How’s your sense of direction?

When you are lost, what do you do?

If you’re lost in a big city at night, does it affect you differently than being lost in a small, but unfamiliar rural town? How do you find your way?

I think we need to be aware of what causes us to lose our sense of direction. Why do we let anxiety and self-doubt cloud our ability to tap into our sufficiency?

Being lost can send us straight back into our core animal response of fight or flight. Your brain sends cortisol coursing into your systems, breathing becomes rapid and shallow your heart rate increases, pupils dilate, and you are pretty much reduced to the same response patterns of your dog or a rabbit. Gone are the gifts of higher thought…compassion…reason…patience.

Lost, and with your physiology working against you, you may head blindly in the wrong direction because you simply want to get away from your current location; you may heed the advice of someone you don’t know who doesn’t have your best interest at heart and who you would normally recognize as a false ally were it not for your mounting anxiety; you might become short tempered with those who happen to be with you or a raging critic of yourself if you’re alone—neither scenario leaves you with a good base for team work to get out of the situation—even if the team is me, myself and I.

In times where we are lost personally or professionally, the same things can occur. We become panicked—especially in “times like these” versus times of abundance. When we live in a climate of fear, our ability to be confident is challenged by everything around us. And confidence—even when you don’t know where to go or what you should do next—is exactly what you must reclaim in order to find your own sense of direction.

Deep in your being—whether in your case it comes from your head, your heart or your gut—is that sense of bearing that will right you when you begin to drift off course or fall out of balance. It is a center of calm from which we can see more clearly what we need to do and be. It’s a small voice that may invoke a sense of guilt as you’re making a poor decision in your self care or that tells you the stranger offering you direction isn’t motivated by goodness.

Today, even if you know where you’re going and what you want to do, practice being still and listening to your self and to Spirit whispering all around you. As a Christian, I’m a pretty big fan of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit rocks my world…but it’s in little tingles that the Spirit speaks to me, not in blinding light. How does Spirit—whether you think it’s the Spirit of the Universe, the Spirit of God or the Spirit of your dead ancestors—reach you? Have you listened lately?

When we learn what the voice on our personal GPS navigation sounds like, we will be able to discern it over the din of fear and distraction when we’re lost and confused. When we practice taking time to reflect and calmly consider “what next”; when we begin to see that there is very little in the world that is truly meant to harm us; when we let lose our reflexive tendency to believe all that which we’re told to fear…then we train ourselves to cope in the times when we are truly lost and afraid. We remember what we’ve known all along…how to find our way home to ourselves.

Journey on in goodness, my friends.

0 comments 0 people listening

Sign in

• Comment help
• Get Livefyre

Post comment as

+ Follow conversation Following - Unfollow

Post to

Sort: Newest | Oldest