A Lost Man Walking Makes the Whole World Larger

A single line struck me when listening to a YouTube video on yet another sleepless night: A lost man walking makes the whole world larger. 

It was a camping/hiking video, presumably about bear spray. To give full credit to the creator to whom it is due, the video was “The Camping Myth That Has Killed More People Than Bears Ever Did,” by David Morris-f5q. In actuality, it covered the topic of why staying put the moment you suspect you might be lost in the woods is superior to continuing to wander and making said suspicion a certainty. 

My brain makes connections. I made the immediate mental leap from “being physically lost in the woods” to “feeling psychically lost amid modern society.” 

It really spoke to the heart of one of the many reasons why we do what we do at Only in Sedona Yoga, which is encouraging people to engage in daily mindful practice and teach themselves to slow down. 

Sometimes, you need to act. 

However, taking the wrong action in a crisis situation can make an already bad situation worse. 

I’m personally acquainted with this paradigm. Here’s what I’ve discovered from a lifetime of having to create my own calm amid chaos. 

Maintaining a Cool Center Amid Swirling Uncertainty

When you first suspect you’re lost in the woods, panic gives your heart butterfly wings. It flies to your gut, where it beats against the walls of your solar plexus, screaming, “Get us out of here!” This, in turn, translates into an almost unbearable desire to move your legs. Hello, fight-or-flight reflex. 

There’s another F: Freeze. 

People often talk about “functional freeze” in negative tones, giving the term a bit of a nasty connotation, as does its description as a “coping mechanism.” After all, if you’re “coping,” you’re hardly doing great. However, let’s deconstruct the actual phrase “functional freeze” a bit.

“Freeze” can be just as much a valid, and lifesaving, response to frightening situations as putting up your dukes or beating a path out of dodge. Just ask Madison Askins or Clay Violand.

In the woods, opting for freeze over flight can literally prevent you from freezing to death. When you move, you sweat. If all you have on you is the clothes on your back and they grow damp, you’re in for one heck of an uncomfortable night—at best. 

I’d argue it’s even easier to get “lost” amid fast-moving modern life (although I admit my bias, as I have never gotten lost in the woods). After all, your landlord isn’t going to wait for you to emerge from a functional freeze state before pinning an eviction notice to your door. 

However, what struck me most about the video, besides the line “A lost man walking makes the whole world larger,” was when you should stop. It’s not once you’ve already confirmed that you’re lost. 

It’s when you first start to suspect something is off that you have the greatest chance of making the best decision. 

That’s when you have the chance to harness the true power of the freeze response.

The trick is transforming “functional freeze” from a mindless, automatic shutdown in which you dissociate and seek to lose yourself in distractions, no matter how unhealthy, to a deliberate pause. It’s making this otherwise mindless timeout, in which your “robot self” takes over, into a mindful one. It is not an easy process, and it takes time to master. I’m still perfecting the art. 

However, learning to tune into your somatic cues—which is something your yoga mat can teach—provides the magical alchemy. It’s what changes “God, I need a drink right now,” into, “I’m having the thought that I need a drink right now,” and finally to, “I’m having the thought that I need a drink right now. What is happening that is signaling ‘danger’ to my body? Let’s pause, observe, and only then decide how to respond.” 

Once you act, you set in motion a series of other, additional actions that build on one another. The reason a lost man walking makes the world larger is that every mile you walk enlarges the search radius that rescuers must cover to locate you (they don’t know if you went east, west, north, south, or somewhere in between). If said search party only consists of one or two people, that’s a lot of ground to cover. 

It’s like acting too hastily when you first suspect something isn’t quite right, just to do something, anything, to quell your panic. However, taking the wrong action often creates additional problems. For example, an unexpected car repair leaves you short on rent. Your credit isn’t great. Instead of thinking through your options, your inner panic monkey defaults to taking out an auto title loan, as you know you can get one of those. “Just to cover the gap,” you think.

However, the reality of compounding interest means you never get caught up. Then you lose your job, move to avoid eviction, and have the remaining roof over your head—your car—threatened at usurious rates. Then it breaks down again. 

In retrospect, you realize you had other options. You could have pleaded with your landlord for mercy. You could have asked your boss about a raise or for additional work that could have earned you the extra you needed. You could have taken a roommate. Granted, these options may or may not have worked at the time, but now, those doors are irrevocably closed. Your reality now is homelessness with a broken-down car. 

If only you had paused to breathe and reflect. 

The Beatles Had It Right: Let It Be 

Taking the extra time to think things through in the above scenario would have been painful. It would have meant sitting with the uncertainty that even the most careful plans can fail. Action feels better than doubt, which is why mindfulness can be so hard. Action feels like doing something, even if what you’re doing is only compounding your problems. Thinking things through can feel like hesitating, even lollygagging, slacking, or zoning out. 

It feels even worse if you have a lot of internalized shame about not “living up to (other people’s) expectations.” This is a huge issue for me, y’all. As someone who was mislabeled as “gifted” at age four (I am not gifted, just autistic, and in reality profoundly learning disabled in several areas, most notably math) and raised in an environment where I was expected to somehow uplift the family name (yeah, sorry about that disappointment), I have so much internalized shame about failing at, well, pretty much everything in life while trying to figure out why I kept ending up in the wrong relationships. 

If you’re at all like me, that need to do something, anything, when disaster strikes is so overwhelming, you feel like one of those adrenaline-crazed folks who could bench-press a Buick right off a baby. You have to do something with all that energy surging through your veins; to do otherwise is sheer torture. 

