Mindset Mastery Moment - What to Do When You Feel Lost in Life - Ep. 130

What to Do When You Feel Lost in Life - Ep. 130

06/09/15 • 15 min

I love auto racing. I used to dream of doing some cross-country rally racing back when I was in my early 20’s. I loved the complexity of it. With a rally race, it’s not like other types of auto racing where you’re on a track, you drive fast, turn left, drive fast, turn left, drive fast... and continue like this until you see someone waving that checkered flag.

If you’ve ever seen Cannonball Run, a movie from back in the 80’s, you know what a rally race is like. It’s a real race that happens every year. In Europe there are Rally races through towns and cities all the time.

In a rally race, you drive for days over long distances. You have to know where you’re ultimately going and your checkpoints along the way. I thought this was a great analogy for this episode...

Sometimes Lost is Good

Sometimes feeling lost is great. We must have down time - Sometimes our spirit our soul will force it upon us by causing us to feel “lost” or to remove our drive for a specific destination. Consider this a rest area in life. Don’t set up camp here, but but realize, you need a break from time to time. So, rest.

Sometimes we even need to just go out for a drive without a particular destination. Just go out, start driving and enjoying what’s right in front of us without being worried about where were going, if we’re on the right path to get there, whether we have enough gas, and if we’re making good time or not.

We need the mind clearing drives sometimes.

Why We Sometimes Feel Lost

Usually, at least for me, we feel “lost” because we’ve become distracted.

If you’ve ever been driving somewhere with someone and become so engaged in conversation, you completely miss your exit, you know what this is like.

When this happens, you have to first become aware of the fact that you missed your exit. Awareness of where you are at this moment. Then you have to figure out how to get back on track.

Sometimes you get so far off track, you actually have to pull over and stop while you get your barrings right, pull out a map and rechart your course.

In life, this could mean pulling over for a while... a vacation or just a day when you can get away from all the “traffic” in life... no distractions. You may even just set up an afternoon to go to beach and collect your thoughts, evaluate your destination and reassess the path you’ve chosen to take.

The last thing you should do is to try to keep driving while you pull out the map and figure out where you are and how you need to get back to where you were going. Doing this could cause a lot of issues for you and completely derail your journey.

Take the time to STOP... clear your mind.. and get back on track. STOP... that’s important.

Using a Navigator

Continuing with the “driving” analogy, you may want to consider bringing a navigator with you. Someone who will keep track of where you’re going at all times and alert you BEFORE you get off track.

A couple of ways you can do this is through a coach, accountability partner or even a mastermind group.

This is the purpose of these people in our lives. But, you have to make sure they know where you want to go and they know your plan on how to get there. We also have to make sure we give them the authority in our lives to give us direction. You can NOT argue with them and challenge everything they tell you.

In cross-country rally car races, there’s a driver and a navigator. The driver drives... watching what is right in front of them and making sure they don’t crash. The navigator looks further ahead to see if there are any detours on the horizon and get the driver ready to react to them.

Listen, if you’re just cruising along in life, you’re not racing towards a goal, you don’t need a navigator, but if you want to accomplish something amazing, you’re going to need to really stay focused on what you do well... driving the car.

At Least Use a Map or GPS

I understand if you’re “car” isn’t big enough to accommodate a navigator at this point. At the very least, use the tools which will let you know if you’re on track and where you need to go if you do get lost.

Your long and short term goals will do this for you.

Your long term goal is like the finish line in this rally race. It doesn’t mean this is the only race you’re run in your lifetime, but it’s the one you’re in right now.

Your short-term goals are where you need to go to get to the next gas station, or next check-point. Rally races usually last several days. This means you check in each night, the timer stops and you refuel, rest and recharge your body. You also make sure your map is still accurate.

Call to Action

Grab your map... designate a navigator (maybe you can navigate for them if they’ll navigate for you).

Know where you are today and where you need to be tonight, if you’re going to make...

In a rally race, you drive for days over long distances. You have to know where you’re ultimately going and your checkpoints along the way. I thought this was a great analogy for this episode...

Sometimes Lost is Good

We need the mind clearing drives sometimes.

Why We Sometimes Feel Lost

Usually, at least for me, we feel “lost” because we’ve become distracted.

If you’ve ever been driving somewhere with someone and become so engaged in conversation, you completely miss your exit, you know what this is like.

When this happens, you have to first become aware of the fact that you missed your exit. Awareness of where you are at this moment. Then you have to figure out how to get back on track.

Sometimes you get so far off track, you actually have to pull over and stop while you get your barrings right, pull out a map and rechart your course.

Take the time to STOP... clear your mind.. and get back on track. STOP... that’s important.

Using a Navigator

A couple of ways you can do this is through a coach, accountability partner or even a mastermind group.

At Least Use a Map or GPS

Your long and short term goals will do this for you.

Your long term goal is like the finish line in this rally race. It doesn’t mean this is the only race you’re run in your lifetime, but it’s the one you’re in right now.

Call to Action

Grab your map... designate a navigator (maybe you can navigate for them if they’ll navigate for you).

Know where you are today and where you need to be tonight, if you’re going to make...

Previous Episode

If You Chase Two Rabbits, You'll Catch Neither - Ep. 129

There’s an old Russian Proverb that says “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one."

