If there’s one thing I’ve had a lot of practice and experience with in my life, it’s that I’ve definitely been lost more than a time or two.
In fact, back in 2017, I really lost everything.
My marriage ended in divorce, I had to move out of my family home, and I had to perform a total life reset with nothing more than $600 in my pocket, a couple of carloads of belongings, and a pretty seriously damaged and broken heart.
This was rock bottom for me.
To say that I was lost was definitely an understatement.
However, in moving into that little one-bedroom apartment and spending six months of pretty intense healing and self-work, I came to realize that this didn’t have to be the end for me.
Even though I was incredibly lost, there was still hope that I could find my way back to happiness, purpose, and some sense of life fulfillment and satisfaction.
And guess what? I was right.
This process didn’t happen overnight.
It took some time.
In fact—now, 5 years after the fact, I’m really still on the journey.
But I’ve come a long way in these past five years.
And every year, things have gotten better.
I’ve learned more, achieved more, and healed more.
And I’ve rebuilt my life.
I’ve also found my purpose.
I have most definitely rekindled my happiness and fulfillment in life—and though there’s no such thing as ‘perfect,’ it still gets better with every passing day, month, and year.
So how did I do it? And how do I continue this process on a daily basis?
Well, I definitely didn’t do it by being perfect.
The truth is that none of us are going to be able to take this journey and make it perfect.
However, that’s not the goal. The goal is to be human and to do your best to apply yourself to learn from your failures, to keep waking up, and to keep giving life another chance.
That’s the baseline.
In this post, I’m going to share the 14 steps that I took (and continue to take) that helped me learn how to find my way in life after everything fell apart.
Some of these steps were taken early on, and some of them I didn’t learn until later.
But this is exactly why I’m sharing them with you—because it’s in our best interest to try to understand this process as well as we can right from the beginning, so that we can get started on the journey and get it conquered so that we can move on with life, be happy, and just, in general, live a positive existence and create a lasting legacy of greatness.
So let’s dive into it.
My 14-Step Plan For How To Find Your Way In Life
1. Decide What You Want
This is much easier said than done.
You’re going to have to do some serious soul searching, researching, thinking, and experimenting.
You’re probably going to try a few things that aren’t going to work.
You’re probably going to waste a bit of time chasing stuff that will later turn out to be a mistake.
This is part of the process.
You just have to do your best.
I started two entire blogs that were completely erased before I finally started this one.
You just need to hone in on what you care about, and start taking action.
Throw stuff against the wall and see if it sticks.
This will help you to figure out what you want for your future.
2. Commit To Taking Action
This is the basis of the alpha mentality.
When we commit to taking action in life, we set ourselves up to begin the journey.
This stands in stark contrast to the beta mentality—which causes us to sit paralyzed in our comfort zone.
There’s no future in that destiny.
They say that the only way out is through—and this is 100% correct.
(Note: If you want to learn more about this alpha-mentality business, download my free ebook: An Introduction To The Alpha Mentality: The Evolutionary Key To Succeeding At Dating, Relationships, Business, Fitness, And Everything Else That Matters. It’ll explain everything you need to know to get a basic understanding of what this means.)
3. Do Some Research
You’re going to have to learn a little bit about yourself, the things you care about, other people, and the world if you want to truly find your way in this life.
I ended up primarily focusing on learning how to date as the first step in my own alpha journey.
In doing this, I read countless books about dating, listened to many podcasts, watched a lot of YouTube, and found some thought mentors who really helped me to learn about human mating behavior, female attraction, dating techniques that actually worked in the real world, etc.
And partly due to this research (but also partly due to my willingness to just jump in and give it a try) I became wildly successful at it.
Research has been a vital part of everything I’ve ever strived to achieve for myself—and it has played a significant role in helping me to achieve any measure of success that I’ve ever achieved (and continue to achieve).
This has been true with fitness, with business, with my diet, and even with relationships in general in my life.
We have to learn in order to improve.
