Get Lost on Purpose

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you. – Barbara Sher

By Dawn Onley

Get lost as often as you can. Purposefully.

Take a new route home from work. Walk a different path. Hike an unfamiliar trail. Visit a city that you’ve never been before. Listen to the music of an emerging artist. Read a book, and maybe even try out a new genre. Try a new restaurant. Frequent a local coffee shop. Strike up a conversation with a stranger. Play a game of tennis. Or learn the game of golf. See how far you can jog without stopping.

Never lose your sense of wonder and discovery at this big, magnificent world. Curiosity is a marvelous thing. Growth is in the unfamiliar. It’s exhilarating to explore a new direction.

For months, you mull over an issue with no answer in sight, until you break from the norm and venture out into the unknown. Then, it’s as if the wind whispers the way and the sky points us in the right direction. It’s as if the ripples in the pond unravel the puzzle of the mind and the new path brings new solutions to old problems.

It’s funny how that works.

New experiences bring fresh insight and new people in our lives — and some of these people are meant to be a part of our life journeys. If we never venture from our routines and rote existences, we never get to meet them.

Take risks. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Brene Brown says “vulnerability is the best measure of courage.”

Be courageous. Try an online dating site. Set up an Etsy shop to sell your handmade jewelry. Pitch your book proposal to an agent. Audition for a play. Make the move. Change your surroundings. Fly to a foreign land and immerse yourself in a new culture.