15 Minutes of Real Solitude Can Rewire Your Brain (Here's How)

time is actually a neurological requirement. Your brain and body need it and most people have by accident trained themselves to be incapable of it. A very interesting study was done by a team at the University of Virginia and they gave people a choice. Sit alone with your thoughts for 15 minutes or give yourself an electric shock. Can you believe it? 67% of people actually chose the shock. They preferred an electric shock over thinking. The pain felt better than their own mind. Most people might call that a serious character flaw, but it's actually a skill deficit with measurable consequences in your mind, brain, body connection because your mind can only do its deepest work when everything else goes quiet. And for most of you, it hasn't been quiet for ages. It hasn't had a chance to be quiet in months. In today's podcast, I'm going to show you exactly what that costs you in your relationships, your creativity, your emotional regulation, and give you some specific protocols, simple specific protocols to rebuild the capacity.

Let's talk about what lost solitude actually looks like. What are the behaviors that tell me someone has never learned the skill? So, when I'm working with someone, there's certain behaviors that tell me that people haven't actually rebooted the skill that's in them. I'm going to paint you a little portrait of someone you may probably recognize in yourself or someone you love. And then we're going to move into the science of what happens in your thinking processes, your creativity, your emotional regulation, your brain, and your body when you truly choose alone time, where you choose solitude. And why the kind of alone time matters as much as the amount. So there's really a specific kind that really works and helps you because not all solitude is created equal and the difference changes absolutely everything. And then we're going to name what the wellness industry has done to solitude. Real talk about how true aloneeness has been packaged and sold back to you as a luxury product. Fourthly, I will give you a simple protocol to help you get back into a healthy solitude routine and the only thing it costs you is 15 minutes of your time. Then we're going to explore how all this connects to your relationships and your kids. How solitude isn't really selfish. It's absolutely essential. It's the foundation for every meaningful connection that you have. And by the time we done, you'll understand why being alone isn't actually a luxury. It's the neurological requirement for you to function. By the end of the day, you're so exhausted and you think it's from people and interaction, but actually it's because you haven't had any real solitude. time where you've allowed your mind to process all this input that you're putting in. We aren't designed for constant stream of input without pausing to process. What we are doing is just feeding constantly and not taking the time to think deeply. When you're in your car alone and you turn on talk radio instantly you're in the shower, you put the podcast on. Even getting dressed in the morning like I did, the television's on or the your cell phone's on and you're listening to a podcast on the news. Sometimes it's not even for the content or for the it's just for the inputs just to have this thing going constantly. So here's a little diagnostic as to whether you need to keep listening to this podcast tomorrow morning. Try this. Wake up and don't reach for your phone. Don't check an email. Just sit with your coffee in bed or wherever you on your own for 10 to 15 minutes. Now if you felt a spike of anxiety just listening to what I've asked you to do and if your first reaction was something like I don't have time for that. I don't have 15 minutes in the morning or that sounds miserable. You've just told me everything I need to know about your relationship with your own mind. You've actually wired in a network that's called filling every moment with input or you're wasting time and it's driving you and it's draining you. So, what I'm about to describe is someone who hasn't been alone without stimulation in months, not years, just months. And when I say alone, I don't mean sitting in your apartment or house and you've got Netflix playing in the background or you're sitting at your computer and you've got multiple tabs open and a podcast playing in the background. I'm talking about literally sitting alone without any information coming at you, just you and your thoughts. So

neurologically, what's going on is striking. Your non-concious mind receives signals from the outside world. You're built for that. It's a core function. Then it's coded in your brain as all these little protein networks, real physical thoughts, and they register all these signals. And then these networks keep you oriented to your environment. The problem is that your mind, the consciousness that observes and manages your brain and that reflects your thoughts, actually learns from experience. So your mind needs the input to stop to do its deepest work. So you need the input, but you've got to stop. You can't just keep pouring in. Without the stopping point, you're actually running on input only, no processing, and that's bad. So, you're receiving information constantly, but you never actually process it properly. We are designed for deep intellectual thought. We need it to function properly. So, if you never step back and ask yourself the deeper questions about what does this mean? Is this important to me? What am I learning from this? Is this good for me? Do I want this information? How do I feel about what's just happened? If you don't do that sort of thing and you just keep adding more, that's going to create an overload mode inside you. A little bit like clutter building up in a closet. You know how you just keep throwing things in and eventually everything just falls out one day and you've got guests there, especially like the door just suddenly opens and everything comes out. You become reactive. You also can't be creative or generate ideas or really think things through or originate anything new when you're always just responding to external stimuli coming in. you will really become reactive and not creative.