Remember… we always want to be getting 1% better in life, and leveling up in mind, body, and spirit. We never want to stagnate or deteriorate in life!
4. Make A Plan
I really started to make progress in learning how to find my way in life when I started writing down my goals.
At first, this was kind of challenging.
I wasn’t sure what to write down, but I took the advice that I was given by mentors about goal setting—and I just started writing stuff down—no matter how simple it was.
- I wrote down what kind of house I wanted in the future.
- I wrote down what kind of work I’d like to do.
- I wrote down how much money I wanted to make.
- I wrote down what I’d like my life to look like.
- I started writing down my daily to-do list.
Pretty soon, as I continued this process, it evolved into a full-scale long-term plan for my life that contained a lot of very specific information.
This was super helpful for keeping me focused and helping me to figure out what direction to travel in.
You can learn the basics of writing down your goals in this post if you’d like to learn a bit about how I do it: How To Set A SMART Goal – For Alpha Mentality Achievement.
5. Prepare Yourself
You’re going to need to prepare yourself for a long, arduous, and difficult journey.
You’re going to have to get tough.
You’re going to need to dig deep into your psyche to find enough willpower to get through the ‘mire’ of your life and onto the correct path.
You have to realize that you’re going to face a lot of difficult challenges, and that you’re going to have to climb a lot of very tall and difficult mountains.
Mentally prepare yourself for the journey.
Understand that every single day is a new opportunity that will also present new challenges.
Just take it one day at a time, and commit to never giving up on yourself.
6. Take Action (Begin The Journey)
It’s time to begin the journey.
A lot of people succumb to ‘analysis paralysis.’
They just sit in their comfort zone wishing that their lives were different.
Don’t be that person.
It’s a lot better to jump into the journey and to fail than to never try.
Failure teaches us things.
When we sit in our comfort zone, by contrast, all we do is stagnate and succumb to our own fear.
7. Face Failure Head On
Failure is a necessary part of life and growth.
When we fail at the things we care about, what we’re basically doing is lifting emotional, mental, and spiritual weight to help us become stronger in all the ways that matter.
Failure literally trains you to be the powerful man or woman you’ll need to be to achieve your goals.
So don’t shy away from it.
Don’t fail on purpose, necessarily—but fail forward, fail often, and fail enthusiastically.
Whatever you do, don’t be so afraid of it that you run back to the comfort zone and give up on your journey.
8. Understand That You Will Get Lost
When you’re trying to learn how to find your way in life, you’re going to get lost many times over.
- Sometimes you’ll find the correct path, and then take a detour and get lost.
- Sometimes you’ll feel like you’re making a lot of progress, and then the bottom will drop out and you’ll feel like you’re falling off the cliff.
This is the nature of progress, and the nature of life.
This speaks to a concept that I call the hero’s arc.
There’s no such thing as an adventure without danger or challenge.
Your life is an adventure.
Put on your armor, pack your bags, and challenge the danger with your own courage and bravery.
This is how you overcome and find your way to success.
9. Stay Hopeful, Positive, And Motivated
Your headspace and your mindset are going to play a huge role in whether or not you succeed at finding your way in life.
Personally, while learning how to find my own way in life, I learned that I needed to get away from negative influences and plug positivity into my ears.
To this day, every single morning when I wake up, I try to listen to something positive.
This could be a motivational speech by one of my favorite speakers, a message from one of my thought mentors, a motivational podcast, a success story from someone I admire, etc.
Unfortunately, a lot of the pop culture music and messaging we hear today, via the news, video, audio, and on social media, is very negative.
We’ve got to turn out this negativity and stay focused and positive.
10. Surround Yourself With Good, Positive People
There are two types of people in this world.
- There are positive people who will lift you up and encourage you.
- And there are negative people who will try to put you down, discourage you, and speak greater suffering into your life.
It’s incredibly important that you only choose to associate with people who challenge you out of love, speak positivity into your existence, lift you up, and encourage you.
