I was talking with my daughter as she came back from a camping trip with friends. I asked her what she learned about her self and others on this trip off grid. She said “I learned that there’s times I need to be alone. When I’m alone I am able to find my values and myself”. I thought this was a pretty brilliant answer for a 15 year old who struggles to find her own voice in an age of intense peer pressure.
When I asked her what she thought her values were, she didn’t have a good answer. She said “that’s why I need to be alone, I need time to think about what kind of person I want to be and what’s important to me so I can be the best version of me”. Pretty … damn … smart.
I started thinking, regardless of our age, we struggle to determine the people we want to be. We often struggle to find ourselves in the face of change and our voice gets buried in the load roar of society’s voice. That’s why being alone is so important. You need time to reflect and contemplate what you want in your life, who you want to be.
When you find yourself on solo adventures you only rely on you. You are only doing things you want to do, eating where you want to eat, and exploring what you want to explore. You do not listen to anyone else’s voice, hear anyone else’s opinion, or deal with anyone else’s expectations. When you solo adventure you have to rely on yourself and find your own strength to navigate, to get around, to figure out timing, and make decisions.
This is no easy feat, in our world there are so many choices in every moment it’s often safer to stay between black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. When we don’t know ourselves well and have a strong identification with our personal values, it’s safer to adopt values based on someone else’s voice. It’s easier to let someone else tell us what we should and should not do, who we should like, what we should like, what we should eat, how we should move, when we should go to sleep, what we should read, the list goes on. It’s also a bit of a cop out. If things go wrong or don’t turn out as we expected it’s not our fault we were just following what we were taught. Solo adventuring allows you the opportunity to find out what your own values are and then live your authentic truth.
I know this is a commercial … but I like all the different places it shows. I do not know about this company. I just liked the video. 🙂
Finding values is hard. There’s great freedom and responsibility in value choices. If you haven’t given your values a thought in a while, now might be a great time to take a value inventory determine what it is that matters most to you. From here you can look at your day to determine if you are living up to your values. So many of us give great lip service to values, but we don’t really live by them. We say we care about our health while tanking it with our food choices, say we care about being present while using substances to alter our state whenever we are with good friends decreasing our ability to be fully present to them. We say we want to move more, while driving around looking for the closest parking spot. If you haven’t spent some time soloing – it might be time to book yourself some alone time and reflect on how well you’ve been living up to the person you say you want to be.
If you haven’t thought about your values in a while check out this values inventory to help you get started. This is a great place to start. It’s important to check in on your values every so often. The person you want to be today, may not be the same person you were 2 years ago, 5, 10 years ago. Solo adventuring offers an opportunity to take space and develop a relationship with yourself.
When you have a strong self-relationship, you know who you are – deep down know who you are. You know you are not trying to fit yourself into someone else’s category. You have an understanding of what’s important to you. Once you have clarity, you have an opportunity to practice skills that move you toward the person you want to be every day (more on this in the next post). Other people’s voices no longer crowd your mind, you know what to do to live your most fulfilling life.
This is an amazing gift to the rest of us. When you live your most authentic self, the rest of us are free to live our authentic lives. We all get an opportunity to bring our gifts to the world and be valued for them. Ahhh, isn’t that what it’s all about in the end?
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