Hello friends!

We've all been there before. Those moments in life when you feel so lost and the only question on your mind is: "What should I do?"

This unknowingness is painfully familiar.

But it's actually fairly straightforward to resolve if we back solved the conditions that got us feeling lost in the first place.

That's what this week's exploration is about.

This week's theme:

Why we feel lost: the two conditions

Put aside your life for a second and try to bring yourself to another situation when you felt lost:

• Being lost while walking through the woods
• Being lost on your first day at a new job

What's the condition that's shared across these situations?

It's this:

If you found a trail to follow or had your boss give you instruction, you would no longer feel lost.

And so when you say you're feeling lost, what you're really saying is: "I don't have a direction to follow."

So... just find a direction to follow and you'll be fine?

Right?

Wrong.

The second not-so-obvious direction

If we go back to the two scenarios from before and modified them slightly, everything changes:

• You find a trail but it's covered in bear paw prints
• You received instructions, but it was from your old boss

Would you still follow that direction? I hope not.

And so the full set of conditions for you feeling lost is actually this:

Direction + Trust.

That's what you need

The implications

So then.

If you feel lost, here are the two questions you'd need to answer for yourself:

1. Where do I get my sources of direction from in life, and could I find alternative sources?
2. Which sources of direction in my life do I no longer trust, and what would it take for me to trust the new ones?

That's it :)

If you'd like to explore this more...

I talk about how to find multiple sources of direction you can trust in this week's video. You can watch it here:

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That's it for this week's issue of Emotional Explorations! I hope it brought you clarity and I look forward to writing to you again soon.

Best,
Eric