People who are also striving to find their own way in life as well.
Nobody’s perfect. That’s for damn sure.
But the types of people you spend time with will have a huge impact on how you navigate the journey through life, and how you conceptualize your reality.
So choose positive people, and limit (or better yet, eliminate) time spent around people who just in general have a negative mindset.
11. Find Thought Mentors To Help Guide You
I have a pretty big list of people I listen to and learn from on a daily basis.
Most of my thought mentors are famous people who’ve accomplished a lot for themselves.
And I don’t necessarily have personal access to these people.
So I’ll do the next best thing to speaking with them and learning from them directly.
I will listen to their content, read their books, study their stories, study their tactics, etc.
Personally, some of my foremost thought mentors are men like:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson
- Gary Vaynerchuk
- Jordan Peterson
- Rick Ross (Yes, the boss Rick Ross, the rapper)
- Steve Harvey
- Joe Rogan, etc.
I also have some amazing real-life mentors who’ve really helped me to understand my journey better, and to learn about real-life stuff that I’m going through.
For example, I’ve learned more about goal setting from Jay O’Donnell than from anyone else in the world.
I’ve learned an incredible amount about business from my friend and colleague Tyler Martin.
I’ve learned a ton about building websites, writing blog posts, and just online business in-general from working with Dean Stephens, founder of TheAdultMan.com.
And I’ve learned so much about SEO, blogging, business, marketing, and all kinds of other stuff from my friend and colleague Josh Lenz, founder of NoFearSEO.com.
These are all men who’ve accomplished more than I have in life, who have already walked some of the paths that I’m striving to walk today.
And I can’t put a price on the wisdom I’ve learned from them.
Having mentors (both thought mentors and real-life mentors) is incredibly important to the journey!
We must be humble enough to admit that we need to learn from people who are better than we are!
12. Be Adaptable (Analyze, Adapt, And Pivot)
Another guarantee in life is that you’re going to come up with some ideas that just won’t work.
You’re going to try things that are going to fail.
You’re going to deploy strategies and plans that will absolutely crash and burn.
This isn’t a negative thing, though.
This is a natural part of life, and a part of the process of finding your way in it.
Instead of getting down on yourself about these situations, it’s always better to understand that failures happen—and that then when they do, you don’t need to retreat or give up.
Instead, you just need to:
- Analyze what went wrong
- Adapt to change the plan as needed
- And then pivot to set out and try again to conquer the challenge
This is truly a massive success formula that I’ve learned in life, that has helped me to overcome so many things.
13. Be Tough
There’s no way around it. You’re gonna have to be tough as nails in this life.
Of course, you want to combine this with being kind, respectful, and empathetic.
We want to care about people.
But we also need to make sure that we’re capable of being the toughest man or woman in the room at any given time.
Personally, I’ve learned that it’s in our best interest to learn:
- How to navigate conflict
- How to enforce our boundaries with kindness and respect
- How to keep people from walking over us
- How to stand up for ourselves
Not shying away from the little conflicts makes a big difference here.
- You’ve got to be honest.
- You’ve got to speak your truth, even if people don’t like it.
- You’ve got to be willing to accept that you’re going to have haters.
- You’ve got to be willing to accept that people may not always like you.
- You’re going to have to learn to understand that you’re a niche product, and that some people just aren’t going to vibe with you—and this is completely fine.
I would also recommend taking up a combat sport so you can learn how to physically defend yourself as well.
Hopefully, you’ll never actually have to be in a real fight.
But just having that knowledge, and knowing that you’re physically capable of defending yourself and being formidable at any given moment, gives you a ton of confidence that you can use to carry you through conflicts of all types with a sense of calmness and rationality.
(Plus, combat sports are an awesome way to stay in great shape. Gotta keep that body ripped if you want to be truly alpha!)
14. Don’t Give Up
At the end of the day, this is really what it all comes down to.
Effort + a plan + the proper path = Progress.
