Self Help - Enlarge Your Life

The awesome power of solitude is very often greatly underestimated. It is sometimes even completely ignored, forgotten or avoided at all costs by many people. The way our society is constructed today, solitude is often equated with boredom.

A quick look at many of the people who have made a lasting impression of us from hundreds or even thousands of years ago will reveal that pretty much all of them harnessed the power that solitude brings

Instead of grabbing all that we can get, we fill it in with mindless television, alcohol, drugs, and other non-constructive and downright destructive activities.

Silence gives us the opportunity to focus or even hyper focus on particular thoughts or ideas enabling the creative process to begin. It most often has to be sought out during pretty much every stage of creation from start to finish.

In ancient times this most precious resource was much easier to come by and resulted in the greatest wonders of the ancient world. Just think how much time it actually took to formulate the plan of how the pyramids and the sphinx (Har-Em-Ahket) where built. Think of all the knowledge and skills that went into accomplishing such a great feat.

The pyramids and the sphinx were constructed with such precision that they cannot even be duplicated in our time with all of the modern computer technology that we possess. Now how is that for creation!

Every “pyramid” or positive manifestation that we seek to create is best when built upon the foundation of solitude. It is very important for us to seek out quiet time on a regular basis if not daily.

Finding this solitude within the daily grind of career, family, city life, etc. can be challenging, but it can be done. Meditating for around 30 minutes is a good way to quiet and renew the mind. Often when we analyze how we use our time, eliminate non-constructive activities, and place importance on actually seeking out quiet time, it is surprising how much of it can be found.

I personally seek out solitude at all costs. To me the most important thing that we have in life is our ability to think and create. When we drink of the elixir of creation on a continual basis we can do mighty things. On the flip side if we neglect solitude or use it in non-constructive ways, we pay the price of manifesting chaos, and disorder in our lives and also by not accomplishing our positive goals. We all have busy schedules but setting aside some time to “still the mind” will yield huge benefits.

“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee’s Bronze Statue
Avenue of Stars, Tsim Tsui, Hong Kong

Although most people know Bruce Lee as a highly skilled martial artist which he definitely was, he was also quite an accomplished philosopher. The wisdom of Bruce Lee goes far beyond the realm of martial arts. The philosophy behind Bruce Lee’s art of “Jeet Kune Do” is very practical and can be applied to many other facets of our lives. As human beings, we tend to mostly want things to be bigger or fancier, and we often look to “add more” to many of the things that we do. We tend to view all such things as “improvements” or as “successful.” A site called “Enlarge Your Life” would most often be expected to advocate the making of things larger and more complicated in the name of “expansion” and “progress” but in actuality the opposite is true. Simplification is a great means of leveraging power. To “Enlarge Your Life” is to enhance the experience of it, which can be done very effectively by simplifying it more and more on a daily basis. We all have those things in or lives that take up huge quantities of our time and yet yield very little in the way of benefits. The “unessential” may very from person to person but if we examine ourselves deep down inside our consciousness, we know what those things are that needlessly consume a disproportionate amount of our time versus the benefit of doing them/having them. When weighed in the scale of virtue, these things are found lacking and are better off discarded. Rather than attempting to discard multiple things all at once, the odds of success are far greater when making progress in slow increments over a longer period of time. A little bit today, a little more tomorrow and so on and so on and by the end of a year’s time, our life can be totally transformed for the better.

Tag: Self Help

Solitude Is The Elixir of Creation

The Strength of Simplicity