Initial Things You May Do If You Start Feeling Lost

INITIAL THINGS YOU MAY DO IF YOU START FEELING LOST

Have you ever experienced freezing in the middle of a task staring into space with nothing in your mind? Your fingers stopped typing, the food in your mouth hung in the side midway from being chewed, or like a lag internet connection, your mind paused processing any information or action. Basically, and suddenly, you just stopped.

Then after some time, a disturbing question comes popping out of nowhere: Why am I doing this?

Unlike before, when you have a clear mindset of the reasons behind your every goal, you find yourself in a state of loss. I often experience it in these two forms: 1) Messy thoughts and emotions all over the place, or 2) nothingness. Both are awful.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional. I am just a student trying to figure out my life’s purpose, hoping to help (even in the littlest ways possible) other people who are caught in between the indescribable works of life.

Based on my past blogs, I think we can all agree on how much I am worried about my future. The stress level of wondering about the coming years of my life skyrocketed when lockdown happened. The new normal that we are currently experiencing, and though we may be slowly progressing than the past years, makes me think of the could have been of my present self if I was not limited within the space of my home. It’s more of, losing experiences, learnings, and moments that could have helped me develop as a person. The pandemic stole me the memories of a different version of myself which may have a brighter future than the person I am right now. That’s what I feel.

Slowly, these thoughts are taking over. The subconscious mind is continuously fed with doubts and unnecessary self-pity that I am getting tired of doing any activity, school works, for example, thinking that I am only obligated to act on it and it is no longer benefitting me. I am losing the motivation to continue, to dream, and to live in the present because I am transfixed on a blurry, if not blank, future.

Others might feel the same. You might be feeling this way as well.

After weeks which feels like a month, or months into years, or a year which felt like an eternity, it is more tiring to be lost than finding out you don’t want to deal with your present life anymore. I’ll make sense of this statement as we go through the list that I will talk about in this blog – the initial steps we may take when we start feeling lost.

Just to be clear, this list does not guarantee an instant solution nor an answer to the question of purpose that we often ask ourselves. These, however typical it seems, actually help in easing the burden of not knowing. I came up with this after breathing and processing what I am going through. I figured that I might have felt better earlier if someone assured me that if I listened to myself, I could get better. I thought that maybe, you, who is reading this needs a signal.

Here it goes.

Acknowledge what you feel.

There is a famous saying, “how could we know how others feel if we can’t even identify ours?” I feel like I just made that up but I hope you get the point. Sure, it is easier to pinpoint the cause of other people’s problems than to admit our emotions toward the current situation we are in. But it is much better if we allow ourselves to know and embrace these feelings. We can’t run away from it nor choose to pick the same trick over and over again – suppress.

Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see?

Lay down in your bed. Look above you. What is running in your mind?

Whatever the answer may be, breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat until your breathing is stable. Throw the thoughts away and focus on calming down yourself. Then slowly, as the tension subsides, feel.

How do you feel right now?

You’re good now, aren’t you? You can now move your body. You are aware of your surroundings. Somehow, even for a little bit, your thoughts loosen up. Then as you look back to your workplace, it hits you again, there is pending work to do. All breathing techniques are set aside because time is ticking, no room for any rest or unnecessary pause; the deadline is approaching.

When should your self wait before you address what is going on?

There is no better time than now. Your blood starts to boil for there are repercussions if you don’t move and finish at least one activity, as there are more to drop soon, should you think that pausing for personal emotion evaluation will be helpful. To find a decent job enough to let you eat thrice a day and pay bills is the best you could do, and you ache because you deserve happiness too, not just to get by. Yet you find yourself still confused if it is the quarantine, peer pressure, or unattainable ideals that led you to choose a career path you don’t feel belong of.

