Full Permission To Be Lost

It is inevitable for people going through a career-life transition to feel lost. In a culture that prefers “knowing” or having the “answer” or the next “goal,” if you find yourself “lost,” it can feel like you are in a pressure cooker to find your way fast and to do so quickly.

But what if you resisted the pressure and you gave yourself full permission to be LOST?  What if you allowed yourself to just float in the unknown? What if you consciously stayed open and trusted the answer will blossom when it was time, and not on your timetable but in spiritual time?

Another way to say spiritual time is Kairos, an ancient Greek word meaning the right, critical, or opportune moment. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: Chronos and Kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action.

Often in this culture, we put the focus and the priority on Chronos time. For example, our educational systems are much more focused on Chronos time than kairos time. We are in grades based on our age. We set up our days by a clock that determines when we sleep, eat, work, go to school, play, ect. These things are all linear, but our essential self–our essence, our most authentic spirit that then leads us to purpose–is so much more aligned with kairos time.

Clarity toward our purpose comes in kairos time. Being lost is part of the journey. You can think of it as part of the initiation to bring you back to your most essential and authentic self.

Lost can be a magical time if you allow it to be part of the process. Being lost does not mean you sleep in bed all day; it simply means you experiment, you explore, you test things out, you risk. You track your resonance and dissonance, but you do not need to force clarity or an answer to what is next. Just simply be lost.