And progress + enough time = success.
This formula means that as long as you’re making progress, you’re bound to succeed…
As long as you’re making it fast enough to get to where you want to go before you die.
It’s also important to keep in mind that sometimes progress will be fast, and sometimes it’ll be slow.
More often than not, it’s a slow grind that’s punctuated by spurts of rapid growth—brought about by creating opportunities and happening across one-off incidences of positive fortune.
Also, who knows? Maybe God, or the source, or the law of attraction, or whatever higher powers exist also help you along the way if you ask them.
Maybe there are blessings involved.
Maybe there’s some kind of mystic element to this as well.
I don’t know about all of that. I think that there is something bigger out there; and I think that prayer, positive thinking, manifesting, etc. I think it all works to some degree, in ways that we don’t quite understand.
But I do know that if you stick with it and don’t give up, you will have a very decent fighting chance of success.
I also know that if we give up and retreat to the comfort zone—and sit there like sad, broken people—we’re never going to change our lives or accomplish anything worthwhile.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to give up on myself.
And it is exactly this mentality that has helped me to overcome my darkest times… to find hope at the end of the darkness, and light at the end of the tunnel.
FAQs
How do I find my path and purpose?
To find your path and purpose, what you want to do is make an intentional plan for your life and take action.
If you end up failing or realizing that you chose the wrong path, that’s okay.
At least you figured it out.
Then you can analyze, adapt, and pivot to try something different.
But inaction and inactivity are death sentences, because they only lead to stagnation.
So make a plan and do something.
Even if it doesn’t work out, you will be better off than you would have been had you just sat in your comfort zone
Why is it so hard to find your purpose in life?
It’s difficult to find your purpose in life because there are so many options.
Many of us are paralyzed by all of the different possibilities that sit in front of us.
Sometimes, we’re also paralyzed by fear—and by an inability to trust ourselves to accomplish things.
But here’s the real shit.
You just need to choose something and take action.
Then, see what the results are.
If it doesn’t go right, if it doesn’t feel right, if you’re not into it, etc. You can always pivot.
Keep pivoting and keep trying things—and you’ll eventually make your way to the success you desire, and find your way.
How do I find my path again?
If you’re lost in the moment, right now, the best thing that you can do is to stop for a minute.
Take stock of your situation, figure out what’s going wrong, and make a plan to overcome the challenges.
Sometimes, the water gets murky—and you need to shine a light on yourself, your goals, and your journey to figure out where the hell you’re going.
If we continue to stumble around in the darkness, we’re not going to make as much progress.
Sure, stumbling forward through the darkness is better than doing nothing.
But if we can make some kind of plan and try something intentional, this is a much better strategy—and it’s much more likely to lead to you finding your way.
Intentionality is truly the key here.
This is an alpha mentality principle.
Do things on purpose, not just in reaction to the chaos.
How do I know if I’m losing myself?
You know that you’re losing yourself if you start to dislike the person you’re becoming, disliking the life you’re creating for yourself, or feeling downright miserable with things that you ought to be excited about.
We all go through difficult times.
But when you’re going through difficult times, you should know that these are just difficult times.
By contrast, if things are going relatively well, and you’re saying to yourself:
“I don’t like this. I don’t like any of this. I’m starting to hate this shit. When I look in the mirror, I don’t like the person I’m becoming or what that person is doing every day. My life is just full of bullshit and I’m over it.”
This is generally a sign to recalibrate, analyze, pivot, and make some kind of change.
Final Thoughts
There you have it.
My 14-step alpha mentality plan for how to find your way in life when you feel lost.
Trust me, I know a thing or two about being lost.
I’ve spent a lot of time being lost.
But I’ll also admit that I’ve made a lot of progress in finding my way, and I know for a fact that if I can do it, so can you.
So get out there and make it happen.
You can do it. I believe in you.
Go with grace my friends, and never give up your power.
This is Joshua K. Sigafus, signing off.