Simple Steps to Find Yourself When You Feel Lost

Inside: Simple steps to find yourself when you feel lost.

Just like that, you find yourself wondering who you are and what you’re doing with your life. You feel guilty because on the surface it appears you have everything you could want or need. But something isn’t right and you just feel…. empty.

Emptiness and feelings of being lost in life can be caused by a few things: depression, burnout, overwhelm and low self-esteem to name a few that affect your mental health. The first step to finding yourself again is to recognise those feelings and take action.

This post will walk you through the ways you can find a purpose again, to give you direction and meaning to your life.

Why you are feeling lost

It is important to take time to recognise and reflect on your feelings. Are you otherwise happy in your life or does nothing bring you joy anymore? It is important to seek professional help if you feel that you may be suffering with depression. It isn’t something people find easy to admit, but there is no shame in it – it’s just your brain being unable to balance your hormones and it is treatable.

If you don’t feel that depression is the cause, but that you are still struggling in certain aspects of your life, then you need to spend time really asking yourself why.

We often spend so much time taking care of others that we then go a long time without looking after our own needs. But once you pinpoint the cause – however difficult it may be to admit it – it will be easier to find a solution.

You’ve been lost for longer than you think

The path to finding yourself is not as simple as buying some new clothes or getting a new job. And the reason is that it all runs deeper than we realise. The sad truth is, many of us (most of us) start to lose our sense of self when we are children. Isn’t that awful?

We are born as bundles of joy, completely happy with who we are (milk guzzling poopers) and will cry and sleep and do what we want, when we want. But then as we get older, our parents instil certain behaviours, we meet friends that influence us, go to schools that expect us to fit their mould and through social media we get shown what the norm is. And we conform, of course we do.

We get up each day, get the kids ready for school, drop them off, look after the house, the dog, work a job, pick up the kids, take them to clubs, cook dinner, put the kids to bed and collapse. Over and over because that’s what everyone else does too. (Your version might be different but you get the point).

But somewhere deep down, our true self – who we were at birth and who we wanted to be – is getting tired of trying to conform. And one day, when you are wandering along wondering how you got to this point, your true self lets you know that you’re lost and enough is enough.

How to find yourself again

You’ve acknowledged the fact you are lost in life. You can feel the emptiness inside. That’s the first step. Now it’s time to take the remaining steps to feeling more ‘you’ again.

Look back at your life

Our past is what brought us to this point in our lives and holds the key to it all. So take an honest look at all that you’ve been through and how it may play a part in how you feel today.

• Pick out the positive moments – the things you enjoyed, the moments that made you happy. Save this list for later.

• Pick out the negative experiences – the times that were hard, painful life events that brought you down.

Were you bullied? Has this caused you to live a life filled with self doubt? Has it made you put up with less because you don’t feel worthy for anything better?

Did you lose a loved family member? Has this affected your other relationships?

Whatever the life event, it will have affected you in some way and set you on a path you wouldn’t have travelled down otherwise. And knowing those events can help you to understand your behaviours and thought processes over the years.

Establish your values

What is important to you? Honesty? Authenticity? Family? Calm?

Make a list of the values you want to live by and now use that list to go through each aspect of your life. It is a great way to gain some clarity around what you want from life.

If you want more authenticity…. reduce your social media consumption. It’s all fake.

If family is important to you.… incorporate more family activities into your life.

If you want more calm…. declutter your life and remove everything (within reason) that creates stress.

If you can work out your own values and work towards a life that aligns with those values, you are one step closer to becoming your authentic self.

What makes you happy?

You’ve reflected on your past and know the values that you want to live by, now it is time to think about the things that bring you joy. They are either things that you have in your life already or things that you would like to have in your life.

It is quite easy to think of the things that you already have in your life, but thinking of anything else can be quite hard. So think about what you used to do that brought you joy, that perhaps you let go over time. Or perhaps you often see other people doing something that you’d like to do too.

Are there old friends you no longer see but you’d like to reconnect with? Do you wish you could spend more time with a good book, relaxing on the sofa? Forget about the expectations of others, just focus on your own opinion around what you’d like to include.

It might be time to try new things – be inspired by friends or by something you read about. Trying different things could mean you discover a new hobby that will bring endless joy. You may even discover a talent or passion that could lead to a change in career.

If you can’t make time for different activities, you can still add more joy to your life by doing little things like buying yourself fresh flowers each week. You can also make sure you get regular alone time – even if it is just 5 minutes to sit and do some quiet meditation.

What brings you down?

