Should I Fight? Shut Down? Stall?

As Bell says, the natural tendency is to fight being lost; or perhaps to shut-down altogether in the face of disorientation and disorder. Generally, this isn’t helpful. Decades of psychological science shows that suppression and repression have negative effects.

But the flip-side, to romanticize and dwell in disorientation and disorder, isn’t helpful either. It’s not fun to be lost. We shouldn’t celebrate it. Ruts build on themselves. Science clearly shows that mood tends to follow action, not the other way around — sometimes the best way out of being lost is to just start doing something⁠.