Have you ever felt lost? Practice the balance between zooming in and zooming out

Every single day we bury ourselves deep into our daily agenda that needs to be accomplished at work, school or during our free time. We have always various types of deadlines that we need to follow – both big and significant, and also small and trivial. This is what I call zooming in. It is when you have a deep focus on one thing after another in your daily life. Everyone is really good at zooming into their daily agenda and tasks. However, what many of us are not that good at, is zooming out. How often do you really zoom out in your daily life and reflect upon your life steps from the bird’s perspective? Have you ever zoomed out and saw your life paths as the roads in a navigation map?

It is really easy to get lost in all the details, and it is easy to loose our track. I often get lost in all the details – all the daily time consuming stuff – that requires the full focus and greatest attention. We move from one detail to another, one thing to another thing, day after day, week after week, month after month. It is like a tunnel vision. We see our feet on the road, but we rarely look up. That is when we get lost and stressed, and may feel that the time is running from us.

By zooming out we can see the relevance, the value of what we are doing or whether we are on our right path or not. By zooming out we can learn how all those small things are connected. Moreover, we can learn whether we worry too much about something and if it is worth worrying or stressing out about a detail. How much influence or concequences will it give and is it really important?

Practice the balance between zooming in and zooming out. This is how you can map your life and get the full overview of your steps, while being aware of your past road, your current steps and the future tracks you do not want to miss in the deepest, darkest forrest. This is how you get control. Seeing you daily life in a perspective. See the big picture of where you are in life and how you daily tasks relate to your progress in life.

How can you practice the balance between zooming in and zooming out? Here is my advice:

At the end of the day:
- Map your main agenda completed:
- Zoom out and reflect: How important were the tasks? What was their value? How do they contribute to what you want to achieve in life?
- Be aware of what is really important and abandon what keeps you off the track.

At the end of the week:
- Map your main paths completed during the week. They should now involve all the things that have an importance to you and your desirable future.

At the end of the month:
- Map all your achievements during the month – both big and small.
- Zoom out and reflect: How did the achievements make you feel? Did they get you to a new level in life? In what way?

At the end of the year:
- Map month by month the road you have been through during the year, including all the things that are important, your achievements and goals accomplished.
- Zoom out and reflect: What are the things you miss on this road? Why do you miss them?
- Map an additional track of what you wish you should have accomplished during each month of the year.
- Close your eyes and visualize the merged map of two roads. It should show you the way forward.

This practice has really helped me along the way, and I hope it can help you too!

So... Map your road. Know where you have been. Know where you are. Know where you want to get headed. Keep being aware. Zoom in and zoom out.