What to Do When You Feel Lost in Life

Why You Feel Lost in Life
5 Steps to Get Your Life Back on Track
The Bottom Line

Are you feeling like your life doesn’t contribute to anything or anyone? Do you feel lost and uncertain about your future?

You aren’t alone. Millions of people go through the same struggles, and they don’t know what to do when they feel lost in life.

However, if you do the right things, adopt the right beliefs, and work to gain direction, you’ll regain your happiness, and find direction to move towards.

In this article, I’ll help you figure out what to do next, offer you 5 steps to overcome uncertainty, and explain how exactly you can implement them. Let’s begin.

Why You Feel Lost in Life

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No matter where you currently are, you can still have a feeling that you are lost in life, a feeling that all the actions you do are utterly meaningless.

It is a complex emotion that is caused primarily by a lack of purpose in life. Most probably, you see your life as a cycle of events that happen over and over again and have no meaning.

This situation is the result of a process that took years to unfold, and is mostly the result not of external circumstances, but your own actions that repeated consistently over time.

Instead of proactively shaping your life the way you wanted it to look like, you prioritized instant pleasure and gratification that have no end goal or ultimate benefit for you.

I know, it sounds harsh, but this is the most likely reason for your current condition. The key to solving any problem is inspecting it, identifying the roots, and working to eliminate them.

Thankfully, we’ve already done the first part. The main reason you feel lost is because most of your current actions have no purpose and do not improve your or other people’s lives.

Remember, though, that life’s steering wheel is always in your hands: no matter where you are, you can drive out of that, and get to where you want to be.

5 Steps to Get Your Life Back on Track

Fulfillment and happiness can only be obtained through consistent actions and habits that benefit both you and people around you. When you feel lost in life, the first thing you should dedicate more attention to is your health, both physical and mental.

1: Prioritize Mental and Physical Health

I think it’s obvious why you should take care of your physical health. The better your body feels, and the less negative influences it experiences, the better you feel throughout the day, and the less likely you are to start getting negative thoughts.

However, another type of health that’s often overlooked is mental health. Mental and physical health are directly correlated and influence one another. The more destructive thoughts you have, the more likely you are to get physically ill.

We need to start with the basics and with small, seemingly insignificant actions, so that you can easily build habits that will improve and support your wellbeing. For the next 30 days, try your best to:

Drink 10 glasses of water
Do at least 10 minutes of any exercise
Go outside without a phone for 15 minutes a day
Write 5 things you are grateful for
Learn how to meditate and breathe deeply for 3 minutes

These actions are simple, and don’t require much effort. But if you manage them every day and trust their effectiveness, your health will significantly improve over time.

When you feel comfortable with the intensity of these activities, gradually increase it: lift weights (or do any other exercise) for 5 more minutes, go outside for longer periods of time, and dedicate a few more minutes to meditation.

These habits will eliminate your stress, help you gain mental clarity, lighten up your mood, and increase energy levels, so that you can move to step 2: finding meaningful activities.

2: Find New Meaningful Hobbies

Aside from work, an average person’s day consists of watching TV, scrolling on TikTok, watching people’s stories on Snapchat, eating processed foods with tons of chemicals, masturbating to messed up porn, and sometimes even smoking weed or other stuff.

With such a list of habits, is it any wonder that most people are so depressed and directionless? The more you indulge in them, the worse your health and intrusive thoughts get, and the more you feel lost in life. So how do you deal with it?

The best way to deal with bad habits and addictions is replacing them with better hobbies. Instead of binge-watching TV series for 4 hours straight after work, watch one episode, and after that, grab a book you’ve always wanted to read.

Instead of scrolling on your phone, try creating content yourself, or learn HTML and Python to boost your income in the future.

Remember: the hobbies you cultivate should be both beneficial and fun to do. Try different activities, see what works for you, and keep doing them every day for as long as possible.

For instance, meditating, reading 30 pages a day, and making 10000 steps daily will greatly improve your mental health, eliminating negative thoughts and helping you feel alive again. Starting these activities is simple and beneficial at the same time.

After getting yourself some fun, yet rewarding things to do, you should focus on finding enjoyable and purposeful work to do.

3: Find Valuable Work to Do

Everybody tells you that you should pursue goals, that you should constantly work and give it your all to achieve them. But not all goals are created equal.

If you constantly hustle on a job you hate in an attempt to buy some stuff you don’t need, to impress some people you don’t even like, is it any wonder you feel lost in life?

Undoubtedly, though, having a purpose and direction to move towards is often necessary to live a good life. But, before even starting to work, you need to clarify what exactly you want to work on, and how you plan to do it.

