Lost & Found

Have you ever found yourself in a state of confusion, not knowing what to do next, wondering which path to take, having lost that illusive joy in your life, and yet you know that it surely must be out there, somewhere?  I think most of us have experienced that state at one point or another.  If you have never experienced any of that, then you are among the lucky ones, and I offer my congratulations.  For those of us who have, there is good news.

As what goes up must come down, I believe that nothing is ever truly lost but simply misplaced or otherwise out of reach for the time being.  Since our thoughts determine our reality, every aspect of our lives was first created in our minds and made true by our actions.  Our actions are determined by our beliefs, which are formed due to various forms of programming and transformed or molded by our model of the world and emotional states.  The communication model presented in NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) illustrates this quite well, but suffice it to say that all of our actions and behaviors have a basis in our beliefs.

When we feel lost and are in a place that is not where we want to be (in a poor relationship or job, for example), that is a wonderful indication that we will soon find our way back, because it is in being lost that we find ourselves.  What I mean is, when we are unhappy, we have an opportunity to recreate, to figure out what got us where we are and to ask questions for which we find answers so we can get to where we want to be.  Norman Vincent Peale said, “Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.”  When things are going along relatively well, we tend to not challenge ourselves to create something better.  It is only when things seem bad that we are driven to want to make a change.

So, the next time you are lost and don’t know what to do next to have the joy you deserve, remember that it is really a blessing in disguise.  Remember that in total darkness, a single candle creates light, that it is darkest before the dawn, and that when you seem most lost, the joy you are about to find will be the sweetest.  How cool is that?