S O L I T U D E

1. Bypassing Burnout

Too often, our culture assigns self-worth with productivity. Whether it's asking what your country can do for you, or what you can do for your country, the question remains -- what can be done? It's a one-way ticket to burnout.

2. Heightened Sensitivity 
For many, attempting ten days of silence would be akin to walking on water. Vipassana silent retreats are exactly that; participants are instructed to refrain from reading, writing, or eye contact.

3. Dissolving Tomorrow's Troubles 

Silence brings our awareness back to the present -- where concrete happiness is experienced. Watts makes the distinction between our basic and ingenious consciousness; the latter makes predictions based on our memories, which seem so real to the mind that we're caught in a hypothetical abstraction. It plans out our lives with an abstract happiness, but an abstract happiness is a very real disappointment.

4. Improves Memory
Combining solitude with a walk in nature causes brain growth in the hippocampus region, resulting in better memory.

5. Strengthens Intention and Action
Psychologist Kelly McGonigal says during silence, the mind is best able to cultivate a form of mindful intention that later motivates us to take action.

Intentional silence puts us in a state of mental reflection and disengages our intellectual mind. At that point McGonigal says to ask yourself three questions:

• "If anything were possible, what would I welcome or create in my life?"
• "When I'm feeling most courageous and inspired, what do I want to offer the world?"
• "When I'm honest about how I suffer, what do I want to make peace with?"

6. Increases Self-Awareness
In silence, we make room for the self-awareness to be in control of our actions, rather than under their control. The break from external voices puts us in tune to our inner voices -- and it's those inner voices that drive our actions. Awareness leads to control.  Practice becoming an observer of your thoughts. The human will is strengthened whenever we choose not to respond to every actionable thought.

7. Grow Your Brain

The brain is the most complex and powerful organ, and like muscles, benefits from rest. UCLA research showed that regular times set aside to disengage, sit in silence, and mentally rest, improves the the "folding" of the cortex and boosts our ability to process information.

8. "A-Ha" Moments
The creative process includes a crucial stage called incubation, where all the ideas we've been exposed to get to meet, mingle, marinate -- then produce a eureka or "A-ha" moment. The secret to incubation? Nothing. Literally; disengage from the work at hand, and take a rest. It's also the elixir for mental blocks.

9. Mastering Discomfort
Just when you've found a quiet place to sit alone and reflect, an itch will beckon to be scratched. But many meditation teachers will encourage you to refrain, and breath into the experience until it passes. Along with bringing your mind back from distracting thoughts and to your breathing, these practices during silence and solitude work to build greater self-discipline.

10. Emotional Cleansing
Our fight/flight mechanism causes us to flee not only from physical difficulties, but also emotional difficulties. Ignoring and burying negative emotions however, only causes them to manifest in stress, anxiety, anger, and insomnia.

The Eyes Have It

 

 

These eyes should not be confused with “ayes” which incidentally is pronounced the same way but with a different meaning and purpose:  ayes being those who voted in favor of something.  But, for most of the time, when we see a phrase like this, we intuitively and instinctively know that it pertains to the eyes in our head, and while incredibly simplistic, our eyes are and appear to look and be, they can be incredibly complex and difficult to read and/or ascertain.

For example, the Wall Street Journal recently published  a piece stating the ideal gaze should last no longer and no shorter than 7-10 seconds.  While that seems to make sense, assuming that the WSJ is a credible source of information, it is nonetheless rather mechanical to think one needs to mentally count off seconds in one’s mind while gazing into the eyes of the person to whom she/he is addressing.

The WSJ article continues by describing 4 different types of making eye contact:

·       The Table Talker

·       The Laser Gazer

·       The Drifter

·       The Faker

A Table Talker is one who looks down at the table or his/her notes when talking in a meeting.  Listeners perceive a lack of self-confidence with either himself or what he is reading.

The Laser Gazer looks intensely into to eyes of the listener while talking which give the impression to the listener that he/she is trying to dominate the conversation and oftentimes appears creepy.

The Drifter cannot make eye contact with anyone very long and looks quickly into the eyes of listener before moving on to the next, giving the listener the impression of distrust.

The Faker does something else while talking with the listener, rarely fooling the listener and causing resentment.

 

Which one of these are you?

 

Which one(s) have you observed in others?  And, how did that awareness make you feel?

As a teacher, I find it interesting to watch students in my classroom to see which ones make eye contact and which ones do not and secretly know inside that this personality will follow them the rest of their lives unless they see what they are doing and decide to change.

Sadly, I all too often see the lack of eye or the Faker contact among our leaders whereas sales people usually possess the Laser Gazer approach.  A variation of this Laser Gazer behavior is when people of the opposite sex stare at each longer than 10 seconds, completely oblivious to what they are doing.

The eyes really do have it...