The Power Of Connecting With Yourself In A Noisy World That Constantly Disconnects You From Yourself
Here are 5 back-to-normal life aspects to reintroduce into your life for your own sanity
Hello out there - in a rushed world,
Here comes your weekly permission to Un-rush and Stress Less.
Timeless insights and impulses on how the power of slow helps you grow - in a rushing world crushing your life
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IMPULSE
The Power Of Connecting With Yourself In A Noisy World That Constantly Disconnects You From Yourself
Here are 5 back-to-normal life aspects to reintroduce into your life for your own sanity
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – C.G. Jung
We don’t want to think too much about ourselves because we were once told that this only leads you down the rabbit whole of getting psycho with yourself. Or, as one friend once said to me, she better doesn’t want to think too much about herself as it might lead her to some dark corners she probably doesn’t want to know about. Or, we feel so overwhelmed with all the communication channels and information overflow that we just want to turn off our brain at some point and not think about anything. That sounds to me that people prefer to be disconnected from themselves and the world around them.
But here is the thing: Depression, burn out, distraction and stress have become an integral part of our culture, daily life and work. Which led to us becoming seriously disconnected from ourselves and the natural world. Re-connecting with yourself actually helps you to cut out the noise and constant distraction.
What Are You Afraid Of?
Look at the bright side of dealing with yourself. It puts you in the driver seat, not the passive passenger seat. As C.G. Jung says, if you make the unconscious conscious, you get to decide what your life looks like.
I was asked how I connect with my inner self. I don’t know. Maybe I am unconsciously conscious. I can see how people are not connected to themselves. Why is that? Why are people making their lives difficult for themselves? At least that is what I observe way too often. Unhappy. Angry at everyone else and their brothers. Here is my suggestion: Very often this comes down to a lack of self-awareness which is connected to not taking the time to pay more attention to yourself, your thoughts, intuition and values.
1. Enjoy Your Own Company
I enjoy thinking and having conversations with myself. Do you enjoy your own company, and do you embrace stillness? If not, ask yourself why. Nothing wrong with it if you don’t, except that you are missing out on some cool revelations.
Being with yourself helps to develop your personal journey, or north star or script, however you want to name it. That script serves you when making decisions, and judgements, when giving answers and advice, when finding orientation and opinions. Your personal script that you define for yourself tells you what you stand for, what you stand up for, and how you approach everything else in your life.
When taking some time to reflect and conversing in your head, you can sort through all the stuff that is around you every day. Why did you do that? What do you like/dislike? What is your point of view, your perspective? Do you know your values and principles? Do you agree/disagree with what the others were saying today? Why? What is important to you? What do you refuse to deal with? Thinking about all the questions that arise in your life every day helps you find your point of view and beliefs, and lets you know how you feel about certain things. What was remarkable about today, and what sucked? Reflect on that and you move forward.
Reflection is how you gain insight. Do more things that are outstanding and less that suck.
2. Enjoy The Company Of Others
I love listening to and talking to people who I find inspiring and I filter out ideas, input, or impulses for ideas or projects I am working on. Learning new perspectives and points of views is also always so interesting.
By listening to people who lift you up and not listening to those who pull you down, you can add a lot of “meat” to your skeleton of thinking.
Don’t waste your time with boring people who are just interested in themselves, which makes them less interesting.
3. Embrace Stillness
It drives me nuts when I come to friend’s/people’s homes, and they constantly have the television running. I became painfully aware of this when I moved to the States. People seemed to have TV screens all over the place. And they are turned on even though nobody is in the room. People told me that they couldn’t do without it because they need the background noise. I understand we are all different and deal with sounds and noise in different ways.
Clearly, I’m the opposite. I love silence. Silence means no distraction. It opens the space and tranquility to think and listen to your own thoughts. Enjoy having a conversation with yourself.
It appears that we have lost the ability to be alone and to connect with ourselves in this over stimulating and noisy world. In a rushing world that is pushing us to go faster all the time and that bombards us with too much input and information, it has become a real challenge to have some downtime, alone time, time to pause and think, or to simply escape the seemingly never-ending busyness.
Which doesn’t mean you should use that as an excuse to not make time for what is important because it enables you to feel better and to work better. That is, pausing and reflecting.
