At a silent meditation retreat one day someone’s phone broke the silence announcing “navigation failure”.  I laughed.  This captured my daily experience.

As introverts we are challenged by the culture’s default navigation system that goes a hundred miles an hour to a hundred different exciting places. Trying to keep up we are exhausted at best. The fast pace, fast talking, multitasking reality tends to leave us cold. We feel like we are coming up short, not keeping up, not achieving enough.

“Navigation failure.”

Introverts we need to follow our own GPS. 

By this I mean GO AT THE PACE YOU WANT. DO WHAT YOU WANT.

How often do we do what an extroverted partner, child or friend wants to and sell our preferences down the river? Definitions of fun are defined by an extrovert-oriented culture. Therefore it becomes even more imperative that we assert our own desires.

Follow your own GPS.

What brings you joy? Do what is fun for you. Honor your pace and style.

For me I experience a lot of joy in silence. I love meditation and silent retreats. It slows me down, allows me to reconnect with myself, to experience my own inherent joy and creativity.  Recently I found a wonderful place in Maryland called Dayspring. Their sole purpose for existence is to help people honor silence and solitude in their lives more. How delicious!

So on a Tuesday I went on a 4 hour silent retreat. At first that nagging other GPS was in my head telling me I couldn’t afford to take the 4 hours from my busy work week to go to a silent retreat. Yet once I settled into the silence, 3 great work ideas popped up – two of which I’ve already implemented with great results. The silence allowed me to be productive!

At times in the past my deep yearning for silence and solitude is an aspect of myself I submerged. Going on retreat was boring, it wasn’t “cool” or I was dissing my family by choosing to spend my time away from them. Plus I had too many important things to “do”. These evaluations came from following an extroverted GPS – not my own.

When we follow our own GPS good things happen.

As Henry David Thoreau says in his final chapter in Walden “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”