Don't just do something...sit there

Don't just do something...sit there

For a long time, all by yourself, sit quietly, absolutely alone. Completely
relax. Don't allow the television or music to be on. Just be with yourself.
Watch for what happens. Feel your sense of belonging to the silence.
Observe insights starting to appear. Observe your relationship with
yourself starting to get better and softer and more comfortable.
Sitting quietly allows your true dream life to give you hints and flashes
of motivation. In this information-rich, interactive, civilized life today,
you are either living your dream or living someone else's. And unless
you give your own dream the time and space it needs to formulate itself,
you'll spend the better part of your life simply helping others make their
dreams come true.

"All of man's troubles," said Blaise Pascal, "stem from his inability to sit
alone, quietly, in a room for any length of time."
Notice that he did not say some of man's troubles, but all.
Sometimes, in my seminars on motivation, a person will ask me, "Why
is it that I get my best ideas when I'm in the shower?"
I usually ask the person, "When else during your day are you alone with
yourself, without any distractions?"

If the person is honest, the answer is never.
Great ideas come to us in the shower when it's the only time in the day
when we're completely alone. No television, no movies, no traffic, no
radio, no family, no talkative pets—nothing to distract our mind from
conversing with itself.

"Thinking," said Plato, "is the soul talking to itself."
People worry they will die of boredom or fear if they are alone for any
length of time. Other people have become so distraction-addicted that
they would consider sitting alone by themselves like being in a sensorydeprivation
tank.

The truth is that the only real motivation we ever experience is
self-motivation that comes from within. And being alone with ourselves
will always give us motivating ideas if we stay with the process long
enough.

The best way to truly understand the world is to remove yourself from
it. Psychic entropy—the seesaw mood swing between boredom and
anxiety—occurs when you allow yourself to become confused by
massive input. By being perpetually busy, glued to your cell phone, out
in the world all day with no time to reflect, you will guarantee yourself an
eventual overwhelming sense of confusion.

The cure is simple and painless. The process is uncomplicated.
"You do not need to leave your room," said Franz Kafka. "Remain
sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen. Simply wait. Do not
even wait. Be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to
you to be unmasked. It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
In other words, don't just do something...sit there.

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