Lack of Direction and How to Deal With It

Uncertainty and confusion

Life coaches might consider an ideal client to be someone who has a goal clearly in mind but who just needs the professional expertise, tools and techniques that a good life coach can offer, to fully crystallise that goal and fast track the process of achieving it.

The simple fact, however, is that only 3% of people go about setting goals to achieve what they want from life. The rest tend to make it up as they go along, if at all!

More often than not then, life coaches get to work with clients who are uncertain about what they really want from life and confused about the direction they should follow.

Why is this, you may well ask?

Living unconsciously

The reason has nothing to do with lack of ambition, or a brain full of disconnected synapses! It has everything to do with a growing tendency to live life reactively as a means of trying to cope with the rising demands of frenzied day-to-day life.

In life coaching we use the term ‘unconscious living’ to describe this coping mentality. It involves feelings of powerlessness.

To survive the many challenges that the external world relentlessly throws at you, you focus on dealing with life one day at a time. Life is tough. You cannot control it; the best you can do is hope for things to change and for better days to appear on the horizon in due course.

Life feels like it is about resolving problems and navigating challenges as they arise. In a world that is harsh and unpredictable, setting goals and choosing a clear direction to follow seems like a pointless exercise.

Roots in our formative years

The tendency towards \’unconscious living’ has its roots in our formative years. Most of the teachings we receive are about how to respond to life and its many challenges, rather than how to be deliberate creators of the lives we truly want to experience.

Those who have spent many years navigating life’s highways and byways are quick to warn those of us with less experience, about the many \’speed bumps\’, \’potholes\’ and cul de sacs that we are likely to encounter along the way, They offer advice and strategies to cope with the surprises that the roads we follow may throw in our way.

The result is that many of us grow up with a focus on the ‘road’ rather than the destination. We are so busy looking out for the next pothole or twist in the road that we fail to be concerned about where the path we are on might be leading us.

Little wonder then, on the occasions when we find time or inspiration to lift our heads to look around, that we are left feeling confused about both our direction and destination!

Finding direction

To find direction in life we require a mind shift that is simple, yet one that is often difficult to embrace, given the conditioning that we have been exposed to.

At the heart of the mind shift required is an appreciation that we are the masters of our own destinies. We can embrace the responsibility needed to take on this role – and design our own futures as we wish them to be – or we can abrogate that responsibility and allow life to continue to dictate terms to us.

Living consciously

By resolving to take full responsibility for our lives, visualising with real clarity the future state we desire and then committing to a plan of action to manifest it, we can start to enjoy the fruits of what we, in life coaching, call ‘living consciously’.

Living conciously requires an appreciation that we are in control. We can choose the path we wish to follow. We can even design the route based on the destination we wish it to lead us towards.

Challenges that arise are seen not as obstacles but as a test of our commitment and a means to expedite our growth. We become focused on finding creative solutions to our challenges, rather than dwelling on our \’problems\’.

We are creators of our lives, not victims of life.

The role of the life coach

A life coaching client who claims not to know what he or she wants from life, and who is confused about what direction to follow, simply needs to make the mind shift that I have referred to above.

But this is not done by simply ‘flicking a switch’.

It requires commitment to a process of personal transformation.

That starts with setting intention followed by entering into a process which results in growing self awareness, a realisation of one’s own true inner power and a step change in one\’s self confidence and personal growth.

New Insights trained coaches are specifically equipped to help their clients through this process. They encourage conscious living by employing various tools and techniques to assist clients to connect with, learn to trust, and act decisively on, their amazing inner beings.

Freedom

By swopping the illusion of a world in which we are powerless, for the appreciation that we can create our own reality, we come to experience new levels of personal freedom, joy, and inner peace.