The Most Important Skill You’ll Probably Never Get Taught
Most people don’t know how to operate in solitude or deal with boredom. But learning how to do so can help us be better people.
Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” George Bernard Shaw said that.
And Einstein also said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” Life is neither static nor unchanging, it’s fluid. Nothing stays the same.
Flexible thinkers consider a range of different possible consequences of their actions rather than only considering an optimistic view or only considering a pessimistic view. A fixed mindset can sabotage your efforts to thrive in a changing environment. Being flexible doesn’t always mean having to give in, or say yes. What it means is you are looking at things from a different perspective first, and then making a choice that is best, this is flexibility. All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
we fear the silence of existence, we dread boredom and instead choose aimless distraction, and we can’t help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts of the mind. The issue at the root, essentially, is that we never learn the art of solitude.
Perks of being connected:-
This brings us to an interesting paradox: if you can master solitude, you’ll never feel lonely again.
From the telegram to the phone to the mobile to the internet, all major cultural inventions have served the same purpose: to bring us closer together.
Today, we’ve reached peak hyper-connectivity. We can cross oceans at the touch of the button, speak to someone, anywhere, 24/7.
The technologies connecting us are isolating us.
Loneliness is an internal state that doesn’t — as most people assume — depend on external factors.
Everything that has done so much to connect us has simultaneously isolated us. We are so busy being distracted that we are forgetting to tend to ourselves, which is consequently making us feel more and more alone.
And you can be alone, millions of miles away from any human contact, and still feel joyfully connected to the world.
Without knowing ourselves, it’s almost impossible to find a healthy way to interact with the world around us. Without taking time to figure it out, we don’t have a foundation to built the rest of our lives on.
Our fear of solitude is really fear of boredom. We read our phones while we brush our teeth.
We’re told happiness comes from within and yet, we’re never taught how to be alone with ourselves.
Some people choose a life of complete solitude. Others know they can harness times of stillness to find answers to questions, solutions to problems.
When you surround yourself with moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately familiar with your environment in a way that forced stimulation doesn’t allow.
The world becomes richer, the layers start to peel back, and you see things for what they really are, in all their wholeness, in all their contradictions, and in all their unfamiliarity. You learn that there are other things you are capable of paying attention to than just what makes the most noise on the surface.
Letting your boredom take you will be uncomfortable at first. It might be painful — even profoundly so — but before long, this will ease.
Bored? Good for you!
Boredom is not a lack of stimulation. Ironically, the more distractions and external stimuli we pursue, the more bored we get.
Boredom is a clean slate. Being bored is escapism — it’s a mental state that we choose to avoid self-reflection.
We feel bored because, deep inside ourselves, we know we can give more. Boredom is the pain of unused potential; it’s a disconnection to everything we can offer the world and vice versa.
Boredom is a powerful tool that invites you to rethink your relationship with the world.
John Eastwood, director of the Boredom Lab at York University believes that boredom is a ‘crisis of meaning.’ It invites us to reflect on how we engage with the world.
It seems that boredom has nearly reached extinction. With digital devices always in hand, we are constantly connected to news, entertainment, and social interaction without having to make extra time in our schedules. This ability to easily absorb stimulation has left us with a hypersensitivity to empty time—driving us to fill every moment with something in a desperate attempt to avoid the profound discomfort of boredom.
In this digital age, we equate boredom with the absence of activity or connection. Waiting for even just a few seconds can make us feel antsy, and we reach for our smartphones or tablets instead of taking a deep breath and soaking in the sights, sounds, and smells around us
Boredom boosts productivity. Researchers have found that daydreaming at your desk may not be a waste of time. Instead, it can help you be more productive when working on task-oriented projects.
Boredom—especially in the digital age—is something we should put back into our hectic lives. Rather than filling all our time with digital stimulation, let’s seek opportunities to press pause and invite boredom in to help us stay grounded in the real world around us.
Boredom is a subtle enemy.
“He who fortifies himself completely against boredom fortifies himself against himself too. He will never drink the most powerful elixir from his own innermost spring.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
It gives you time to examine your emotions, the way you interact with others, what you want in life and what makes you happy.
The Takeaway
The more the world advances, the more stimulation it will provide as an incentive for us to get outside of our own mind to engage with it.
Everything that has done so much to connect us has simultaneously isolated us. We are so busy being distracted that we are forgetting to tend to ourselves, which is consequently making us feel more and more alone.
Interestingly, the main culprit isn’t our obsession with any particular worldly stimulation. It’s the fear of nothingness — our addiction to a state of not-being-bored. We have an instinctive aversion to simply being.
Without realizing the value of solitude, we are overlooking the fact that, once the fear of boredom is faced, it can actually provide its own stimulation. And the only way to face it is to make time, whether every day or every week, to just sit — with our thoughts, our feelings, with a moment of stillness.
The oldest philosophical wisdom in the world has one piece of advice for us: know yourself. And there is a good reason why that is.
Without knowing ourselves, it’s almost impossible to find a healthy way to interact with the world around us. Without taking time to figure it out, we don’t have a foundation to build the rest of our lives on.
Being alone and connecting inwardly is a skill nobody ever teaches us. That’s ironic because it’s more important than most of the ones they do.
Solitude may not be the solution to everything, but it certainly is a start.
How to Know Who You Really Are
We all think we know ourselves well, but psychological studies show otherwise. In fact, most of us are somewhat deluded about ourselves. The only way to know how to be yourself, is to understand who you are at your deepest, core level. Who you are is not your job, your name or the labels you have given yourself through the years.