So, when was the last time you were actually bored? Let me ask you that. Truly bored. Not scrolling through your phone, not trying to feel engaged, not flipping through a book because you should be doing something productive, but with nothing to do and nowhere to be, just sitting and watching the sunset, just standing still and just observing or sitting still. When did you actually sit last without any input for about 10 or 15 minutes? Most people can't answer that question and that's because they've lost the skill. They're always filling the spaces with talking or listening or something. Can you just sit on your own maybe with family or friends and just look at the sunset, watch the water, whatever. Boredom is where the mind does some of its best work. It's the signal that your mind is looking for something to engage with. It's going deep. And when it doesn't find external input, guess what? It turns inward. your conscious mind starts looking inward and it starts processing and it starts creating and true intellect and all kinds of amazing things come start pouring out of you and this is the skill that we've lost when we just constantly push things in like we've become an ADHD society just shove busy without deep processing so an

interesting research was study was done by Tai Nun and her team at Durham University they gave people these 15 minutes now this is key I want you to hear this they gave them 15 minutes of chosen in solitude. Chosen is the key word here. So they didn't have their phone. They didn't have tasks. They just had to be with themselves but chose to. What happened when they chose to have the solitude? The high arousal emotions dropped significantly. That hovering anxiety, it decreased. Excite the excitement in that restlessness, the hovering anxiety decreased. Excitement in that restless unfocused way decreased. Rumination and worry patterns decreased. their body's stress response turned returned to intelligence and people felt more settled amazing by choosing 15 minutes of solitude all that great stuff happened. So those benefits however only happened let me emphasize when the solitude was chosen however when people were told that they had to sit alone so it wasn't chosen when it was forced isolation you will sit alone you will do this you can't have anything you must but the benefits all disappeared the hovering anxiety didn't drop the mind didn't settle their body stress response stayed in a very toxic mode working against them instead of for

them why did this happen forced isolation triggers is a completely different neurological response than chosen solitude. So if it's forced on you, put you into a threat mode. The difference between solitude and loneliness isn't time, it's agency. What agency do you have over it? In the experiment where they were told they could choose, there was agency. When they were told they had to, they lost agency. It's you making the decision to be with yourself versus being forced into aloneeness without a choice. One restores, which is the choice one. The other's very threatening and doesn't restore. Puts you on a high alert and all those high anxiety things. Now, I work with a lot of people and they often tell me that they need alone time, but what they really mean is that they need to escape. Escape from demands, from other people's energy, from responsibility, from the relentless ping on their phone. It's just so tiring. And that's not solitude. Solitude is different. But solitude is going to be the solution to that. So what I tell my clients and what I told my patients is that you have to be intentional about solitude. It's you recognizing that you need time with yourself and creating that time deliberately. It's a choice made from self-awareness, not from desperation. It's not I can't handle anyone else right now. It's I want to be with myself right now. Loneliness is involuntary. It's isolation that's been imposed on you by circumstances, rejection, distance, or whatever. In chosen solitude, your body's stress response can actually switch back into its intelligent state and your heart rate slows, your breath deepens, your blood pressure normalizes. But there's so much more happening than just emotion regulation and all this chemistry that's related to that. When

you have chosen alone time, something else turns on something that I love talking about the default mode network. It's a brain state that you go into when your mind uses deep processing. So when you start just being with yourself and going into that solitude state, you activate that part of your brain and that network needs to activate. It's the thing that kind of regulates and keeps your brain in a healthy state and your body. It's when real work gets done. It allows your conscious mind to be still and listen to a deep intuitive mind. So when you choose to go into solitude, you have autonomy. You then activate that network cuz you're sending that message to your brain. So this network actually only becomes properly activated when you're not focused on all the podcasts and the noise and the stimulation and the constant input. And this is the brain state that your mind uses when you self-reflect. It activates the default mode network. We also need it when we consolidate memory. We activate the default mode network. When you plan things like your future, understanding your own motivation, do you activate the default mode network? So it works as this team thing and it's how your mind uses your brain to integrate experience that you learn from it. If you just keep piling information on without activating your default mode network, you're not really learning anything. You're not really moving forward. And that's why intrusive thoughts and things like that will catch you. So how your mind figures out who you are, you've got to go beyond what other people expect. We've got to know our self. So many people I work with battle with their identity. And part of it is what I'm talking about. We don't spend enough time in this solitude state to activate this beautiful these beautiful networks that we have. So if you don't activate it, then you

