#9 The Pause and Reflect Time

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We live in a world that is too busy and surrounded by a lot of digital and other tools that are designed to keep us busy all the time. In a theoretical sense, this is good and we should be living the best lives but the reality is different and quite the opposite. Most of the people in modern society are living in pain. Although the sufferings are not that apparent in the first look, they are still suffering because the majority of the suffering is not physical but rather mental suffering. Stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and several other mental diseases are what cause their suffering.

The saddest truth is that the majority of the people who suffer do not address their suffering and they still keep on doing what they are doing. And consequently, life gets harder and harder for them.

For our ancestors, they had plenty of time to contemplate and think deeply about their problems because they had plenty of free time in their lives which is precisely what we lack in the modern world. We are always surrounded by tools that keep us busy and we rarely get any time to contemplate our lives.

Bill Gates takes one whole week a year to stop doing everything else and spend time reading and thinking. He calls this the “Think Week”. Taking some time once in a while to pause and reflect can make a huge difference in our lives.

So this is the advice I have to give you and give myself. Take some time in a while to stop doing what you usually do and think about your life. And ask yourself questions such as “Are you happy?”, “What bugs you?”, “What can you do to improve your life?” and questions like that. I call this “The Pause and Reflect Time”.

Doing this can make you see things more clearly and it can help you get a better sense you what you are doing right and wrong and what you should be doing less and more. The more frequently you do this the better and more frictionless things will get for you.



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