Life is a journey which means there are no straight roads but twists, turns, crossroads, hills and valleys for us all to experience. We have to have the lows in life to appreciate the highs, besides, the lows can teach us invaluable lessons and help us to grow. But what happens when we end up lost in the wilderness with no visible way out? It happens. All of us at one time or another will experience our own walk in the wilderness and when it happens we fall and fall fast. We fall fast into chaos, confusion and despair. Everything we have ever thought solid melts, everything we have ever learnt gets forgotten and everything we have ever held onto disappears.

We stand alone as those around us can only sympathize but not help us get out of the darkness, we have to do it by ourselves because we have just encountered our biggest life lesson, our most intense test and yet our most heavenly gift. If life were a straight forward journey, what would we actually learn? As emotional and highly-intelligent creatures would we be bored, stifled or just dull?

When you are in the wilderness the one thing you crave is normality and a desire to go back to how things were, even if it wasnt right just so you can feel ok again. Its a very scary place to be. How many of us try to go back to how things were and how many stick it out to learn and move on? What would you do? What have you done in the past?

The truth is we only find ourselves in the wilderness because we were on the wrong path in the first place. Understanding that is the first stage to finding your way out. The next stage is to be ok with where you are. Sit it out, accept your feelings, and know that you are on a roller-coaster ride of emotions which can be uncomfortable and sometimes very painful. Go with it but never ever believe that all hope is gone.

Hope springs eternal is a true old saying. You can find it if you look for it. And of course there is always old father time which heals everything. So look for hope because the worst thing you can do in any emergency (like being in the wilderness) is panic. Panic makes us act like headless fools and we become blind and separated from our common sense, our intuition and self-love.

Talking of which, lets revisit the reason why we have found ourselves in the wilderness. I said it is because we were on the wrong path to begin with which can only mean one thing a lack of self-love. Thats right. The whole purpose of life is to learn to love yourself so you can love others and make the world a better place. If we our missing the point of life, then we will go off the rails as it were. No matter what got you in the wilderness, behind it will be self-neglect.

Commonly, this causes us to stay in unhealthy relationship with a person, a company or whatever because we fear the alternative. This lack of self-love is what makes us feel so bad.

If you put your faith into the fact you are deserving and that your life can and will be great, no matter what, then you will be out of the woods in no time at all. In the meantime, be courageous, love yourself and look forward to the future because no matter how grim it may seem right now, it will get better. I promise!