constantly disrupting it with an notification, a text message, a podcast starting up, a scroll through social media, and every single time that happens, that damaging network that you've wired in that disrupts the default mode network pops up. It's that network that I mentioned earlier on. And it's the one that's called I must be busy network that you build that gets stronger. So every time you submit to more stimulation, you strengthen that toxic network and then that drives you and you set up this negative feedback loop. Makes solitude even harder and then everything just stays shallow and that's not healthy. Your brain does not function well when things are just shallow. What we actually need for a healthy mind brain body connection is deep stimulation. We hear that the diagnosis is expanding across the board. Suddenly everyone's got it. We need to look. It's not everyone's got ADHD. It's society creating this environment. We can get our minds back through solitude. If every experience just gets skimmed instead of absorbed, we're going to create an ADHD type sensation. You move through your life without learning from it. And that's not good. We need to go into deep state. Otherwise, we're just going to accumulate data instead of integrating it. Information goes in, nothing sticks in any meaningful way. And that's exhausting physically for your brain and your body. It's exhausting for your conscious mind. And it just does not grow you as a person. It's not how you designed to work. When was the last time you were bored or had some genuine insight about yourself? I ask my clients this and sometimes they say to me, I don't know like they really have to think when was the last time. I don't want to something about yourself that resonated with you. That's something that you thought through and understood differently. That kind of thing requires solitude. Real solitude. The kind where your mind gets 15 minutes at least or more uninterrupted time to do its work. And your mind doesn't just hand insights out for free. You've got to dig around and find it. You have to process. You have to reflect. You have to connect the dots between the different experiences. This is only going to happen when you choose solitude when the external input stops. So switching off to the external and switching on to the internal. And

now let's come to one of my bug bears. The wellness industry's takeover of solitude. It's completely commodified solitude. And I mean that literally, specifically, deliberately. Real time alone has been repackaged as self-care. Not that I'm anti-selfare, but I'm anti- this, which has been turned into a product that you have to buy. For example, bath bombs with essential oils, $28 per unit. You've got to have that for solitude. or journaling prompts with leather covers, whatever, $45 to $150, I don't know, whatever, depending on the brand. Meditation apps with premium subscriptions that cost anything from $13 a month to, I don't know, 156 a year, just to sit with your thoughts. The treat yourself culture has become a billiondoll industry. Candles that cost $60 to $80 that have that candle, that essential oil, weighted blankets, or whatever, that's how you find solitude. So, it's an external thing. I've got to buy something external to get solitude. Not at all. It's inside of you. It's a choice that you make. As we see from the research, the self-care market exceeded $5 billion in 2023 in the US alone. Solitude doesn't have any kind of witness. There's no before and after photo. You can't post about it on Instagram with the right filter and the right lighting. It doesn't require a product. Doesn't need to be cured, optimized, shared. It's yours. The industry can't monetize something that requires nothing except your presence. So, they've packaged the idea of alone time as another thing you have to purchase, another box you check on your wellness list, another way to feel like you're doing self-care, right? I get so many of my clients that say this, I've got to do all these things and they're so worked up about doing self-care. There's absolutely no self-care happening. You deserve this expensive candle. Yes, I'm not saying you don't, but that's something else. That's not solitude. and the message is relentless. Genuine solitude is out of reach with the right purchases. That is not the truth. I'm really frustrated about this because I watch women especially internalizing this message. The cultural narrative is like you need alone time and you need to buy the right things to make it meaningful or to make it work. When I first started my podcast, I remember sitting there thinking, what if no one listens? What if this totally flops? There's so much uncertainty when you start something new and honestly that doubt can be the hardest part. But taking that leap ended up being one of the best decisions that I have made and having the right tools would have made it a whole lot less stressful. And that's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States from huge brands to people just getting started. And what I love is how it simplifies everything. 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thinking about it. I just want to be able to sit and watch the sunset or watch squirrels running on my fence or watch my dogs or whatever. You just don't have time for all of that. You don't have to do all of that. All you have to do is just sit still and think. Now alone time becomes another performance. Oh my gosh, we are such a performative society. Another thing to optimize. We're an optimization society. Another way to feel like you're failing. Everyone's posting about another item on the self-improved checklist that you can't quite nail. I honestly I hear this all the time with my onetoone clients. They spending hundreds of dollars trying to create the right environment for solitude. And then they feel guilty because they can't afford the products. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit of exaggerating slightly here, but this is the messaging that we are getting. And that is not solitude. That's consumption with this little solitude rapper and a bow. It's performance masquerading as presence. It's a multi-billion dollar industry profiting from the idea that your solitude is incomplete without the right. Real solitude is free. It's unglamorous solitude. It's not something anyone else will ever know about because it happens entirely in the privacy of your own mind. You don't tell people about it because it's yours. You don't document it. You don't make it into a moment that proves something about yourself. But boy, once you get it, there's such freedom in that. You can stop performing. You can stop curating the experience for approval. You can stop trying to prove anything to anyone, including yourself. You're just being with yourself. That's the whole thing.

