What to do when you feel lost

what to do when you feel lost

Last week, we looked at how to get your business idea off the ground: from ‘idea’ to ‘I do’. An important part of this was checking the idea against your personal success criteria. When you’re creating your own business (or your own career path more generally), you want to make sure that it’s a good fit for you. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself creating the same cage for yourself that you were trying to leave behind – or failing to create anything lasting at all and feeling lost as to which direction is right for you.

Getting lost

I left my corporate job in 2013 with dreams of heading off on adventures, ‘being a writer’ and starting a business. In the first months after leaving, however, I found myself going to interviews for similar roles to what I’d been doing, just in other companies and industries.

Later, after setting up my limited company, I took on big projects where I was doing the same kind of work for other companies on a contractual basis. Then I went through what I like to call my ‘hippy phase’, when I focused on adventure and personal development but less so on growing my business and earning an income.

Over the last five years, I’ve zigged and I’ve zagged as I’ve tried different things and been distracted by different ideas and opportunities along the way. Each decision point, at least in the early years, has been incredibly painful as I ummed and ahhed about what was best.

My story is one that I see repeated among many of my clients. They quit their jobs, or start businesses, with a clear intention of what they don’t want but often only a vague idea of what they do want. They also have money concerns and fears around failing in their more audacious and creative ideas.

As a result, people get pulled in different directions, starting and stopping, and tempted back onto those dreaded job sites where they apply for random roles in particularly panicky moments. They are easily influenced by what other people say about their business ideas or career plans and lack the conviction to stick to one path. Or they do stick to their idea but end up creating something that doesn’t bring them the fun and fulfilment that they were hoping for.

What to do when you feel lost? Heading in the right direction

I’m a big believer that you do your best work, and enjoy it most, when you find (or create) work that leverages your individual strengths, that fits with your personal values and that allows you to be your very best self. In order to find (or create) that work, you need to know what those parameters are!

If you don’t know what you’re aiming for then you can’t possibly work out a plan to get there. You know that you’re here, at point A – but point B could be in any direction, and it may well be that the decisions you make in the short term take you away from that point B, without you realising it.

This is not about having an exact job title and description that you’re going for, or a detailed business plan mapping out each and every aspect of how your business will grow over the next ten years. It’s about having a vision, a direction in which you’re heading – while allowing for some flexibility as to how exactly you’ll get there.

Having those parameters will help you make decisions as to what kind of business you want to develop and how you’re going to set it up; which opportunities to say “yes” to and which to say “no” to; and how to make your business, and you, thrive.

guiding star frameworkFinding your guiding star

To help you – and me! – to identify and prioritise all the different aspects that are important for you to thrive in your career and business, I’ve developed a framework to help you get clear on what works for you and ensure that what you’re creating takes you closer to that. I’ve called it ‘The guiding star’ and it comprises the following five points: Values, Feelings, Environment, Strengths, Characters.

I teach this in detail in my coaching programmes. If you’re interested in reimagining success in your business and career, then book a call with me and let’s discuss how we can work together.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You might also be interested in these articles

“Everything you’ve ever
wanted is one step outside
your comfort zone.”

Book a free consultation

Get on the phone with Anna to discuss your unique goals and situation to determine the best programme for you, so you can start taking action towards creating the business and lifestyle you desire.

Explore a broader definition of success

Download this free assessment to consider what ‘success’ means to you across different areas of your life, evaluate where you are today, and prioritise the right goals to get you to where you want to be.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Explore a broader definition of success

Download this free assessment to consider what ‘success’ means to you across different areas of your life, evaluate where you are today, and prioritise the right goals to get you to where you want to be.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Outside of the 9 to 5

Anna continues the journey in her new book, where she details what’s needed to sustain your initial escape from the 9 to 5 in a guide to designing and building a profitable business that gives you more freedom, flexibility and fulfilment.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how One Step Outside uses and protects any information that you give One Step Outside when you use this website (https://onestepoutside.com/).

One Step Outside is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

One Step Outside may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

What information we collect and why

We only ever collect the information that we need in order to serve you.

Generally, this just means collecting your first name and email address that you enter, for example, when you request a resource, register for a webinar, or submit a message via a contact form.

If you are a paying customer, we also collect your billing information including your last name and your postal address.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms

We use Gravity Forms to allow you to contact us via the website. We will use the information you submit for the sole purpose of that specific form and will explicitly ask you to provide your consent to allow us to do so.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Advertising and Analytics

Google

We use Google Analytics to track and optimise performance on this site as well as embedding video content from YouTube, and this means that your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page that you’re visiting and your IP address. Google may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse and personalise content and ads that you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See their Privacy Policy to learn more about how they process data for each of these purposes, and their Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising and how long Google stores this information.

Facebook

We use the conversion tracking and custom audiences via the Facebook pixel on our website. This allows user behaviour to be tracked after they have been redirected to our website by clicking on a Facebook ad and enables us to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook ads. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is stored and processed by Facebook, who may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes. You can revoke your permission directly on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. For more guidance on opting out you can also consult http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Who we share your data with

We use a number of third parties to provide us with services which are necessary to run our business or to assist us with running our business and who process your information for us on our behalf. These include a hosting and email provider (Siteground), mailing list provider (GetResponse), and a payment provider (Stripe).

Your information will be shared with these service providers only where necessary to enable us to run our business.

How long we maintain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

The main reason for collecting this information is to be able to send you resources, updates and, sometimes, information and products and services, as well as for internal record keeping.

The rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How we protect your data

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that lets you access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and we ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. Initially created on 18th November 2016, it was last updated on 23rd May 2018 to be compliant with GDPR.

Contact information

If you have any questions or concerns related to your privacy, you can get in touch here >>