Have You Lost Yourself?

Why I’m Tired of Trying to Find Myself

There is a funny trend going on at the moment. It’s all over Instagram, Facebook, magazine covers, books and endless blog posts mention it. Some advise to practice yoga, others give handy checklists and quite a few will tell you to travel the world. All with this one big goal: Finding yourself.

I won’t lie, I’ve been through many articles, read many books, have even traveled a good bit of the world in search of myself. But a while back, I came to a big realization.

I’m not ready to find myself and might never will be.

And that’s completely okay. Trying to figure out who you are or even who you want to be, can be rather scary. It can turn into a frustrating search, a search with no goal. So here is what I propose: Instead of trying to find ourselves, maybe we should learn to lose ourselves. We should have the courage to lose ourselves in all the things we care about — lose ourselves in travel, in love, in creativity, in life, in whatever makes us feel free.

Since everyone always warns of losing yourself, the dangers it may bring and all the bad things that come from it, I’d like to tell you how I keep on losing myself and why I love it.

After traveling for over three years, I would like to let you in on a little secret. You’ve probably seen, or at least heard of the movie Eat Pray Love. It’s about a woman that decides to leave everything behind in order to find herself. She travels to India, Italy and Bali and seems to be the hero of all self-finding guides.

What happened when I went traveling?

Instead of finding myself, I returned even more confused than ever. Things changed, I changed and believe me, it most definitely did not feel like I had found myself, not even a teeny tiny bit. I learned to look closely at my confusion and my chaotic mind though and realized, that there is quite a unique beauty in this feeling of being utterly lost.

And I don’t mean the kind of lost in the streets, I mean the kind of lost where you don’t remember what you really like, what’s important to you, what you wanna do with the rest of your life. Lost in every way possible.

Traveling has taught me a lot and I would tell anyone to go out there. Maybe not in search of themselves though, maybe just with the courage to lose themselves.

Losing yourself in love, is a terrible thing according to a majority of the articles you find online.

For some reason it is associated with giving up your own dreams, not having time for your friends and not doing anything for yourself.

I guess it makes sense at the first glance.

My generation has done a pretty good job of messing up the concept of trust and relationships — things come fast and go even faster, lies are hidden behind pretty stories and locked phones and social media seems to be the place to make it or break it.

Losing yourself in that mess, is definitely not an experience I wish anyone.

But it can be different. You can also lose yourself in a wonderful way, with the right people around you — that could be your partner, your best friends or your family.

People we love will bring out the best in us, make us feel safe and give us the feeling that it’s okay to let go and it’s okay to not know where we’re going.

When you find people you can lose yourself with, you won’t need breathtaking adventures every day, you won’t need to climb mountains to feel alive. Just lying in bed and talking about the universe, all beautiful and scary things, will be enough.

And you’ll feel that it’s okay to lose yourself.

It is not easy to open up and be vulnerable, not even to the people that mean the most to us.

But once we do, we will realize that losing ourselves in love is not a terrible thing. It’s courageous and quite magical.

Art and creativity have been from great importance to me. Although I’m not the greatest writer, nor a ridiculously talented artist, I could spend hours creating things. Short texts, long ones, messages of appreciation, doodles of unidentifiable things, photographs, and the list goes on.

It’s about letting go of thoughts and opening up to my chaotic mind. It’s about losing myself in art while forgetting about time and everything around me.

It feels like a little holiday away from the hectic routine and it leaves me with new energy to conquer anything.

Even a stroll through a museum seems to calm my mind and my soul. It brings new thoughts into my life and sparks up areas within myself I had never known before.

In constant search of myself, I often found myself frustrated. Things simply did not make any sense. I didn’t know what I wanted to study, even after traveling, I still don’t know what exactly I want to do with my life and I still don’t feel like I’ve found myself.

But now, I don’t feel frustrated about it anymore.

Life is not all about finding myself.

Now it is more about finding things I love and losing myself in them.

I hope you find something that makes you feel alive. Something that reminds you of the little miracles in everyday life. And something that makes you realize, it’s okay not to find yourself.

I wish you the courage to lose yourself in the things you love.

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