And that's probably why people avoid it so strongly. strongly because you actually just got to be with yourself. It's the only thing left in our culture that you can't optimize or perform or monetize because it's just you alone. No one knows about it. It's unwitnessed and honestly that seems to terrify people because we've been trained to equate productivity with value. Okay, so at this point we've had a whole conversation around all this establishing the idea that alone time is a skill that we've got to literally rebuild. But to work, we have to choose it. But here's what I want to dig into after this break. Your mind has a very

specific capacity that predicts how you show up in every single relationship that you have. So, how you manage conflict, how you handle criticism, whether it's from family or work members or whatever, how you actually connect with your kids, your friends, your partner. And that capacity, that regulation skill, do you know where it's built? Not with a wellness product, not with another app. It's built in solitude. It's developed when you choose to be alone, not when you're performing connection, not when you're managing other people's emotions. You can do all of those things if you want to, but rather in the quiet moments where you just with yourself chosen solitude is the foundation of pretty much everything else. It brings perspective because what you do is tap into your wisdom and with wisdom we can see things more clearly. I

just want to quickly remind you about the default mode network. It's amazing structure in the brain that is really designed to pull things together and it activated when we're in the solitude state and when it works properly it like literally leaves a footprint a healthy footprint in your brain and your body when you use it properly. So it's all it creates a very positive cycle and that means that when you're thinking in this different way and you're using your front of your brain differently, you can think more divergently and more creatively. And then that enables you to make connections between things that you didn't maybe make before. So solitude actually helps you to be way more intellectual and way more focused and

creative. Some of your best ideas come when you in the shower with nothing playing, just you in the shower, no music, no podcast or driving alone or maybe lying in bed at night. That's what I love to do is lying in bed at night and think about these things. Your conscious mind has finally had a break from trying to deal with all this data alone and something it was never actually built for. And the external demands are controlled. You're lying in bed and suddenly your mind can finish its own conversations. I love that statement. Your best creative solutions don't really come when you're trying hard. They come when you've chilled and you letting your mind just finish the conversations that we started like the ends of sentences. You step back and you've given your mind space to wander. Wondering is fantastic for this. That mind wandering is what we're talking about here. Think about how often that happens to you now. Does it happen maybe once a month? Maybe you don't even know what I'm talking about. Chosen solitude that is really going to help you. So you need to

hear this. You accumulate experiences, but you don't learn from them if you don't take solitude moments. So, if you take a solitude moment, not only do you accumulate experiences, but you will also learn from them. And to clarify, a really important point, your brain and mind aren't the same thing. Your brain is the physical organ in your skull and it has chemistry and structure and proteins and specific regions that activate in specific ways according to what your mind tells it to do. So, your mind observes your brain and uses your brain. And when you're reflecting on your thoughts, your mind is working really well and then it's making your brain work very well. And solitude moments really activate a healthy flow through the brain via that default mode network. So when we talk about what happens in solitude, we are really talking about your mind's ability to make sense of what your brain is actually receiving, what's going into your brain. And without that, you're accumulating experience without actually learning from it. You're moving through life without most self-care advice tells you what to do when you're alone. Go for a walk, journal your thoughts. It's a whole commodified industry. Do this, do that. There's always a doing component. Always something productive attached. Always something to check off. I don't want you to do that. Okay. What I'm