What if I told you that adrenaline surge you feel is not a cue to take action? What if, instead, you interpret it as your first clue that slowing down and operating with greater caution and curiosity is necessary? 

It is a warning sign. 

However, it doesn’t read, “Destroy so-and-so” or “drop everything in your life and run like hell.” 

It just says: “Caution.” 

Or, if you prefer something softer, gentler, more positive-sounding, go with The Beatles’ sage advice: Let it be. 

Letting It Be While Responding to What Is 

Chances are, there is no bear charging at you right now, or in your moment of greatest fear (and even then, playing dead might be your best bet, depending on the bear’s mood and how handy you keep your spray). 

The truth is, there are mercifully few situations in modern life that require you to take immediate action right on the spot. “Sleep on it” may be the most underrated advice ever given, but it may also be the best. I guess there isn’t much money to be made from giving it unless you’re a mattress company, but I’ll repeat it here anyway (hey Serta, wanna sponsor this article? I’ll link back). 

Ask yourself: what difference will an hour (two hours, a day, a week) make if I do nothing? Give yourself this processing time. Set a personal deadline if you must. For example, if rent is due in a week and you know you’re short of funds, giving yourself an hour to breathe before brainstorming your options hurts nothing but may reveal the most seamless path out of your current troubles. 

You can always do little things while you make big decisions. For example, fill out job applications you may never submit. Write lists. Pen letters you never intend to send. 

If you must distract yourself when the urge to do something, anything becomes overwhelming, make it a healthy distraction. Instead of doomscrolling or moseying up to the corner bar (or pouring a cold one while you doomscroll), watch a video on a special interest that fascinates you or chat with a friend over tea. 

Or heck, talk things through with ChatGPT if you’re the sort who processes verbally. Personally, I prefer my “robot friend,” Google Gemini, but the point is to choose a distraction that is more likely to reveal insight and less likely to lead you down a path of rumination or self-destruction. I must admit, I’ve flipped from hating AI to considering it the coolest thing since the encyclopedia set I had as a kid (and read cover to cover—nope, no signs I was autistic, ha). Plugging your problems into a chatbot and asking it for advice can sometimes introduce you to pathways out of your problems you had no idea even existed. 

The point is, most problems today aren’t forest fires. They might start with a single spark, but they don’t grow unseen until they rage out of control. You smell smoke way before then. 

The trick is learning to pause when you first smell the smoke. Only then can you rightfully assess, “Am I smelling someone else’s barbecue? A controlled burn? Or something that requires a coordinated approach to control?” Even hotshots don’t rush out to dump water on every blaze. They first pause to analyze factors like the terrain, wind direction, and the proximity of nearby structures before deciding where to point their hoses. 

You don’t want to let a small blaze burn out of control, but neither do you want to point your extinguisher at someone else’s marshmallow roast.

You don’t want to remain frozen forever, but you do want to learn when to freeze. 

I wish I had learned this lesson when I was younger. I have survived countless bad situations that I never would have gotten into in the first place were it not for letting my panic response run wild, overriding my reason. Worse, I entered scores of relationships I never should have entered into or stayed in, walking right past entire fields of red flags, so convinced was I that being with someone, anyone was better than being alone in a world that I didn’t understand, and that felt utterly hostile. 

In retrospect, I could have prevented so much suffering had I just slowed down and responded mindfully instead of knee-jerk reacting. My reactions were mainly fear-based, much as I might try to justify them, and thinking only of my immediate survival prolonged suffering that could have ended much sooner had I just taken the time to understand the reality of the situation before acting. 

In Reality, We’re All Lost in the Woods

Ultimately, even the most mindful folks make mistakes. Life didn’t come with an instruction manual. It’s more like a product you order off Temu with your last $10, hoping it will fulfill a need you have, only to receive it with no idea how to use it and no one to ask for advice. 

In short, we’re all lost in the woods in a way. No one knows the ultimate truth of life, and even Google Gemini only contains the knowledge coded into its data sets. 

However, slowing down just enough to get your bearings, to understand the full reality of the situation—to realize, in short, when pushing forward into the woods only gets you more lost—can be life-altering. 

When you’re pausing, do you know what you’re not doing? 

You’re not making an already bad situation even worse. 

Learn the value of strategic pausing. Begin viewing the impulse to freeze not as a shameful act, but as an invitation to choose mindful stillness over mindless panic. Sometimes, hesitating is the strategy that works the best. It’s not weakness, and it’s not shameful. Nor is it laziness, apathy or a lack of caring. It is more like, to paraphrase the old Kenny Rogers tune “The Gambler,” knowing when to hold them. 

Experiment with this mental trick. The next time panic strikes, instead of responding to it as if it is a five-alarm fire siren going off in your chest, commanding all your cells to “Move, run, fight right now,” try interpreting it as a sign to get extra mindful. Get still. Wait. Observe. Fill your time with intentional actions or healthy diversions. Just avoid mindless escapism, and put off any life-altering decisions until you’ve given yourself time to think through the consequences of that decision for you and those you love.

The reality is, we’re all lost in the woods. Admittedly, there are times you must move, for example, when no one knows where you are, or if you’ve unwittingly wandered into bear territory. 

However, in many cases, you can avoid making a bad situation worse simply by sitting and observing. Who knows what you might see, if you only take the time to look? 

You might even discover that being in the woods isn’t so bad after all.