What solitary confinement taught me about surviving isolation (2020)
&gt; What I learned in the two years to follow was that I was trying to control something I had no control over, and I suffered as a result. In my third year, I began to journal. I discovered that my thoughts and my actions were the only two things I could control. It was a pivotal moment in my life. I went from being a victim of my circumstances to being a master of my destiny.<p>Almost every book and teaching mostly comes down to this. Whether is Viktor Frankl or good old CBT. I actually read a very good passage about this in a book called Hapiness Trap<p>- Choose anything you are aware of: a sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation, thought, feeling, movement, body part, material object—literally anything.<p>- Focus on that thing and observe it as if you were a curious scientist.<p>- As you’re observing it, notice who’s doing the observing.<p>- That’s all there is to it.<p>- In that moment, when you observe the observing, you are the observing self.<p>- So the moment you realise what is happening—that you’re fusing with stories or believing that you are the documentary—you can instantly step back and observe.<p>- Then all you need to do is notice that you’re observing and in that moment, there is the real you.