Start with answering some questions about yourself and your dreams:

What do I want to accomplish?
What impact would I like to leave on this world?
How would I like to improve people’s lives?
What work could I do for hours straight with passion for several years?
What value do I ideally want to create?

Why You Should Work on Something More Than Your Job

You’ve likely noticed that I emphasize helping other people and generating value for them. And this is for a good reason: one of the main factors influencing happiness is the impact we make on other people.

If the work you do directly improves people’s wellbeing and helps them solve their problems, you become happy yourself.

Figure out what kind of meaningful work you’d like to do, and do it for at least an hour a day. Start a blog or a YouTube channel, freelance on Fiverr, or learn a craft that interests you. There are many opportunities: you’ve just gotta use them.

Yes, it requires additional effort, and yes, it isn’t always easy. But in the end, it is worth it: your life gets a whole new meaning, and you get extra thousands of dollars you can spend on your needs and wishes.

While you work on yourself and your habits, it’s important that you reflect on your progress and life in general.

4: Reflect on Your Life and Progress

Surprisingly few people do introspection these days. They live in a state of constant distraction, afraid to face their thoughts and inner demons.

If you want to make progress in life and stop feeling lost, you need to face your flaws, accept them, and continuously work on fixing them. If you have trouble controlling your sexual desires, accept it, and try your best to resist temptation.

Similarly, if you have troubles with losing weight or impulsive eating, you should reflect on why this is the case. In most cases, binge-eating is a way of self-soothing and dealing with stress, so to combat it, you can learn healthy ways to destress.

Of course, you shouldn’t focus solely on what you do wrong. As you stay on your journey of improving yourself, praise yourself for even the littlest achievements: for going to the gym when you didn’t want to, or for resisting the urge to eat some sweets.

Nothing motivates more than existing progress. Amplify your strengths, praise yourself for achievements, work on your flaws, and aim to become a better person every day. Do this via journaling or other methods, and you’ll stop feeling lost in life.

Finally, the last thing you can do to gain direction is remove mental barriers.

5: Remove Your Mental Barriers

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Now, what do I mean by ‘mental barriers’? Mental barriers are limiting beliefs about yourself or life that limit your perception of self, reality, and your potential capabilities. You aren’t consciously aware of it, but there are dozens of beliefs that hold you back.

The vast majority of us go through life stuck in one place, feeling unable to progress further due to beliefs that seem true at first, but turn out to be false after further inspection.

For example, many people suffer from anxiety, overthink everything, and believe that they can’t do anything about it. They don’t realize that anxiety isn’t a predetermined curse that stays with you forever, but a problem that can be solved with the right methods.

Similarly, some individuals constantly hate themselves, feeling like they only have themselves to blame, and bursting their anger out on others. The point is – the more you live and identify with mental barriers, the more unpredictable and intolerable your life becomes.

That is why you should work on eliminating your limiting beliefs, as practically all of them are untrue in nature. How do you actually do it though?

How to Remove Mental Barriers

First, you can start by coldly analyzing the beliefs you already have. Take a few deep breaths, and ask yourself: is this belief factually true, and is there any physical proof of it? If there is, can I live without it?

Yes, you can. Your perception is not the objective reality, but the image formed by beliefs inside your mind. Look at your situation from a different perspective, and imagine yourself acting directly opposite to that belief.

It can feel uncomfortable at first, but try it nevertheless. You’ll find that you can live better without holding this belief, and that it limits your opportunities for growth. Therefore, it is a wise decision to discard it to stop feeling lost in life.

You’re probably thinking that it is too simple. The truth is – no genuine solution to problems is complicated. Analyze the belief, visualize things from a different perspective, and discard the mental barrier that holds you back.

Try living with an exact opposite belief in mind for about a month, even if it feels fake and uncomfortable. The longer you do it, the weaker your mental barriers become, and the more control you regain over your mind.

The Bottom Line

We live in a materialistic society, where constant hustle is prevalent. People put tons of effort into things they see no value in, and feel unable to control their lives.

Thankfully, no matter where you are, you can climb out of this pit and gain direction using these 5 steps:

Prioritize your health
Find meaningful hobbies
Find valuable work to do
Reflect on your life and progress
Remove mental barriers

This journey will not be easy, but it’s what makes it worth going through: the hardships strengthen your character, help you discover yourself, and make you virtuous.

Aim to improve yourself, your situation, and say no to your previous lifestyle. Commit to a cause you care about, work on it every day, help people along the way, and invest into your growth. That’s what you do when you feel lost in life.

Remember: you don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Work, grow, improve, and enjoy your life.

If you liked this article and found it useful, make sure to share it on social media and leave a comment below. Good luck, and see you soon, brother.