In this post: What to do when you feel lost in life or are having trouble finding a way to move forward. Learn 5 ways I help myself find more clarity in life.
Do you ever just feel… lost… sometimes?
Perhaps because of one of the following reasons…
- It could be that you never had an exact plan for your life and feel lost as to which way to go to achieve happiness and fulfilment.
- Or maybe you have had a sense of where you wanted to go but then, when you got there, it didn’t feel quite right and you didn’t know why.
- Or maybe something’s happened in your life that just brought you unstuck and you didn’t know what the next step should be.
- It could even be that you are having trouble making a decision and feel unclear about what is the best way to go.
There are lots of reasons why we can feel lost in life from time to time and it can be a scary and frustrating place to be in. It can bring up feelings of being in limbo and facing confusion as to which way to move forwards to stop feeling lost. Sometimes it means having to come to terms with not having all the answers that you want and putting yourself out into the unknown – eek!
At its’ worst, feeling lost can lead us to feel like we don’t know ourselves or our place in life. This can cause us to question everything, including what is the point of us being here. And that’s not a very nice feeling to have, at all…
Luckily, the feeling of being lost doesn’t last forever and can be overcome. And, in the process of getting ‘un-lost’, we can often find a great sense of clarity about whatever it was that was causing us angst in the first place.
In this post, I want to share with you some actions that have helped me to move on from feeling lost in life to having more clarity around myself and what direction I am going in life.
Know yourself better
For me, knowing myself better has helped me to understand what is important to me, as well as provide a guide as to how I want to act in life. This often helps me to make decisions more quickly because I have a set of values I can use to assess them against.
There are many different ways you can get to know yourself better, including taking personality assessments (I have used 16 Personalities and StrengthsFinder), identifying your core values, or simply doing some journaling and soul searching.
Knowing yourself can help to give you a better sense of who you are, what brings you joy and what direction you want to go in life, so it’s definitely worthwhile taking the time to learn your ins and outs, even if you’re afraid of what you’ll find. Your personality isn’t set in stone, so you can always enhance the traits you like about yourself over those you don’t (but remember to love yourself warts and all!).
Do a life audit and plan some life goals
If you are feeling a bit ho-hum about your life but you’re not exactly sure which part of your life is falling short, I recommend doing a life audit and using the answers to set some meaningful life goals.
A life audit is where we look at different aspects of our lives one at a time and assess how content we are with each aspect. It makes sense because when we feel off in one part of our lives, it can usually spill over and affect everything else too, sometimes without us even realising (hence the lost feeling).
You can use whatever labels you want to in your audit, but common areas to consider include:
- Physical health/body
- Mental health/emotions/personal growth
- Relationships – intimate, family and friends
- Work & career
- Money & finances
- Fun & recreation
- Physical environment
- Community & giving
- Spiritual/creativity
You can simply write out your assessment, giving each area a score from 1-10 to represent your levels of satisfaction with these aspects of your life or, if you’re more of a visual person, you can use a ‘Wheel Of Life’ chart to track your results (see below for an example).
Once you’ve work through each aspect of your life and identified the area that you are most dissatisfied with, you can then brainstorm ways to increase your levels of contentment surrounding this aspect of your life and then set these as goals and action items to work towards.
I love brainstorming ideas, so I’ve come up with 3 action items for each area that could help to improve how you feel about that part of your life. You can find them all in this free Life Audit Workbook, along with a blank Wheel of Life Chart for you to use, enter your details below to get started.
Do some soul-searching
Sometimes, a good ol’ soul-searching session might be just what you need to find more clarity and direction in your life. Give yourself some space to really check in with yourself and see if you can find the root cause of why you are feeling lost.
You might want to use some journal prompts or questions to help you dig away at what is going on, such as:
- When did I start feeling lost?
- Am I feeling lost about something in particular or is it just a general uneasiness that something isn’t quite right?
- Has something happened that I need to take time to process?
- Am I getting overwhelmed by too many choices? Is there a choice that my intuition is trying to lead me to? Which choice excites me the most?
- Am I being authentic to myself?
- What can I do to make myself proud?
- How can I enrich my life?
- Is there something I can learn from this experience?
- What is something new that I would like to try?
- How can I include more fun and happiness into my life?
- What activities make me feel grounded?
- Where can I seek out help?
For more questions, check out this post with 48 questions to help you get clear on life!
Craft your dream bio
This is an exercise I did as part of the free Uber Frugal Month Challenge hosted by Mrs Frugalwoods ( I definitely recommend this challenge if you are looking for more financial freedom in your life).
It involves writing down your current bio with details such as where you live, what you do, your health, your financial situation, your family status, how you spend your time and any other factors going on right now.
Then you write down your dream bio. Where do you want to be in 5-10 years with everything you outlined in the last point? Do you want to have achieved anything in particular? Write this down as if you were living it already. (Psst: Make sure to write this down from your own perspective NOT what you think others would want you to achieve or achievements just for the sake of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.)
This is your vision of where you want to go. Use this vision to work out what needs to change from your current bio to reach your dream bio (and what to keep the same).
There may be some areas in which you would like to make big changes and that’s okay: it doesn’t all have to happen in one go. Identify some small steps that you can start to take to get you closer to that dream vision. If you’re not sure how to get from point A to point B, do some research or ask someone who is where you want to be for their advice.
Talk it out
I’m the first to admit that I struggle to talk about things openly with others BUT when I have stretched myself and let my friends and family in on what I am feeling, I have more often than not been surprised by the amount of support and understanding I receive.
They can often provide insight and ideas that I had not considered myself and it feels good to get things off my chest and stop stressing about things in silence. You might just find that you are not the only one struggling with inner turmoil as well.
If you don’t have any family and friends that you can muster up the courage to talk to, then think about reaching out to a counsellor, life coach or even by putting a post online. Connecting with others when we feel lost in life can produce powerful results.
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So there are 5 things to try when you are feeling lost in life. To recap they are:
- Know yourself better
- Do a life audit and plan some life goals
- Do some soul-searching
- Craft your dream bio
- Talk it out
Don’t feel like you have to do them all at once – just choose one to start with and move onto the others if that one doesn’t help. Like anything, it can be a processes of trying things to see what works for you. It’s all part of learning and getting more clarity around ourselves and what we want to do with our lives.
Remember that you don’t have to have it all figured out to live a happy, meaningful life (I think very few people do have it all figured out all the time to be honest!). It might even help to just be okay with where you are at and know that nothing lasts forever and the feeling of being lost will eventually pass one way or another.
Don’t forget to get your Life Audit Workbook freebie by entering your details below.
All the best,
Sarah xo
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