4. Feel Your Intuition
Are you self-aware “enough” to feel and listen to your intuition? We have lost the art of listening to our intuition. Intuition is that feeling in your gut when you instinctively know that something you are doing is right or wrong. Connecting with yourself brings back your connection with your gut feelings. The more you learn about yourself, the better is your sense of your intuition. That also includes your accumulation of your experiences that influence your intuition. Based on the vast amount of collected and stored knowledge, you are able to make choices quickly, intuitively, and they’re often superior to those decisions that rely on logic and rational thought. Many of the well-known businesspeople admit that their decisions are often based on intuition and not on logical, conscious deliberate thinking.
The ancient Icelandic word for intuition is “innsaei,” but in Iceland, it has multiple meanings. It can mean “the sea within” which is the borderless nature of our inner world, a constantly moving world of vision, feelings and imagination beyond words. It can mean “to see within” which means to know yourself, and to know yourself well enough to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes. And it can mean “to see from the inside out” which is to have a strong inner compass to navigate your way in our ever-changing world.
Enjoying time with yourself, getting to know yourself and building your inner compass is the best way to navigate this noisy, distracting and overwhelming world.
5. Walk And Listen
I love walking in the woods, mountains or fields and I would absolutely not ruin that pleasure with listening to music or a podcast. Some might consider it an efficient use of their time to exercise and check off one of the podcasts on their long listen-to-do-list.
What does taking a walk mean to you? If you take walks, do you do it because the well-being industry has very intelligently figured out that walking is good and healthy for you? Or you do it because you can’t help yourself to just want to move your legs and be outside in the fresh air and take a break from your work? (That’s me!).
Going for a walk means the opportunity to enjoy listening to your thinking without distraction and not listening to other people’s stuff. As mentioned above, a great way to learn more about yourself and to come up with new insights.
Walking is about the joy, not the goal. For so many, a walk becomes easily a goal to be achieved, rather than an experience to be enjoyed. You gain a lot if you change your mindset around walking. Walking helps to feel like yourself, gain new insights, find awe in what you hear and what you see in nature you haven’t previously paid attention to.
The Deal: Building Self-Confidence through Self-Awareness
Being aware of yourself means that you deal with yourself to understand what your values, principles, aspirations, preferences, wishes, dislikes, tastes, or preferred/non-preferred environments are. You make choices based on what your understanding of yourself is, what aligns with who you are. Self-awareness is like an inner compass, or guidance. It also encompasses an understanding of how others see and feel you.
Becoming aware of yourself is a process of self-discovery. This means getting to know yourself beyond the surface and listening to your inner voice. This is in turn is connected to your intuition, your trust in yourself and, also, to being able to shut down negative self-talk.
Getting there requires attention and time. And this is where the excuse for many people start.
“I don’t have TIME to reflect and dig deeper.” Too bad because that’s when you get to the essence of your own personality. Listen to your voice carefully, it is the compass that guides you toward your self-awareness, which in turn builds your self-confidence.
The Bonus: Happiness Is Connected To Self-Awareness
"Happiness is not found at the summit, but within us. When we are completely ourselves.", describes Reinhold Messner, climber, explorer and the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousand meter mountains without supplementary oxygen.
We feel comfortable and confident with ourselves when we know ourselves, when we are aware of our values, principles, likes, dislikes, goals, and visions.
We are living in a noisy world that constantly disconnects us from ourselves. Spending time with ourselves helps us to uncover the art of connecting within in today’s world of distraction, disconnection and stress.
INSIGHTS
Curated stories and links on the topic of slowing down and stressing less, designed to open up new ways of looking at why you should give yourself permission to un-rush.
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Hi there, a brief reminder of where you are:
I’m Claudia, encouraging and inspiring you to shift down a gear on that hamster wheel everybody wants us to push faster and faster. Let’s embrace the power of slow, a healthier way to live and work. My life has taken place on three continents, with work in marketing, and project organization, currently spending my time writing, creating photography events and growing two communities. When I am surrounded by nature, books, my husband, and friends, I am one happy camper.
You can also find out more about what the publication Un-Rush is all about and who is behind it, here:
https://claudiabrose.substack.com/p/hello-there-in-a-rushed-world-start