Good. You are angry, sad, and frustrated all at once. Feel it. Embrace it. Acknowledge that you are mad at yourself for not being able to focus, for overthinking, and for throwing a self-pity party. You hate the misogynistic society that we live in and if given a chance, would barf at the deep and ill-rooted makers of the system digging the graves of the marginalized long before their next-generation set foot to see the world. It breaks your heart that a lot is happening to you, around you, and you can’t do anything about it. Cry.

Allow yourself to feel. Admit that you are overflowing with various emotions at once, or maybe, you don’t feel anything at all. Acknowledge that you are numb, exhausted, or losing hope. However negative you think your emotions are, do not forbid yourself to express them.

Now that you have assessed and evaluated your current state, take another round of breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat it until you find your heart and breathing stable.

You may not solve everything right at this moment, which is okay and normal, but at least you have checked yourself. Somehow, you strengthened your connection with the mind, enabling a better grasp in analyzing the causes of this stress, your reaction towards it, and soon find a healthy way to release it.

Listen to your body.

I think this is an important thing that we should always care about. As much as I would love to directly say that you should abandon your responsibilities because your body aches for sweet and sounding sleep, I do not want to create any misinterpretation. There is a thin line between giving your body the care it needs and this becoming an excuse to be lazy. Keep that in mind.

We are not machines. While it is admirable that we push through our tasks, however draining they may be, it will not hurt to take a break. A few minutes, perhaps an hour, to drink water and rest our eyes recharges our mind. Whatever our working style may be, either an individual who keeps tab and schedules of her tasks finishing it days or weeks before its deadline or an individual who mentally stresses themselves yet only moves the day before the submission date or someone in between, it is important to care for our body.

Say, spending the whole 7-5 class period or job in front of the computer made our backache, then find a time in between or after that we can lie down. If in the middle of answering the modules we felt that our brain is stuck on reading the same question but fails to comprehend, take a break.

Most importantly, however, we rely on, promised, or forced ourselves to stick with these schedules that we had, if our body is not in its best condition to fulfill it, don’t push through.

Sufficient rest, hydration, and/or just at least half of our body’s energy percentage, results in a much clearer mind than a boggled and clogged one we had earlier.

Stop being a pushover of yourself.

Although addressing the first two is essential, it may come to a point that it will be used as an excuse to not do anything. When we feel lost, we are often tired, and takes the luxury of time to rest. That’s okay, normal, and what I have exactly proposed earlier. This is crucial because we can or cannot, depending on how much we know ourselves, determine whether we are overstaying our break or not. To answer that, ask: are we tired of finding that our reality is not what we thought it was supposed to be, or are we tired of staying lost?

If you chose to answer the latter, then it calls for another yet battle within yourself. We have already acknowledged our feelings and listened to our bodies; it is time to get a hold of our reality. It is time for us to get back and face the dilemma. For reasons we only know, there is a time in our lives that people took advantage of us. Unbeknownst to us, we do that to ourselves too. The way out of the suffocating bubble is to stop being your pushover. Maybe, even if you chose the former version of tired, this might work for you too.

We can only break the bubble of being in an unclear position if we stopped ourselves to stay in it. Our mind may tell us thousand appealing reasons for us to just breathe and exist but after assessing ourselves, we know better deep inside we could put an end to this. We know that though we think there’s no way out, there’s still a faint of light that someday, somehow, things will just fall into place. Use that to build courage.

Stop labeling yourself a disappointment whenever you don’t feel like doing anything. Stop forcing yourself to be productive when all you want is to rest. Stop suppressing your emotions. We have to stop feeding ourselves of hopelessness, doubt, and guilt of not knowing or being unsure of everything in our lives. If you have finished these initial steps, with the knowledge that you are more self-aware, the answer to your purpose will surely come then.

Allow yourself to recover.

I hope that this has been an interesting read for you as much as I enjoyed writing it. Again, this list does not guarantee a solution to our dilemmas but rather an opening for acceptance that life is indeed uncertain. May this blog help you, however little it may be, to regain your strength in these trying situations.

Have a wonderful day! Flourish!