about to suggest might be very uncomfortable at first, might be confusing. It's researchbased and it really does work to activate that default mode network like we should. And in fact, if you do feel a little bit of discomfort, I'm actually glad. You know, that's the point. It means that you're busy learning something. Whenever you learn something new, so you've also got so used to filling up every empty space, now you got to create space and stay in it. The practice is really simple. I just want you to commit to 15 minutes where you don't have your phone, no music, no task, no podcast, no emails, no productivity. You and your thoughts. Literally, just you. Not even a pen and paper. Just you and your thoughts. That's it. That's the entire practice. You're going to switch off to the external and switch onto the internal and let your mind wander. You know, midweek hits differently. You're tired. You're hungry. And honestly, you're tired of making the same five meals on rotation. I get it. But here's the thing. There's this part of you that's been craving something different. I know I do. Something adventurous in the kitchen. And that's where HelloFresh comes in. You can cook up bold flavors from around the world without ever leaving your kitchen. You're talking Vietnamese, Moroccan, Caribbean cuisine. 80 plus global recipes every single month. I just got this incredible basil pesto pasta with chicken and it was absolutely delicious. And the best part, all the stress is gone. No recipe hunting, no ingredient sourcing. Everything arrives at your door pre-proportioned and ready to go. So, imagine cooking with lemongrass, curry paste, ingredients that usually mean takeout, but you're doing it at home because nothing hits like home cooking. Let's face it. I use this and you should try it. So, go to hellofresh. com/dleaf10m now to get 10 free meals. Amazing. Plus a free Nutri Bullet Ultra Plus, plus 2in1 compact kitchen system. a $189. 99 value on your third box. Free meals are applied on a discount on the first box, new subscribers only, and it varies by plan. Disclaimer, you must order the third box by May 31st, 2026. I have tried a lot of body care over the years, like shelves full, and I always end up circling back to OIA. There's just something about reaching for a product that consistently makes my skin look more radiant and feel smoother, and it turns a basic routine into a moment I actually look forward to. These seaweed powered clinically tested formulas are designed to deliver visible results, and honestly, it does show. Plus, they've got a full lineup, so no matter what your routine looks like, there is something that fits. Lately, I've been especially into Oia's Anderia Algie Body Oil. It's one of their bests sellers and it even won a 2025 URE best of beauty award. It's lightweight. It's fast absorbing. It's not greasy at all and it leaves my skin with this really beautiful healthy looking glow. The texture was the first thing that really got me. It just melts in and I usually apply it right after showering and I noticed my skin feels softer and smoother and just more subtle almost immediately. So, it's become part of my windown ritual, and it really helps create that sense of calm and serenity at the end of a busy day. And the results are backed up. A 2 week clinical study showed that 100% of participants had improved moisturization and elasticity, and they agreed that their skin felt softer, smoother, and looked firmer. So, get a springw worthy glow with clean, clinically tested skin care from OA. And right now we have a special discount just for our listeners. You can get 10% off your first order sitewide with the code leaf l e af at oia malibu. com.

