Your own best company
Emotions get amplified with others. People act differently in groups than on their own.
Some people can’t exist without being around people. I flip back and forth. I go from needing to be around someone to wanting nothing else but to sit here and write down my thoughts.
You’ve got to be your own best company. Can you spend time on your own? With no inputs? Just sitting there. That’s where it all starts. Being your own best company gives you energy, loving yourself is a superpower. Working on being your own best company is worth it because it ends up with you also being the best company of others. I say working on with purpose. Because being your own best company is a work in progress. When things are going well, it’ll be easy, it’s when they’re not you’ll have to double down.
The shame is, it isn’t talked about enough.
The focus is to keep yourself busy. Keep doing things. Of course, one has to do something to pass the time but not if it’s in an effort to run away from yourself. To distract yourself from yourself.
There’s an irony to it. We feel most alive when we forget when we’re alive. When the skydiver jumps out of the plane and can’t explain how it feels falling from 14,000ft borderline terminal velocity. When the athlete comes off the field after a big win says to the reporter, I don’t know, everything just seemed to fall into place. When the writer channels the muse and the words appear on the page without effort.
Those are the moments we live for. They can be sudden or gradual. One of the best ways to feel it, to feel like a really swinging human being is to look in the mirror with nothing but love.
No mirror? No problem. Say it out loud. Write it down. I love you, I love you, I love you. Line the story up in your head with the story you’re living in real life.
Things go sidewards when you start playing hide and seek with yourself. Trying to fit into someone else’s definition of success. Which is silly because no definition of success is better than being your own best company.
If not you, who?