Solo day
Listen to the sound of silence. ―Paul Simon
👥 Serves: 1 person
🎚 Difficulty: Hard
⏳ Total time: 1 day
🥣 Ingredients: Anything you may need on your solo day
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Awareness, Liberatory Learning, Positive Emotion, Ritualising
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Abundance, Autonomy, Awe, Embodiment, Hosting yourself, Liberation, Reflection, Self-directed learning, Solitude, Zest
Solo day
📝 Description
A practice in solitude to rekindle connection.
In a world overloaded with unhelpful information and never-ending distractions, it is essential that changemakers find the time to retreat in silence and solitude to reconfirm the clarity of their vision and refill their batteries for the journey ahead. Spending twenty-four hours by yourself and in silence may feel a radical step, but we feel it is a powerful one to nourish the calmness and groundedness needed to sail successfully across the stormy waters that define our time. Whether you spend it hiking or meditating all day, here are a few of the main benefits you will experience:
- Increased awareness and equanimity;
- Detox from life and technology;
- Happiness and harmony; and
- Broader sense of perspective and time.
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This recipe has been featured in our blog post “Cultivating tender discipline” published on tbd* on 9 September 2020.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Preparation
Let your family, friends, and colleagues know you will not be reachable at all for twenty-four hours. If helpful, activate the out-of-office automatic email reply and turn off your phone. You may want to prepare ahead anything you need for your solo day (e.g. hiking gear, food, and water if you decide to go on a hike) or leave all the preparation until the actual day if you rather let it emerge organically.
Step 2 – Soloing (24 hrs)
Enjoy being by yourself for twenty-four hours and in silence. To break away from old patterns, try not to do anything habitual (e.g. avoid reading books if this is something you would do when you have a little bit of free time). The idea is to receive stimuli from the natural environment around you so that you may tune in to what is happening within you.
Step 3 – Reflect
Once the solo day is over, take some time to reflect on your experience: What challenged you? What surprised you? What did you learn or re-learn about yourself? What did you discover about your own journey and vision for a better world? How will you see the world around you in a different way from now on? If you did this as a group experience, we would recommend having two hours for a group sharing round where everyone has the opportunity to share about their experience.