Sometimes Not Knowing Your Path is Your Path

What to do when you don't know what to do.

Sometimes Not Knowing Your Path IS Your Path

Walking your own path begins the moment you abandon the default path you’ve been told will lead to purpose, success, and fulfillment.

Sometimes you’re forced off the default path by crisis—a career loss, a death of a loved one, or tragedy that levels you.

Other times, ironically, it’s your success that leaves you feeling unfulfilled and lost. Despite following the path faithfully, you realize it doesn’t deliver on its promises… because it can’t.

Like addiction expert Vincent Felitti says, it’s impossible to get enough of something that almost works.

I’ve experienced this a few times in my life already. Each time I was stopped in my tracks by a blistering realization that the direction I was walking wasn’t my True North, and staying on the path would mean betraying myself.

Those periods were extremely disorienting, depressing even. All my certainty and plans evaporated, replaced by fear, confusion, and a profound loss of self-confidence.

Feeling lost sucks. It’s a shared human experience.

I recently shared these words in a Substack Note, which resonated with more people than any of my previous posts:

If you’re feeling lost and don’t know what you’re next step is, be open to the possibility that you’re exactly where you need to be. You’re not lost. You’re standing at the threshold of something new.

Not knowing your path is your path.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have wise friends by my side during my seasons of wandering in the wilderness to remind me how to navigate times of not knowing.

Here are Five Principles that have been helpful for me along the way. I hope these help illuminate your way, wherever you find yourself now.

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Principle 1: Stop trying to figure it out.

The modern mind fights Life, especially when faced with uncertainty.

The mind is focused on ensuring our survival by attempting to control whatever it can (which it thinks is everything). The human psyche naturally looks at the world through a lens of scarcity, inadequacy, and insecurity. Because of that perception, it is fundamentally at odds with life and clings to everything.

Life, on the other hand, clings to nothing. It flows because that is its nature. The flow of being is our essential nature, too, but because we see ourselves as outside of life we get tight, we block that flow.

If you want to be at peace, this is step one: stop trying to figure things out. Open to flow, because the mind is the wrong tool for finding True North again, the heart is. Your intuition is. To hear it, though, you have to relax.

You have to let go.

Letting go means letting be. Rather than asking yourself, “What do I need to do next to get out of this (feeling or situatino)?” ask, “Am I willing to be with this right now?” You’re not solving for anything, you’re relaxing. You’re cooperating with Reality.

If you’re willing to be with the uncertainty and stop fighting life and where it wants to flow, space eventually opens up. I can’t tell you how it works, but it does. It may not come instantly. It takes as long as it takes, but when you no longer need answers, that’s when they come.

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Principle 2: Step into the Unknown.

As a species, we crave predictability, certainty, and avoid unknown situations whenever we can. We’re always trying to re-create a better, more “extra-ordinary” version of what we already have. But, you will never find the answers to your biggest questions about purpose, fulfillment, or what to do now in the past.

The past is the Known, which are the ideas you inherited from others about what life should be. If your choices are only informed by the past, that’s all you will ever get. A 2.0 version of the Known.

The New can only be found in the Unknown. This requires faith because you cannot anticipate the Unknown. You can’t set out to find it because you don’t know what you’re looking for. You cannot plan for it anymore than an explorer who has landed on an uncharted continent can.

If you want to become someone you have never been before, there is only one way to do that. You must step beyond the edges of the maps you’ve been given and start exploring with no demand on what you will find.

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Principle 3: Be an Explorer, not a Seeker.

Stepping into the Unknown requires a shift from seeking to exploring.

A seeker intends to find, and only seeks, what they’ve decided (or been told) they should find. They arrive to the wilderness with a treasure map drawn by someone else.

Imagine the map is supposed to lead them to a treasure buried beneath a skull-shaped boulder. What will the seeker search for? A skull-shaped boulder and nothing else. Perhaps the map is real, or maybe it’s a diversion from where the real treasure is buried. Worse yet, there could be a trap beneath the skull-shaped boulder.

An explorer, on the other hand, is open to everything. They’ve been told a treasure can be found somewhere in the wilderness, but they haven’t been told where or given a map. Where will they look? Everywhere.

The eyes of a seeker look for what want to find, but the explorer sees all possibilities. Be an explorer.

Principle 4: Trust your Self.

We’ve been taught from a young age not to trust ourselves.

We’ve been taught to look to others—our institutions, communities, leaders, religions, etc.—to tell us how to live. The underlying assumption is that we need someone to tell us what to do, which, of course, some people are more than happy to do.

The ironic thing is you are always trusting yourself. Never forget this. The question is whether you’re doing it consciously or not.

When you decide someone else can be trusted to tell you what to believe or how to live, you’re trusting your own judgment of that person.

You see, you’re always trusting yourself and your ability to make good decisions. Even now. Why not do it consciously? Why not practice trusting yourself more deeply and completely. On purpose.

Begin to listen to the inner dialogue you have with yourself, and root out where you undermine your trust through old patterns of thinking. Instead of looking outside of yourself for permission or answers, realize you will always come back to yourself.

Start there.

Principle 5: Learn to hear The Voice.

Great intuitive wisdom dwells in each of us. I call this wisdom “the Voice”. It goes by many names across different cultures: the soul, the still small voice, spirit, or our intuition, to name a few.

I used to think I wasn’t very intuitive until I learned to notice the subtle signals among the “noise” of my mind and body.

Everyone is intuitive, but some naturally access it more easily than others. Many people learn how to attune their sensitivity to the Voice through practice and listening.

I said earlier that the mind is the wrong tool for navigating the Unknown. The right tool is your intuition, especially as you learn to trust yourself, practice making choices from intuitive insight and guidance. This is scary at first, because the mind is always there casting doubt on whether you can trust yourself or not. You can. And you must.

In closing, remember: you are exactly where you need to be.

In my world, we’re all here for the same purpose: to creatively explore and express our soul’s essence through our very three-dimensional, messy and beautiful human lives.

Life brings us the situations and people necessary to help us unlock more and more of our potential so we can express it. If you have decided to grow beyond what society has dictated for us all, well, you have to go off trail. You have to go off the map. You have to leave the path of the status quo and step into the Unknown.

See you next time,

Kevin

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