Being AloneThey say the easiest way to make a person go crazy is to lock them by themselves in a room for an hour. No phones. No sleeping. No friends…
They say the easiest way to make a person go crazy is to lock them by themselves in a room for an hour. No phones. No sleeping. No friends. Just one person and their own thoughts.
While this adage may be a bit extreme/dramatic, I find it interesting exploring my own thoughts while I am alone.
I am an extrovert — I get energy from being around others.
I enjoy friends. I enjoy company. I enjoy having other people help push me to have more fun and do more things with my day.
But being alone, and being comfortable alone, can be immensely insightful.
Activities like meditation, yoga, and running put you in an environment where the only thing you hear is the tiny voice in your head.
Right now, while I am writing this, I am alone. Completely. There are no distractions — no noises — no people encouraging me to do anything.
It is me, dumping my thoughts onto a screen.
It is easy to get lost in the future. We are all busy people with tons of things on our plates.
It is even easier to drift back in the past — to start getting happy/sad when we are reminded of a specific memory.
But it is really hard to just be in the present. And it never gets easier — unless we take a step back and think — think about what makes us happy, what is important to us, and how we should be spending our time.
Being alone. It is interesting.
Have you ever traveled alone? Or spent tons of time alone? At work? At school?
I find that learning about ourselves is perhaps the most important ability that we all have.
And…I think…most of us lie to ourselves so much about who we really are that we do not even understand our true values and intentions. We are afraid to challenge our ego, our priorities…
But why not? What are we hiding?
Originally published at gonen.blog.
By jordangonen on October 22, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.