MsWriteNow

In a recent email correspondence, a friend and I were swapping stories about the changes that we were both facing. He made reference to the feeling of being lost. When faced with a change, especially one that we didn’t necessarily put into motion ourselves, it is very common to feel lost.  It is also common to get a bit freaked out about feeling that way.

In his email, he said something that stopped me in my tracks. He made me question the very process of change. Let me share it with you.

“Maybe we can give ourselves permission to be lost. It could be we created some enormously positive visualizations years ago that are going to suddenly show up in spite of how we see our lives right now.  Then there is the cumulative effect of all the thoughts visualizations and actions of our life as a whole. It all comes out in the wash, save for a few stubborn stains.”

Give ourselves permission to be lost? But why would we want to be lost? Being lost feels like we aren’t in control, we’re clueless and we have no direction? Right? Well after thinking about his thought, I came to realize that it is OK to be lost. In fact, my response to him was that it is OK to be lost. Sometimes, it is only by being lost that we can be found.

When we’re lost, we are forced to choose between two actions.  1) We can frantically start doing whatever we can to get back on the right track or fill our days with people and activities in hopes that we will find ourselves again. Or, 2) We can simply continue living, aware of being lost and instead of filling our days and frantically searching, explore where we are lost.

If we allow ourselves to simply be lost, and start to explore our mindset, we’ll start taking inventory of everything we have and haven’t done. We start looking at our successes and defeats. We start feeling the emotions that were attached to our past, good or bad. Even as unpleasant as that sounds, I do believe that maybe it is good we allow ourselves to get lost in this process.

I don’t mean for us to dwell on the past. It isn’t healthy to dig up the negative and obsess over the hurt it has caused you. But it is healthy to look at the negative, how it hurt you, and then from there see how you have moved beyond. Its OK for there to be hurt leftover from your past, as long as you remember you have moved forward and keep moving forward.

In my past, when I left my husband, I allowed myself to get lost. I did the inventories, confronted feelings I never allowed to surface and eventually - the visualizations that I had previously for my life - my dreams and desires, did resurface. Without getting lost, I think would never have been where I am today. And today, I am realizing that it is time for me to once again become lost so I can once again find myself.

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