Checking The Map: For When You Feel Lost In Life

Life is a complicated thing filled with blockades, diversions, and dead ends. I'd like to show you how to navigate these obstacles while ensuring that the road you're on leads to a destination that you actually want to arrive at.

Checking The Map

When you are in a car, how long do you spend driving and how long do you spend sitting at your destination? Apply this to how long you spend working and how long you spend celebrating a success.

Look at your desires, what you feel that you need and want, and scrutinize it. Did the desire come from something externally? Maybe you saw someone's nice car and now you want a new car. Or maybe you saw how happy people are when they go on holiday and now you want to save up for one. These desires are formed from external factors sometimes built on negative emotions such as envy, fear and even anger. You should not allow these negative emotions to dictate your actions. I understand that this is a strong statement to make but stay with me here...

When I was veering off track, I became easily distracted, I sometimes lacked motivation to start or continue with my work, and I felt unwilling to sacrifice things for my work. However, I continued to work despite the signs that the work wasn't for me. I continued, blinded by the vanity of external validation, money, and fame. I was too fearful to admit that this wasn't what I truly should be doing. I was too fearful to sacrifice what I currently have for what I truly wanted to achieve. I did this for six months.

On reflection, I've leant that to find your dreams, you shouldn't look outwards for your them to come to you. Instead, you should try to look inwards and to observe the passion and happiness that bursts out of you. Is it the brotherhood that you feel during sports? Is it the love that you feel when you care for less-abled people? Is it the focus that you feel when you are researching a topic? Look back and observe your behaviour... You will find what work you enjoy doing. If you look deeper, you will realise that there is a reason for the fulfilment that you feel. The work accomplishes something that you care about. It builds teams, it helps people live the best life they can despite illness, it brings richer knowledge to a subject area.

(Re)Defining Your Destination

Work is difficult, no matter what you are working for. So why not work for your dreams rather than working on somebody else's?

We all make mistakes. They can be as small as putting too much milk in your morning coffee to as large as wasting years of your life pursuing something that you never truly wanted in the first place. However, that isn't the mistake. The mistake is when you know, deep down, that what you're doing isn't for you but you continue to do it nonetheless. There's no harm in trying something and realising that you don't like it. But ignoring the signs and continuing to do it despite that fact... That's just pain.

When I finally built up the courage to admit to myself that the targets I had been aiming for for the past six months weren't the things that I wanted to achieve, I sought peace. I needed a place to rest not my body but instead my mind; a place to get away from the chaos of life to think. After careful consideration, I cut off projects with big potential and I said to my boss that I would be working intermittently for the next two weeks while I spent some time at home. This time was spent with my family to reflect. It acted as a sanctuary, away from the city I

worked. As I always have, I had deep discussions with my mum, sometimes lasting hours, sometimes while walking through the woods, sometimes even on the landing at the top of the stairs.

I am lucky that my work is remote so I can move out of my city. But you don't need to move out of the city, just out of your work space and mindset. For you, this can be anywhere as long as it is away from work. Find somewhere that feel at rest, away from the hustle and bustle of "life". Find somewhere where you are able to, not relax, but rest your mind and reflect on your life. Like me, you may want to discuss your thoughts with someone that you trust. This will allow your mind to wonder and ponder, free from distraction.

Recalculating Route...

Don't let failure or getting lost discourage you from success. These are simply parts of the journey of exploring life. Turn back and try again.

After that reflection, you may feel two ways. You may feel stronger as you have reinforced why you are on the path that you are pursing. Or you may feel lost or that you aren't working towards anything significant. If you do feel lost, I'd like to guide you back on track.

Looking back at the start of the guide, when you found what you were truly passionate about, you should begin to make a plan on how you are going to get there. If you want to win a weight lifting competition, what are you going to do to train for it? If you want to become a professor, what are you going to need to achieve beforehand? If you want to go to another destination in life, what roads will you need to use?

The main point of this is that you should pursue your dreams even if they don't define a strong, specific end goal. Simply the act of pursuing your goals will make them more specific and will make more goals as you go. What you want to avoid is over-analysing; something which plagued me for years. Acknowledge your vision and make steps towards it. Each week, look back and reflect on how you feel and if you should continue with what you are doing, change something, or stop altogether and try something else.

Final Thoughts

If you enjoy the journey of life, it will become enjoyable. It is the journey, the dayto-day work, where you spend most of your time to get to your destination, your goal.

There is a lot of resistance in changing direction, especially if you are going fast in one direction or you are heavy, set in one direction, like a truck travelling at 100mph trying to turn. This can be for many reasons. You are dropping things that you are good at to start thing that you are bad at. You are entering the unknown. You are sacrificing the potential you had for the potential that you want but need to build. Yes, there is risk. But this risk is for something more than just enough money to have a roof over your head and food on the table. It is there to fill your heart with passion and to spread it to the people that surround you.