Solitude

Not only because I feel passionate about this topic, but also it intrigues me to understand why people find it hard to be with themselves.

Being in an isolated environment can feel quite scary for most people to comprehend, but for me this has been a big part of my life. From training for hours on end in the mountains day in day out no matter the weather, running my own chalet out in the French alps, to being on a rowing boat in the middle of the ocean… all providing some sort of isolation. For me, the times that have been truly isolating is when I am living in close proximity with people when I was working on super yachts. How can this be you may ask? Well, its all about connection. And even though I met some incredible people and had some of the best times of my life working as a deckhand, I also felt very lonely and isolated when things weren’t going so well.

But, don’t be fooled in thinking that solitude is about your environment. This is the mistake most people make. See, solitude is psychological state rather than a physical location and loneliness, isolation can be confused with solitude. Solitude is the psychological isolation of the mind from the input of other minds and resources. This is where deep thinking and reflection can occur. External chaos of the challenge or of the crisis being faced, forces mental isolation regardless of the physical proximity to help or support. For me, it’s about scheduling solitude into my day as a non-negotiable and my ocean row was just an extreme scheduled block out of my calendar to truly sit in this!

Solitude for me brings out the feral intelligence, that cannot be taught in a classroom or read in a book. It’s about immersive and lived experience and for you to understand it, you must go through it. This feral intelligence can only be entered when you schedule this void. It taps into four major areas that I will go into more detail in my later blogs.

But Intuition, imagination, emotion being your insight markers for any given situation. For me, this was tested just 10 hours into my rowing expedition when my boat was violently capsized. The ocean knew I needed to have this hard hitting moment, before truly loosing sight of land. And I would not wanted to have had it any other way. IT tested my intuition to a point before it happened, it tested my imagination whilst it was happening and it tested my emotions after the initial realisation I was in the water with a boat upside down in a very big sea state.

Be ready to catch me on my next blog post that explores solitude and this feral intelligence in more detail.

My love and warmth to you as my reader,
Annasley