Taking time for yourself is essential because it allows you to accurately assess your state of mind and prevents you from rushing into something extraordinarily idiotic before you're ready. When you don't know enough about yourself, you have a tendency to make decisions based on what you want rather than what you need; the search for success turns into the search for immediate gratification, the pursuit of love turns into the pursuit of infatuation, the goal of self-improvement turns into the goal of just being "okay", etc. Without self-reflection, our ultimate potential is lost and we settle for those things that are easily and obviously attainable simply because they happen to be right in front of us.

The ability to stay still forces you to stop thinking about moving forward and start thinking about yourself in the present. Our current culture seems to have a fear of stagnation as if taking a moment to pause and do nothing (that means no working, no sleeping, no Netflix, etc.) would cause you to fall behind. This allows us to assess our failures in a way that is productive rather than unhealthy. By taking the time to think about the present, we are adequately analyzing the choices that led to our past mistakes; when we live in the future, we continue to overlook our failures in order to rush on towards the next ones. Appreciating the now allows you to appreciate yourself so that you have the ability to appreciate others.

Perhaps we need to be asking ourselves who we want to be right now rather than where we want to be in the future. Our plans will never turn out the way we imagine them because life always gets in the way. Therefore, we need to be able to adapt but we will never be able to do that if we don't take the time to learn how we work, how we function, how we were made. What kind of impression do you want to make in the world? How do you want other people to see you? How do you want God to see you? Do your words spoken to others match the ones in your mind? Are the values that you are pursuing the same as the ones in your heart?

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I'm not saying any of this is easy, but necessary. Without knowing ourselves, we will never be able to understand other people. That means we will never get to know someone. We will never know what it's like to be known. We will never know how to listen. We will never know when someone is in pain. We will never know if we are the cause of their pain. We will never know how to forgive. We will never know how to ask for forgiveness. We will never know how to love. We will never know how to be loved. What is left but ourselves? Who knows? Being inactive could be the most productive thing you ever do.