Why You Feel Lost

Most people have no idea who they are. They are utterly lost in the journey of life.

This might be an uncomfortable statement to read, but it’s not a controversial one.

Almost all important thinkers over the past 200-ish years have discussed inauthenticity and a sense of emptiness as the default state of the average individual, ultimately leading to a feeling of being lost in life.

However, our emptiness today is a different kind of emptiness. Our emptiness comes from excess.

It’s nothing new that the average member of society lacks a sense of autonomy and agency and isn’t confident in their ability to make important life decisions.

This predicament was fairly easy to explain to psychologists of the 20th century, especially in its first half.

Back then, most people knew what they should want. The problem was that, more often than not, what they should have wanted was in conflict with what they really wanted or how they felt.

These “shoulds” came from the family, church, society—all of these institutions giving one pretty much the same image of what one’s life should look like.

If one was able to work through repressions, often with a psychoanalyst, they would bring their authentic desires into consciousness, replace the shoulds with authentic wants, and satisfy them to the extent that was realistic under their life circumstances.

How is our situation today different?

The modern individual is faced with competing and conflicting shoulds while also being distracted and overstimulated to the point where they have no idea what they really want or how they feel.

You have one set of shoulds from your family, another from your community, and countless other visions of what your life should look like coming from people online who claim to have figured life out.

The amount of input the average person is receiving blasted with on a daily basis from different forms of media is immeasurably more than any human from any point in history had to deal with.

I hope you didn’t come here for a simple, easy solution, because there isn’t one.

The title promises to answer why you feel lost. The answer is,

How could you not feel lost? How could you not feel overwhelmed?

I’m not trying to say you’re condemned to be lost and that you’ll never find a firm ground and a stable course on the journey of your life. I’m trying to say that, whether we like it or not, this is the starting point for the self-aware individual who wants to engage in life honestly rather than with false confidence.

To continue exploring this topic, I suggest reading my piece on why you will not survive the AI age if you don’t have a personal myth and how to mythologize your life.

P.S. I’m running a free live workshop on the 28th of June where I’ll be sharing my story of finding direction and consistency, which led to 6+ years of writing and millions of people reading my work. Click here to register.