How to Enjoy Solitude
Source：Chicken Soup For The Soul
1. Learn to Befriend Solitude
Spend a few minutes each day in solitude. Turn off your cell phone and TV and just let yourself be in stillness. Gradually, as you befriend solitude, rather than flee from it, you will begin to hear the voice of your own authentic self.
2. Stay Patient
To be in solitude takes patience. Patience allows us to stay in the present so that we can reflect and change.
3. Start Where You Are
In solitude, you start where you are, with whatever feelings you have, not where you want to be.
4. Begin Your Sorting Process
Solitude gives us the same opportunity. We sort and separate out the old voices from our own personal voice, the old story from the new story, which is about us, what we desire, and how to get it.
5. Take Time for Self-Blessing
As we enter solitude, we let ourselves breathe deeply and quietly. Then we need to bless ourselves and our journey so that we might gain, or renew, a sense of our own loveliness.
6. Close the "Knowing vs. Living" Gap
In solitude, chose one thing you want to nurture your growth and give it to yourself as your gift.
7. Remember the Small Moments
Wonder and joy are almost always found in the small moments that make up our lives: listening to the sound of a seashell, walking through the woods, knitting a new scarf, baking bread, listening to a bird sing. Solitude teaches us to pay attention to these small moments and realize that they are the jewels of our life.
8. Reconnect to the Sacred
We enter solitude for many reasons: to rest, to nurse our grief, to ease the strain of giving others more than we give ourselves, to hear the sound of our own voice, to nurture our creative energies, and for many of us, to honor our search for a spiritual life.
9. Step Into Your Own Life
Solitude, however, is a dynamic state that will in time lead you to where you want to be.
10. Be There for Others
Solitude teaches us that we are both alone and all one. As we grow stronger in ourselves, we find that we have more to give to others-our partners, children, friends, but also the larger community of which we are a part.
Rebecca Lin 2008 Summer In USA |
