##### 🔑 We need Nothing > “The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.” > — May Sarton Just because not everything is junkfood doesn't mean constantly eating is a good idea. Likewise, we need breaks from stimulation itself. One of the reasons so many of our best ideas come to us while we're in the shower, on the toilet, or while [[👟 Walking]], is because these are rare moments when our senses aren’t overloaded with information and our attention isn't being externalized and manipulated. Historically, we humans have spent most of our time in quieter soundscapes, and we spent much more time with ourselves, with large gaps of time between one high-information or emotionally intense moment and the next. Our minds use those daydreamy, mind-wandery chunks of time when we have no goal or focus of attention to metabolize our experience and the feelings we have in response to them — to [[⭐️ Learning|Learn]] and [[⭐️ Integration|Integrate]], to develop new and interesting [[☀️ Creativity|☀️ creative]] ideas, epiphanies, and ah-ha moments. [[The Modern World]] is much noisier and much faster than it used to be. We have audio and video streaming, smartphones, tablets, handheld game consoles, noise-cancelling earphones, and waterproof bluetooth speakers. We have several screens that can satisfy nearly every impulse and then some, full of highly refined attentional hooks that steal hours at a time from us. We’re exposed to emotionally provocative stimuli that activate our [[💡 Parts|Parts]] to such an extent that our [[💡 Protector Parts|Protector Parts]] may emotionally numb us. We’re also constantly being marketed to and given [[🛡️ Fixing and Advice Giving|🛡️ unsolicited advice]] about who we are, what we should do, and what we should want. Nothingness is a nurturing remedy to [[💡 Papañca|Papañca]]. Sometimes we gotta stop doin’ stuff and come back to center. [[⭐️ Rest and Restoration]] and [[🕯️ Doing Nothing]] are paramount both in service of [[☀️ Creativity]] and for its own sake. We need to have large gaps of time when our attention is not externalized. Sometimes I don’t want to [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘|meditate]] or do nothing because there’s so much something to do. But when I'm [[💡 Blending|wrapped up]] in [[💡 Parts|Parts]] and [[💡 Burdens 🪨|Burdens]] I'm likely expending much more energy, and I'm probably spending it in ways that I don't actually want to be. To do nothing is to stop “shaking the snow globe” — allowing the snow to settle so that I can see and attend to what’s going on inside and re-connect with myself. We cannot pay attention to or even notice our internal signals if our attention is always externalized. We can’t [[💡 Self-Intimacy|know ourselves]], we can’t [[⭐️ Individuation|⭐️ Individuate]] if we don’t give ourselves our own attention and [[⭐️ Self-Care|⭐ Care]]. We can't even give ourselves, or others, care if we don't slow down to listen to what we need. Silence and non-stimulation are what allow us to hear our own voice, to sink into our [[⭐️ Body]], to notice our [[⭐️ Inner-Compass]] because we’re not being pulled around by external attentional hooks. It allows the foreground and the background to swap places for a time, and it's incredible what we can learn when we sit with ourselves. For some of us, the first thing that comes up inside is negativity, but if we continue to loosen our grip, it continues to give space for fresh ideas and solutions to emerge. The intention is not to ignore or abandon, but to give space. We might also find that all we’ve taken in needs to be digested or off-gassed like a backlog of emails. For others that can quickly become [[💡 Overwhelm|overwhelming]] as we become magnetized to something and start to ruminate, to try and solve something now. See: [[🧘 Mindfulness Meditation#The Hazards of Mindfulness|The Hazards of Mindfulness]] - [[🕯️ Doing Nothing]] - [[🕯️ Journaling]] - [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘]] - [[👟 Walking]], [[👟 Hiking]], [[Forest Bathing]] - [[🕯️ Movement and Exercise 👟]] - Cleaning, organizing - Doodling - I spent months spending hours at a time staring at a wall - [[🤝 Become a Client]] [^1]: Michael Easter - The Comfort Crisis