So you're saying what am I supposed to do exactly that you're supposed to just be with yourself without filling up the space. Just let your mind wander. The ability to be bored and you may not even be bored. You might be quite interested when you actually start seeing what's going through your mind. Some of my clients have said that to me as they started this. They said, "I didn't even know I was thinking these things. " The ability to sit with nothing in your hands or doing something and just feel okay about this is fantastic. I tell you, the first 3 minutes will feel very uncomfortable. Your conscious mind will start generating a to-do list maybe or suddenly you remember something you forgot to do and you'll just have to bring yourself back. You'll start planning dinner or replaying a conversation or whatever. Just let your mind want it. It'll do that. But you just pull it back and just say, "I'm just going to relax. I'm just going to let my mind wander. I'm not going to do anything. It will try and stay busy because it's doing nothing feels wrong. So, you're going to feel like you need to do something. But what I want you to do is just let those thoughts flow. So, this discomfort is your conscious mind getting used to that shift from working alone to working with the nonscious. Because as you let your mind flow, you start tapping into your wisdom, your nonscious. So it's been on your conscious mind's been focused on external alerts so much in receiving data that sitting in silence feels a bit weird at first. It feels like you should be something doing something then your and your physiology adapted because you wired that in. You made a network of that. So don't fight that. Just notice it. That's the practice. Notice what happens when you stop. And I tell you the first time you do this, it really does feel very odd. But you will get used to it. The first few minutes are the hardest. And then once you're doing it, once you're observing, you are actually allowing your default mode network to work and you're actually starting to rewire networks. You're directing neuroplasticity. Instead of changes just happening randomly in your brain from the stimulation, you're directing what you're going to focus on. By minute five or six, something starts to shift. You'll find those high arousal emotions start to decrease a bit and the need to do something starts to ease. You might find yourself sitting more relaxed. And this is your neuroplasticity in action. Your mind is guiding your neurobiology to start reeregulating. So the constant searching for the next input starts to cut down. By minute 15, you'll understand something you've been avoiding. There will be some thought coming up. It's so interesting to see what comes up. You're actually pretty interesting to yourself when you're not distracted. And it turns out your head is less chaotic than you thought. It's wonderful exercise. And what you can do when you finish the 15 minutes, you could just make a note of what came up because there could be some really insightful things that come up or ideas suddenly generate some fantastic idea. Shut off, close your eyes, shut off the external world. Your ability to be alone with yourself will directly

determine how you show up in your closest relationships. So I do a lot of work with people on relationships and a lot of it starts with what you're doing with yourself. the regulation capacity that you build in solitude, it actually moves out into every interaction that you have. So, it builds a foundation for guiding good interaction in your relationships. It helps you listen better. It helps you respond handle conflict. It's because it's tapping into your wisdom. So, solitude starts being about you and then it becomes about everyone that you love, which is a beautiful part of it. One

partner expresses sadness about something that didn't actually work out. The other partner without capacity for solitude immediately tries to fix it. They make excuses. They problem solve. They distract. They do anything but sit with their partner's experience. Why? Because sitting with a sadness, even someone else's sadness, activates their own anxiety and they don't have the internal resources to tolerate it. The person without the solitude capacity just falls apart. They make it about themselves. They need reassurance. They can't be in the same room with someone without requiring some level of interaction. The person who can't be alone without stimulation is also with another person's silence or with their partner sadness without immediately trying to fix it or maybe their child's struggle without stepping in and solving it. They don't have the capacity to just be present without doing something, fixing something, turning their problem into something for someone else to solve. Now on the other side, conversely, the person who has developed the practice of solitude, true solitude, where they're comfortable sitting with themselves, processing their own thoughts, doing the reflection, all this good stuff I've been talking about, that person can actually be present with other people's experiences without needing to fix them or escape from them or make it about themselves. They can just sit with their partner's sadness and maybe just reach out and hold their hand and just say, "I'm sorry. " or without instantly trying to fix solve. They can listen to that friend's struggle without turning it into their own similar experience. Sometimes we just need to listen. They can be with their child's frustration without immediately trying to solve it. Just sit there and say, "I know it's difficult. " In other words, you can hold space. You can be the steady presence that actually allows someone else to work through what they're experiencing because you're not thrown off by that. So your relationship capacity is built in your solitude time, not in the time you spend with other people. yourself, it builds it so that you have more effective time with other people. Most of us have it backwards. We think that being in a better relationship means spending more time together, communicating more, being more available. And those things really do matter. I'm not saying that you don't do those, but they matter far less than your capacity to regulate yourself internally. When you regulate yourself internally, then you know how to do the rest in a very balanced way. I'm

