Find your quiet place

Do you have a quiet place where you can just sit and think? Or just sit and be? 

Where is it? 

This photo was taken at one of my favorite places, Pinewoods Camp in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It's where my family has attended folk dance camp since the early 1990s. 

It's a place I associate with a lot of fun times with friends and family.

It’s also a place that I associate with taking time to just sit and think, or sit and be (without thinking). A place where I can just sit and absorb the sights, sounds, and smells of nature. 

A place where I can just slow down.

We get so involved in the hustle and bustle of daily life that we often forget to slow down. and find ourselves running on adrenaline and other stress hormones. 

We get so stressed that we don't sleep well, we don't take time to take care of ourselves, and our wellbeing suffers. 

We take shortcuts with our eating, with our sleep, with our work, with our exercise, with our play, and with our relationships. 

But just as in the fable about The Tortoise and the Hare, too many shortcuts and racing through life can get us into trouble.

We need to slow down a little bit. 

It doesn’t take much.  

You have the time for this.

You have the time for yourself.

What if you considered it an investment?

What if the five or ten minutes you just sat down in your quiet place and did nothing but breathe or meditate or journal meant you got an extra half hour of sleep at night because your body wasn’t hopped up on adrenaline and cortisol?

What if the five or ten minutes you took to plan your meals for the week meant you saved 30 minutes a day figuring out what you were going to eat that day (not to mention the extra 30-60 minutes a day if you were cooking every day instead of cooking ahead once or twice a week). 

Or what if the five or ten minutes you took to plan your meals for the week saved you from spending the rest of your time thinking about food?

What if the five or ten minutes you sat and breathed or meditated or relaxed prevented you from feeling resentful about something (or someone) in your life? Or kept you from snapping at your spouse or children?

What if those five or ten minutes gave you enough insight or inspiration to go out and take a walk or do something else to get healthy, to take some time to work on a hobby that you love, or to do something else that you've been wanting to do? 

Even if those five minutes simply gave you enough energy to do something that you're not wild about doing but that needs to be done (cleaning the kitchen so that it will be ready for you to make your next healthy meal instead of grabbing takeout, for example), what would that do for you?

Here’s the thing:  

You don’t actually even have to have a physical quiet place. 

There are plenty of nice quiet places at my home where I can sit.  

And the spot in the photo above happens to be 3000 miles from my home.  

But I can be there anytime I want. 

All I have to do is stop for a moment, close my eyes, and breathe and I can be there. 

So even if you live in a cluttered, noisy environment, you can still have your quiet place in the midst of it. 

Because the fact is, your quiet place is inside of you. 

All you have to do is close your eyes and see it - or maybe “open your eyes” and see it. 

So where is your quiet place? 

And are you willing to make some time to go there?