if you're feeling lost right now, I'm gonna be honest. This video probably isn't gonna
help you feel any less lost, but it might help you understand how getting lost can
actually be really helpful and, in fact, necessary sometimes for finding your way.
Hey, I'm Willie from Roadtrip Nation. I'm currently out here on a hiking trail getting
a little lost myself. And, at Roadtrip Nation we know a thing or two about getting lost. Uh,
literally, first of all, we've been lost on the streets all across the country probably
more times than we want to admit, uh, but also, you know, figuratively, in the grander sense,
like, lost on the path of life. And that's because year after year we take road trips with
all kinds of different people who are at various stages of trying to figure out what
to do next and with them we seek out wisdom and guidance from people who have found their way.
One of the things that we hear most of all is just not to panic. You know, as hard and uncomfortable
as it can feel in the moment, not knowing what to do with your life is normal and it's okay. This
is exactly what Celine Cousteau told us. She's a real life explorer by the way. So check this out.
This is part of the exploration process. This is part of realizing and becoming who you are.
Even to be able to say, the next time I make a decision I want to make a good decision. So
I'm going to let myself live in that in-between time for a little while. And this in-between time
is the meantime. It's the transition time. And too often we don't look at that as an
entity in and of itself. That is a moment in your life. And to really embrace that,
and appreciate it. But those are also the really difficult times, because that's when you're
questioning yourself. That's when you're not sure about what's next. But to be able to just accept
it and say, well, I'm in the meantime. I'm in that in-between, and I'm gonna figure it out.
So we can be pressured to have it all figured out at a pretty young age, right? You know,
like, what are you gonna study? What are you gonna be when you grow up? People really expect us to
have those answers oftentimes before we even feel like we know who we really are. And I know from
experience it can be really difficult to look around and see a bunch of people who seemingly
have it all figured out, right? They have five year plans and ten year plans and all of that,
and not that there's anything wrong with having long-term plans necessarily, but
whenever I meet someone like that I actually get really tempted to
share a conversation with them that we once had with someone named Juan Enriquez.
He's a futurist which is a real job by the way. Anyways, check out what he told us.
Most of the U.S. economy and most of the new U.S. jobs are in things that did not
exist 10 years ago. So you have probably no idea where you're going to end up working in
10 years because a lot of the fields you're going to end up working in don't exist yet.
Okay it would appear we have reached our first fork in the road looks like
we've got a shady path and a sunny path. Uh,
yeah, that feels obvious. Don't worry about it Mr. Map. We're not interested. Don't need it.
Okay so not only is the world always changing around us - and rapidly - but
we're also always changing as individuals, right? Every time you try another path
or you have another experience you're gonna learn and you're going to grow
and evolve. And I believe that means that in order to stay true to who you are,
and in order to stay in touch with a world that's constantly changing, then you can't really hang on
too tightly to any kind of blueprint. Anyways, we actually spoke about this to someone named
Jeff Johnson who is a journalist and a speaker and an activist. Check out how he put it to us.
Success isn't logical. You know, most of the people that are successful, they didn't do
what everybody else did. Because it's the people that think out of the box in whatever discipline
they're in are the ones that shape the world. I mean, nobody's looking around at the people
following a manual saying, my god, they followed that manual in a way that was just inspiring.
I mean, it's the people who throw the manual away and say there's something beyond this that I can
share, or that I can give or that I can invest, that are the people that become successful.
Okay check this out. Uh, this might be a terrible plan the trail goes up that way,
but I just found this little path that heads out into the woods.
I say we check it out. Let's see where this heads. And, uh, okay, so that was a dead end. It doesn't
go anywhere. That feels like a metaphor. I don't know exactly what it's a metaphor for.
Okay so there was another conversation that we had that honestly
completely reshaped the way that I think about what it means to be lost.
It was with someone named JP Barlow who, rest in peace by the way, um, he lived an epic,
meandering, full life as everything from a poet to a rancher to an internet rights pioneer,
and honestly our conversation with him had such an impact on me that I literally got some of
his words tattooed on my skin. It's just these four little words right here. If you're not lost
dot dot dot. I'll explain what that means in just a second, but first, when we came to him
and we explained how we were feeling lost he really flipped it on us. Check this out.
Well I think it's important to place a different value on what you connote when you say getting
lost. As long as we assume that that means that we are helpless, and adrift, and abandoned,
very little good can come of it. But if we start to think about being lost in a positive way,
exploring and opening yourself up to possibilities that you wouldn't have otherwise considered.
So what does that really mean to get lost in a positive way? What I took from that conversation
is that there is a key difference between getting lost and getting stuck. When you are getting lost
the way that he's talking about, it that means you're venturing out into the unknown. You know,
uncharted territories, and you're asking yourself big questions and you're exploring
your possibilities. You don't know what your end goal is necessarily but you do have forward
momentum. Now when you're stuck on the other hand, that might mean that you've let this feeling of
being lost overwhelm you and paralyze you. You know, you've stopped asking questions,
you stop trying new things. And if you are feeling that way right now,
uh, we actually made a whole video about getting unstuck so be sure to check that out.
This concept actually reminded me of another conversation that we had with someone named
Lisa Legohn who is a master welder, but she didn't even know what welding was
when she took her first class in it in high school. She just
had an interest so she decided to explore and check it out.
You have to explore in order to really find out what you like,
but don't let opportunities pass you by. They're not going to always come and knock on the door.
You have to go look. I just happen to see the word welding and was curious. If you are curious
about something go and look. Go and observe, and if it sparks you, find a class and try.
But going back to our conversation with JP Barlow, it was really one of the last things that he said
to us that really brought it all home, and this is where the tattoo quote comes in.
I once had a member of the explorers decided he'd gotten both of us lost and I thought well,
this is ironic, and you're lost and you're a member of the explorers society. And he said,
well, I figure if you're not lost you're not much of an explorer.
To me that is just the perfect reminder that if you're feeling lost, that might actually be
a sign that you're doing the right thing. You know, you're taking the time to explore who you
are and who you could become, and you're asking yourself the right questions. And that tension
that you feel, that discomfort, that might just be you growing, you know, as you allow your
priorities to shift, as your interests change. In other words, I don't think you have to wait to
make the quote-unquote right move. You know, you can just follow your interest down whatever little
tangents and side roads that they lead you down, and allow yourself to discover something new.
You may have to let go a little bit of control and accept that you don't know exactly where
you're going to end up, but i'd say especially you should reject the idea that you already know what
you're capable of, because right now it's very likely that there are untapped skills and talents
just living dormant beneath your surface just waiting for you to be open enough to explore
what these other versions of yourself could be. So I say that we keep exploring all these different
roads that maybe don't make perfect sense right away, and next time somebody asks you
what you're gonna do with your life, just look at them proudly and say, I don't know. I'm exploring.