actually curious at this point. I'd love you to drop a comment and tell me which one of these potentially with some of the things that I've said hits home for you. The relationship issue that came from not being able to regulate himself or herself. And if you can't be alone with yourself, just remember this. You're actually bringing that deficit into every single interaction. Everyone feels it. Your partner feels it. Your kids feel it. Your friends feel it. There's this unspoken pressure for them to fill your internal emptiness. The expectation that they keep you from having to be alone with yourself. And they can't do that. That's not their job. It's not your job to do it for someone else. It's not theirs you. Their job is not to keep you from feeling lonely. That comes from you. So when you build solitude capacity, something shifts in you and then transfers into relationships. there's less neediness and reactivity and expectation for other people to fix you. Sometimes people will say, "I've got to be in this relationship because I'm going to fix them. " Or, "I'm going in broken because I need that person cuz they're going to help me. " No, you've got to be working on yourself first. You can't expect someone else to do it. So, because you're not expecting the other person to do your internal regulation once you've got the solitude practice, you can be more balanced yourself. You're not asking them to fill a void that's yours to fill. You fill a void, not them. This is why alone time isn't selfish. It's the most generous thing you can do for the people that you love. The oxygen mask principle. Generous. Give it yourself so you can help others.

And then I just want to quickly talk a little bit about when kids are involved. First and foremost, you are you. You've got to get your own solitude practice going because your kids are watching everything. They're watching how you handle your own emotions, how you recover from frustration, how you manage your own internal world. They'll do what you do, not what you say. If you're always filling up your space with input or activity or responsiveness, you can be a busy person, but you've really got to show them that you can also have solitude. Your kids will learn that the wrong thing is normal otherwise. And this is how you need to show how you manage yourself. That being with yourself isn't something to avoid. It's something to celebrate. And then when they're stretched thin or anxious or struggling, if you've always been the one there to fix it, they don't know how to be with themsel. Then they reach for their phone or they need constant activity or they panic but they're looking for the external instead of the internal. They look for someone else to manage their feelings for them. They haven't learned the skill. So we need to teach that to him. And you teach it by modeling it. Just think about what happens when a child hasn't learned solitude. A pre-teen comes home from school and immediately asks for a ride to a friend's house or wants to start a new activity or gets on their device. They can't just sit with a boredom for 5 minutes without anxiety spiking. When they're frustrated, they can't talk themselves through it. They need a parent to intervene. When they're sad, they can't just sit with the sadness. They need distraction or reassurance. And in school, when they face a difficult assignment, they fall apart instead of pushing through. And when social dynamics shift, they catastrophize instead of processing. They don't have the internal resources cuz they haven't developed that sol that solitude practice. Nobody taught them. So, we really need we're doing our kids and ourselves such a favor when we teach. Talk about it. Show them how you do it. Teach that to them. And the discomfort's just temporary. Emotions pass. If you don't fight them, you'll move through. This is one of the best things that you can model for your kids. I've watched this shift dramatically in families who I've worked with. I've seen how they rebuild solitude capacity. The kids develop better emotional regulation, less reactivity, and more self-awareness. They become less dependent on parental parents rescuing everything, and they can manage their own internal experience. A parent told me that their teenage daughter actually said, "I'm going to my room to think for a while. " And I thought, "Wow, that's fantastic. That's such a success. It would have been unthinkable before, but she learned it was possible. " And this

is the part that makes me most frustrated about the busyness culture we are in. We've made it so hard to model this for our kids. The schedule is so packed. The expectation is constant availability. The guilt is relentless. And now parents are being bad for taking 15 minutes for themselves. 15 minutes for yourself is very good parenting. Okay, you otherwise you teach your kids that you don't matter and that's wrong because you do matter and then they reflect that on themselves and think they don't really matter. Their demands override your own needs. That's not a good thing to teach your kids that love means self arerasia. That's not the truth and that's unhealthy. real boundaries around your alone time actually teach your children something crucial about selfrespect and you are showing them that your internal life matters that you can take care of yourself that you're not available to manage their emotions or rescue them from every moment of discomfort that's something you need to be with yourself and that's okay that's a gift to them more important than any activity you could do together time isn't a luxury

it's not a treat you get after you've earned it through productivity it's a skill that you build It's essential. It's foundational. And if you don't build it and practice it, it's not going to become a habit. And you may have been avoiding it for all the reasons we've discussed. But this is something you can do. 15 minutes. That's all you have to dedicate. Start once a week. Build it up. Learn how to just switch off from the inter external and switch onto the internal. You're doing wonders for yourself, wonders for your family, wonders for your relationship, and wonders for the world because you are going to generate a creativity out of you that only you can generate. And everyone will benefit from that.