Chris Williamson

We don't want to be left alone by ourself with ourself.

So we come in and we sit down and we get on our phone or we turn on the TV or we go wherever we do whatever because we don't want to face the reality of being by ourself with ourself.

Start making yourself a companion that you're comfortable with and become comfortable in your own skin.

I'm very comfortable in my own head.

I'm very comfortable alone for hours at a time for days at a time.

The one companion that's always going to be with you is yourself.

How so?

I believe that the most important daily practice that any one of us can do in the 21st century is a daily practice of solitude.

I want to say solitude.

I'm simply talking about time with yourself.

Start making yourself a companion that you're comfortable with.

If you get up and the first thing you do is start consuming from the outside, whether it's news, whether it's social media, even if it's good quality information,

you've lost an opportunity to listen to yourself.

If everyone rejects you, there's probably something wrong and it's probably deep and difficult and it's going to be horrible to fix.

And so this isn't a trivial problem.

The most important skill in the 21st century is the ability to live happily with uncertainty.

anxiety is all about uncertainty.

It's about trying to compress uncertainty down.

I don't know what's going to happen in future.

If I can imagine all of the different ways that the future might unfold, especially the really bad ones, I'll be able to plan and war game.