Blog Challenge! II // 08. What do you do when you are feeling lost?

📷 !g

I am happy to say I haven't felt lost in a long while. I think that when I typed this challenge I was feeling rather lost, hence this topic. Since this is not the case anymore, I'm going to try and remember what I did do (I'll leave out one particular episode) when I was feeling lost. 

This might become a mix  what I did and what I wish I would have done, but, well, aren't most things like that? Same as me, I'm certain you too have some things that you think about and wish you would have done something differently. But don't dwell too much on them, what's done is done. Instead let's type them out and share them so we can inspire others. 

I won't go into the seriousness of it because, really, who is to say what is serious and to what degree? Same shit affects us differently. What is serious to me is a breeze to you and vice-versa. 

But enough fussing around, let's get to it. 

I do remember some instances of me feeling lost, but what I remember more is the moment I stopped feeling lost, and usually that moment occurred after a series of steps. Depending on how overwhelming the feeling was, those steps went something like this: 

 01. Find something that makes you feel good 

This could be almost anything, really, anything that's low effort. Something like listening to music, eating something you like, drinking something you like. This, however, works for a short period of time. 

 02. Try to figure out the origin of the feeling 

Usually when this happens to me there is a reason for it. It's either a plan that didn't work out, losing something that I worked hard for, not being able to find an answer to something etc etc, the origin varies. The problem with this step is that it doesn't really work. I would find the origin, but I would start overthinking it, going back and forth on what I should have done differently, about how it would affect me in the future and then I'd get to other unpleasant feelings like being disappointed in myself, to wonder if I did the right thing and so on.

 03. Talk about it 

This is the most important step and I cannot stress enough how important it is. Get a friend, a family member you can talk to freely or even go online and talk to a stranger, see if it's okay for you to talk about something in your discord chat group (ditto), make an anonymous account and write about it on reddit, go on yahoo answers and ask for opinions. There are so many ways you could get feedback on what bothers you and the thing with talking about it is this: 

a. you may come to realize things you didn't see before, when overthinking about it;

b. a different perspective helps a lot, and I mean a lot; naturally people don't see things the same and someone might just lead you on how to solve what is bothering you. 

That's about it. Honestly, I'd skip step 01 and 02 and go straight to 03. Even by writing things down I might get to see things in a new light. Or, hey, just got an idea: if you like writing, make up a character with the same issue and see how they deal with it. I don't know about you, but when I write I get to know my characters while writing, so you never know what their solution might be. It could just work.