Welcome to the ninth day of the 2018 Love Blog Challenge! Today’s prompt is Solitude. Check out the announcement post for all the prompts and rules this month. You can still join the link-up for yesterday’s topic, Solitude.
Howdy, Dan here again. Feeling guilty about writing this after 6PM the night my next post is due…
But guilt isn’t such a bad thing all of the time. Guilt is just the feeling of reflecting upon your decisions and realizing that they may not have been the best.
People think guilt is a bad thing, but I think it’s an important part of personal development. If you don’t feel guilty at some point, then either you think you only make the best decisions (thanks for reading, Mr. President!), or you don’t strive to make good decisions. Neither are healthy attitudes.
I do think it’s important to look back to the past and consider the things you’ve done. Not just the bad decisions, but the good ones and the neutral ones too. Even look at how you handled decisions you didn’t get to make. How we advance as individuals is primarily dependent on learning from our past behavior. Not everything in life is as easy to learn as “Don’t touch that–it’s hot!” that we learned from touching the stove when we were kids (okay, I still haven’t gotten that one down yet…).
For the more complicated adult situations, sometimes it takes dedicated time to think about the past and determine what went right, what went wrong, and what can be done better in the future.
Yep, I’m talking about giving yourself a time-out! One of those things we tend to forget about as we get older. Unlike naps, the thing we all want as adults that we hated as kids, time-outs are something I never hear adults mention taking for themselves. Well, I guess some might use different terminology for being alone with your thoughts for a period of time, terms like “meditation,” “reflection,” or “commuting.”
Point being that, time-out is what it really is. It’s a time we spend thinking about our actions. I’m not saying that immediately after a bad decision, we have to go sit in a corner. But we should take scheduled time away from distractions, away from things like screens, music, or your wife talking about The Greatest Showman (trust me, this is a thing).
Yeah, maybe commuting isn’t the best time to take a time out… Or after a great movie (trust me, this is a thing).
Some people take time-outs in different ways though. Some do yoga, some write in a journal, some do it as part of prayer, some do it on vacation, some do it at lunch, etc. I frequently end up doing mine in the car even though it’s not an ideal environment for all people. Driving on a beautiful day on an empty road with the top down brings me a rare clarity and focus that brings my brain into a state to really think about my life.
Every time-out doesn’t have to be the same. Sometimes you can have an informal time-out to think about the little things, and sometimes you need to take a serious time out to consider the bigger decisions in life. You might take a quick 2-minute time-out at work to process a meeting, or you might need a few hours or days to take a time-out evaluating your annual household budget (which is a good idea to do while you are doing your taxes). I’m sure there is a sports reference I could put in here too, but I wouldn’t want to limit your time-outs to a certain number or duration.
So what do you think? Do you take time-outs as an adult? What do you call them?
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Brita Long is the pink and sparkly personality behind the Christian feminist lifestyle blog, Belle Brita. While her first love will always be Paris, she lives happily with her husband Daniel Fleck in the Atlanta area.
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Amritha is a travel and food blogger offering travel, dining, and healthy recipe guides for vegetarians who love to vacation. Her mission is to guide others in creating meaningful life experiences with friends and family through mindful travel, vegetarian food, and an active lifestyle.
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Alessia is a lifestyle blogger, entrepreneur and post-graduate student in History from the best borough in London, up and coming Croydon. She’s a bit like Emma Woodhouse (Pemberley Digital version) and just about no longer the most eligible Catholic bachelorette, as she has found her Mr Knightley in sunny Derbyshire.
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