Walking in Circles

I am sure at some point in all our lives, we have all felt the proverbial frustration of “walking around in circles.” As it turns out, that is a very literal phenomenon. Jan Souman of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics put the colloquialism to the test and researched how humans behave in unfamiliar forests and deserts. What he found out was that, without paths, maps or landmarks, people invariably do end up walking around in circles.

While the research explores many theories for that discovery that we are not going to get into here, the point is this: without something guiding us, human beings tend to wander in circles. This is true far beyond deserts and forests.

What are the guiding principles for your life? Do you have a pathway to keep you on track? Do you have landmarks out ahead to keep you moving in the right direction? Do you have a map to keep you from drifting off course? And here is the big question: do you know where you want to end up in life? Is there an overarching objective on the horizon that you are working towards?

I do not think it matters so much that you pick the “right” objective at the beginning of the journey. The specifics of your purpose and goals, your “why,” will certainly evolve through life. What is important though is that you have something on the horizon – something deeply compelling and meaningful – to pull you in the right direction and prevent you from wandering in circles.

As Yogi Berra famously said, “If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.” If you find yourself in an undesirable place in life, or simply aimlessly wandering in circles, find that overarching objective on the horizon and start moving towards it.

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