Sitting in the Unknown: The Power of Pause to Find Yourself

When was the last time you thought deeply about something?

Not because there was an immediate impact on your life, but because an idea, concept, or belief caught your attention.

When did you give yourself the luxury of just thinking it through?

We often tell ourselves that the one thing we lack, is the time to hear our own thoughts. On auto-pilot we find ourselves chasing deadlines and finding ourselves beholden to our routines. No time, to enjoy time, to think, to weigh, to balance things out.

Every action starts with a thought.

How prepared are we for life happening if we don't give ourselves space to reflect?

Reflection doesn't need to take a specific trajectory or follow a specific train of thought. Ingenuity and creativity are rarely the byproduct of structured and calculated thinking. Reflection for the purpose of exploring ideas and giving yourself time to decide where you position yourself against those ideas. Attending to thoughts that you enjoy as much as though that strike a chord, knowing that you're developing a muscle. That giving yourself space to think is its own life skills.

Give yourself the space to think it through.

Sit in ambiguity.

Rather than force yourself to lean left or right and to balance between outcomes that are black and white, learn to find comfort in the grey.

Recognize that there are pockets of reality where subjectivity reigns supreme. There is no clear cut right or wrong answer, and that's okay.

More than okay, you'll come to realize that the majority of life comes in shades of grey. Hues and tones that hardly give you clarity on the right or wrongness of a given direction. So you decide where you stand. Allow your values to position you in the middle of black and white block thinking and see how well you acclimate.

Your world view can be what propels you into spaces and places that you may not have imagined, if you give yourself the space to expand it.

The world is bigger than our backyard and while it'd be great to have everything made available in easily adjustable bites, to ensure all truths were comfortable and there was no such thing as an ugly truth, it's even better to recognize that you have the agility of mind to navigate through the most complex of times.

Think it through.

The power to think critically, to reflect deeply, and to decide on trajectories based on the context you find yourself in, will give you an opportunity to understand your sense of self better.

The greatest honour we could bestow on ourselves and on others is the honour of being known... and rather than seek that validation in the external gaze, you might recognize the value of your own.

You might find freedom in the opportunity to know yourself...a little better than before.

#SelfReflection #ThoughtExploration #EmbracingTheUnknown