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Who am I? What makes me unique? Where am I going in life? Am I comfortable with myself? Solitude is a chance to learn something about yourself. Self-discovery is a process that involves asking and answering the questions above.
Solitude also provides an opportunity for perspective. When you’re caught up in the hassles of day-to-day life, all you can see is what’s directly in front of you – the problem of the moment. If you want to see and appreciate the big picture of what your life’s all about, you have to step back and get a bird’s-eye view – and that’s exactly what solitude allows you to do.
Taking time for yourself is often viewed as selfish and uproductive. Solitude is also uncomortable for many people because they’ve learned to derive their self-esteem from activities initiated by their “other selves” – that is, their efforts to satisfy themselves by satisfying others. But there are important benefits that come from spending time with your “personal self”, that part of you that doesn’t need other people to be happy…:)
On my way over to Sweden I took the time to study some of my passengers prior to embarking on the plane and during the flight itself. The fear of flying takes a lot of different forms – but can you actually spot a nervous person by just observing their physical behavior? Maybe. But if you would ask each one of the passengers what that person is afraid of, you may be surprised to hear that the calmest, “coolest” passenger is the one who is the most afraid…
….and when asking that person what he/she is afraid of, the answer usually is “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure”. Fear is a skeptical feeling like in a horror movie. You just think something bad is going to happen, and you sit on the edge of your seat and wait for the unknown.
Change brings unknowns with it. Managing change is the art of breaking down unknowns into predictable and hopeful visions of the future. How far you can go is as far as you can see. When you become blind with fear, you can’t go anywhere. Through self-accountability, we take on self-awareness, and move forward through self-improvement.
So, going back to the fear of flying – and not knowing exactly what the person is afraid of – you need to break down the perceived fear into predictable and hopeful visions of the future – of the next 8 hours on an airplane, controlled by skilled pilots who know very well that by being proactive, turning problems into challenges, and through accountability, self-awareness, and self improvement (continued ed), these challenges are transformed into opportunities (to in a case of an emergency, respond by using all the known predictables of the emergency to conquer any perceived fear of the unknown).
So, how do you overcome the fear of flying, heights, making a lifechanging decision or a career change? You simply won’t allow any “barriers” into your life:). You choose to transform the barriers, the challenges, into opportunities to conquer, resolve and build your new life, fearless of the unknown…
Really liked this post by Sister Karol Jackowski and thought you would too! So here are four simple steps to real success – simple, powerful but oooh so important…:)
The Four Simple Steps
We often insist that the outside world reflect something at us that tells us who we are…Whether that comes in the form of success or failure is beside the point. To attempt a meaningful life is to embrace that which can be measured only within ourselves. It’s not the snapshot of ourselves, seen through the lens of someone else. It is rather how we feel about the person staring back at us in the mirror and how we feel about life…
How do we get to that point when we embrace the randomness of life?
If everything were linear and predictable, we’d come to a halt. There would be no creativity or evolution or growth. To live is to weave constantly between the known and unknown. But for a lot of us, the impulse is to hide from that which we don’t understand or can’t answer. We lose our reverence for mystery, and instead choose fear, avoidance, and denial. It’s easier to shut down and close out the unknown rather than enter it with a conscious awareness that we don’t have the answers.
It is frightening to trust ourselves to be creative, to find answers or resources or people who can help…
…but if we can start to embrace the feeling of wonder, openness, and curiosity we can get comfortable exploring the vastness of the unanswered questions.
Leading life in a meaningful way requires embracing the empty spaces, the blanks and vastness. Living in the gap, we find ourselves and the meaning of life 