This is a difficult step because it is often hard to admit that some things leave us with negative thoughts. Difficult family members or friends, your job – all things that aren’t easy to just remove. It is important to write everything down though, you don’t have to show anyone – it is your list to help you assess where you are so that you can get closer to your end goal.

Think about the opinion you have about yourself – your inner voice, think about your day to day, think about your relationships, think about your commitments. Every aspect of your life needs to be considered so you can find all of the negatives, however big or small.

The next step is to carefully look at that list and asking yourself what changes you can make that will align with your list of values?

Perhaps your job brings you down. One of your values might be family but your job means you barely spend any time with your loved ones. It is not easy to get a different job but it is not impossible. Start looking in the job listings and you never know what might turn up.

Perhaps you feel overwhelmed with motherhood. One of your values might be simplicity but you spend all of your days rushing around. What can you cut out? Can you cut out some of the kids’ clubs? Can you share the household chores more evenly? Running a household is hard work and you should not carry the load on your own.

Perhaps there is someone that constantly brings negativity into your life. One of your values is joy but you find it so hard to stay positive when they are around. If that person is a family member then it is hard to simply cut them out. So instead, reduce the amount of time you give to that person and limit your interactions so that you aren’t weighed down by their negative vibes.

Perhaps you feel as though you aren’t good enough. Your values might be authenticity and balance but you’re on Instagram on a daily basis scrolling through comparing your life to others. Reduce the time spent looking at things that make you feel bad about what you have and focus your energy on surrounding yourself with what matters – family and friends who share the same values as you. You’ll soon realise that your own life is more than good enough and silence your inner critic.

If you can let go of the things that bring you down or at least reduce the amount of time spent doing them, you will soon see a positive change in your thoughts.

Moving in the right direction

Once you have worked through the steps and done the exercises, you’ll have a new perspective on what is important to you and the changes that need to be made. If you’ve spent your entire life with certain belief systems it won’t be an easy process, but it is an unselfish process and one that needs doing so that you can have a better life – a life where you are the best version of yourself.

You only have one life, don’t let past experiences hold you down. It is time to realise your worth, time to love yourself, and time to allow yourself to be happy.

A case study

Sarah had everything she wanted, a loving husband and wonderful children that brought her so much joy each day. And yet something was missing. She felt as though she was going through the motions every day, taking the kids to school, tidying the house, working part time, making dinner.

She was living on autopilot and she found herself feeling more and more empty as time went on. She wasn’t miserable, she wasn’t depressed, she just felt as though all she did was look after everyone else and that she’d lost her sense of purpose – her sense of self.

She worked through the steps above and found the following…

As a child she had grown up in a negative household. Worth was attributed to looks and money. And so now, without realising it, her own financial situation was making her feel like a failure. They weren’t poor by any means but they didn’t have a lavish home as everyone else seemed to have. She couldn’t afford to buy clothes every other day. So she felt as though she wasn’t good enough.

As a teen she was bullied and this dented her confidence badly, to the point that she’d always felt as though she was unlikeable. This affected friendships and confidence levels in most areas of her life. She didn’t feel attractive at the best of times, but having spent so long looking after everyone else she’d forgotten to take care of herself and now her self worth was at rock bottom.

Acknowledging these two points helped her to sit back and really assess how true these thoughts were. She didn’t need or want a lavish home or new clothes – they had enough money for what they needs and so were not failures at all. Her husband loved her and she had plenty of friends who cared about her – so she was likeable. Changing her mindset around her looks was difficult but she knew she needed to start prioritising herself more.

Looking at her values, she decided on the following 5: Family, Love, Balance, Simplicity and Gratitude.

From that point, she looked at everything through the lens of those values. Money and possessions were not important – not compared to family. She decided that she wanted to live with simplicity in mind, to step back from the parts of her life that made her feel as though she needed more and more. And to live with gratitude for everything she had in her life.

Thinking about the things that brought her joy, or that she wanted to bring into her life to bring more joy, she decided to listen to more music, to include more creativity in her life (she’d always loved art as a child), to spend more time in nature as a family – going for long walks together.

She also decided to cut down on the number of commitments that took her away from her value of Balance. She stopped some of the kids clubs, stopped saying yes to things that she didn’t actually want to do and she also stopped watching TV mindlessly – wasting valuable time.

As time went on, with a focus on simple living and less time spent trying to keep up with the joneses, she felt more content in her life. She had more mental capacity to enjoy new hobbies as she had let go of the constraints of the life that weighed her down.

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The only person who can make changes to the way you live your life is you. Don’t waste another second.