This is the way life can feel for people like us. We’re idea people and we have ideas popping into our head all the time. We want to catch every single one of them and we end up catching nothing.

This week, you’ve heard me talk about this resource quite a few times. It’s a book called The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.

I just finished it up today and I can tell you, this book was MADE for people who listen to this show: Mindset - Productivity - Self-DIscipline - Purpose

These are all major heading in this book.

The authors do a great job of illustrating why it’s vital we focus on and FINISH The ONE Thing in our life at this moment which will make all other things unnecessary or a lot easier.

The Domino Effect

Gary and Jay talk about the Domino Effect. In fact, today I saw a video where someone illustrated this perfectly.

You have a MASSIVE goal, but you just have to finish the ONE thing that’s most important right now. When you know over that domino, by finishing that one thing, it will help knock over the even bigger domino that’s next. Then by finishing or knocking down that domino, we help knock over the next bigger one.

Watch the Domino Effect Video. You’ll see how knocking over one TINY domino, you cause a chain of events which knocks over a massive domino in the end.

Pereto Your Tasks

If you go back to this past Tuesdays episode (#126) How to Pereto Your Way to Productivity, you’ll hear about he method Jay and Gary use to focus our attention on the tasks that are most important.

They use a tool I used as a development engineer in the semi-conductor industry. The Pereto Effect.

80% of your outcomes are caused by 20% of your inputs.
80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers

The 80-20 rule.

Why Discipline is Important

The authors scared me initially because they said “Discipline wasn’t important.” Well, I thought they said that.

They share why so many of us can’t sustain our discipline. Because we’re trying to be disciplined in too many areas.

Maintain your discipline in ONE area, until that area becomes a HABIT.

Once something is a habit, it is a lot less taxing on our discipline. Then we can use that energy on another area we’d like to make into a habit.

The Focusing Question.

This isn’t just a book of theory, there are real tools you can put into play right now. Like the Focusing Question.

The question you need to ask yourself in order to figure out what you should be focusing on RIGHT now.

It’s in Chapter 10 of the book...

This book is a book YOU would benefit from reading right now.

I listened to it on Audiobook and I’ve loved every minute of it. I’ve implementing the processes they outline and I’m feeling a lot more clarity about what I should be doing right now. Like this Podcast... my ONE thing for today.

Next Episode

Where Did All That Time Go? - Ep. 131

Have you ever seen one of those time-lapse video’s in a bus station or maybe in a big city intersection? Everybody is flying all over the place in this jumbled mess of massive activity. They all have somewhere to go or something to do, but when you look at it from that level, it looks like something that borders on chaos.

This is how our day can look when we glance back at it and wonder were all our time went and why we didn’t get all of our stuff done. We see a mass busy-ness with what seems like a lot of productive activity.

But...

When you slow it down, zoom in and see what actually happened, you notice, there’s one person in the train station who walked up to the newsstand and stayed there for about 30 minutes, just flipping through magazines. You notice another person who ran into a friend and 40 minutes later, said farewell and continued on.

This is what happens in our day. From a distance, it’s a mass of activity, but when we really look closer, we see the Devil in the details.

Start An Activity (or Productivity) Journal

If you ever want to know why you can’t lose weight, even though it seems like you’re trying, start a food journal.

Write down every single thing you eat and what time you ate it. Make sure you record the quantity as well. There are apps that can do this for you, including one I like called MyFitnessPal. You can use it to see if you’re staying within your calorie goals and if your macro nutrients (Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates) are in alignment with your desired diet plan (I won’t get into what I think is best... too controversial).

The same thing is often recommended when someone starts a household budget ... and certainly with every business, they need to be tracking where every dollar goes and comparing it to their budget.

In households, you start by writing down EVERY penny you spend. Do it for a given period of time so you can capture as many of the infrequent items as possible. Today, we have apps like MINT which will do this automatically. Just make sure you’re assigning everything to a category and you’re including your cash expenses.

If this works for food and for money, it will work for time as well. But I’ve only met a handful of people who take the time to do this. Most people believe their too busy to spend the time it would take to write down everything they do all day long, for a few days.

BUT, I DON’T HAVE TIME

Honestly, you don’t have time because you don’t take the time to figure out where your time is going.

I was reading about someone who broke their day up into 6 minute blocks and wrote it all out on a sheet of paper and then started filling out where each 6 minutes went. 10 blocks per hour.

You can even set a reminder on your smartphone to ask “what have you been doing the last 6 minutes.

Maybe 6 minutes is too detailed... don’t let that stop you. Begin by looking at every 15 minutes just four times per hour. If it’s really tough, do 30 minute increments.

I think anything bigger than that wouldn’t give you a clear idea of what happens with your time.

You only have to do this for a few days.. a week at the MOST and it will give you SO much insight, you’ll instantly know where your time is going and you’ll be able to adjust what you expect from yourself each day.

Categorize The Results

Break down your results into several different categories.

I would definitely include something called “LOST TIME.” This is down time that wasn’t intentional. You just saw someone in the hallway and you started to chat about the NBA finals or something. Next thing you know, 20 minutes are gone.

Some other suggested categories are: