts, actions, all responded. Then it gives me the chance to look at what changes need to be made in order to help myself process, heal, and be stronger next time.

This question would often cross my mind, "Who was I before this, and who am I now."

This helped me identifying what parts of me needed to be left behind. What parts of me no longer served me. What behavior, thoughts, feelings, responses no longer served me. Here's a process that has become part of my yearly self-reflection review.

• Am I doing activities that serve my physical health?

• Am I eating in a way that nourishes my body and mind and am I giving myself enough grace?

• Am I reading, watching, listening, things that I enjoy?

• Are my hobbies still serving me in a healthy and positive way?

• Are all of my relationships supportive of my life?

-------------

• Did I try a new activity this year for my physical health to see if my taste in exercise has changed?

• Did I try a new food or meal to see if my taste has changed?

• Did I read, watch, listen something new to see if my passion for these topics changed?

• Did I try a new hobby to see if it could add to my overall well-being?

• Did I meet anyone new, strengthen or weaken a current relationship, or lose a relationship this year and what did that teach me?

These questions trigger me to think about myself and if my life is moving in the right direction of the future that is ahead of me.

What does feeling lost "feel" like? It depends on who you are and how you process life events. For me, feeling lost usually starts with feeling stuck. Either stuck in a routine, feeling burned out, stuck in a pattern of behavior that isn't serving me, or experiencing the same outcomes over and over again. Feeling stuck used to be a frequent emotion for me because my life was structured in a survival mode. When we are in survival mode, it's hard to make even small changes because everything feels like it's being held together by the worlds thinnest thread.

However, after years of being in "survival mode", it was clear to me that a change needed to be made. Starting with friends, work, and living arrangement, and ending with my diet, exercise, habits, and hobbies. If an opportunity presented itself to me for a shift or a change, there was no hesitation to take it. And once these opportunities came about, it became much easier for me to start identifying them everywhere.

My moments of feeling lost are more rare now days. If they do some up, they are typically attached to a growth moment. There may be a core belief that use to serve that is no longer a daily practice and there is a brief moment of feeling confused. But by putting myself through various thinking exercises, it makes the process of feeling lost much easier and it gets me to that next core belief that starts to become part of my daily practice.

Here's an example.

It use to be a core belief for me that I am not a people pleaser and that I always do things that I want (big lie). I wasn't doing what I wanted. I was the biggest people pleaser and walked around hiding and pretending I didn't have a deep, burning desire to be accepted by everyone. It took a while, but when I finally learned this about myself, I then became the biggest self-advocate (big lie). I wasn't a self-advocate. I was acting like a narcissistic asshole who didn't care who was hurt by my actions or words.

Moral of the story is that I wasn't identifying people-pleasing or self-advocating correctly. Once I learned what it meant to behave as both, I started acting as the true self-advocate. Now, self-advocating to me means recognizing when to enter or leave a situation in order to maintain my peace, when to speak and when to stay quiet, when to go somewhere or when to say no, when to be a team-player, when to show up as a friend, and do all of this while being empathetic, compassionate, kind, and understanding. This helped me build myself up while also making sure I was not bringing harm to others. We cannot control everything, but we can control ourselves. That's why it's important to remember that the same way we can only control ourselves, others can't control us. And we all only have the capacity that we have at the moment to respond, react, comprehend, etc.

Everyone's story is different, but believe me, quitting a job when you don't have savings, moving in a pandemic, and watching your friend circle slowly decrease is hard. It's very hard. But, as we learn in Judaism, this too shall pass, and for me, on the other side was a life filled with genuine connections, fulfilling hobbies, peaceful work environments, and an abundance of friends I'd never thought I'd make.

Believing in yourself and challenging yourself when you are lost, is vital. Being lost is great because that means you can be found. We become lost after pivotal moments in our life, or just out of personal growth in general. When we grow out of something, that is also an opportunity for us to be a little lost before we find what it is to put our energy toward next.

Have you ever thought about the pivotal moments in your life that changed you? What were they and what growth did you experience through them?

------Word Count 1,071