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Many people who come to me for post-divorce, life transition, and career counseling admit to feeling a lack of direction in their lives. This can be a decidedly uncomfortable feeling, yet I don’t think its such a bad thing. Naturally, we all want to find a place of greater clarity from which we can move ourselves forward toward goals that will fulfill us in a deep, meaningful way. Yet a period of “cluelessness” may sometimes be just what we need. It can be an opportunity to sit with ourselves, in all our discomfort, and really explore what it is we feel we are meant to do with our lives. We so often need this seemingly chaotic time to contemplate our lives and de-clutter our minds from the conditioning that tells us what we “should” be doing, rather than diving into the next project just for the sake of keeping busy.
Of course, this is not to negate the urgency we feel if we are unemployed and need to find work quickly. But even if we are fortunate enough in these economic conditions to find a job to pay the bills, we need to give ourselves time and space to get in touch with what our longer-term needs might be.
So, once again, I advocate for a minimum of a half-hour a day that is just for ourselves, preferably allowing some form of contemplation or quiet time without too much planning or busywork. A few ideas can be found at my Brief “vacations” page.
I’d love to hear from you. How do you deal with feeling like you lack direction? Have you discovered any helpful strategies for making decisions about the next chapter in your life? (I’ll address these questions more in upcoming posts.)
