There is so much noise and notifications surrounding us each day, practically each minute we get inundated with these distractions with all the apps we have in our smart phone. How then can we lessen the noise and not let “Decision Fatigue” take over our lives? Most of us feel that we need all the apps in order to be notified and updated with everything that goes on in our life, society and the world. With so much information overload, our brain is vigorously working to decide what is important and what is not important. Therefore, ultimately it goes into a state of decision fatigue where we just don’t make any actionable decisions and let the responsibility fall onto someone else. As a consequence, we feel like our life is meaningless, and we have no control over it. Loneliness starts to creep up inside and the cycle continues over and over again each day. Hence we become short tempered, highly emotional, and judgmental and not our best self.
The only way to overcome decision fatigue and loneliness is to find “Solitude” As explained by Neel Burton M.D in Psychology Today- “On this account, loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of meaning from the universe, an absence that is all the more glaring in modern societies which have sacrificed traditional and religious structures of meaning on the thin altar of truth. Our unconscious requires solitude to process and unravel problems, so much so that our body imposes it upon us each night in the form of sleep.”
We know we can find solitude in sleep at night but what about during the day? By meditating in prayers during the day, solitude can be attained. We can begin to eliminate distractions, oppressive thoughts and opinions from our mind. Letting our mind be free of “ourselves” and our selfish needs, allows for more room for a closer connection to our humanity and spirituality. There will be no place for loneliness and decision fatigue because we will have a clear sense of ourselves, our purpose and meaning in life.