Used for a moment, isolation favors reflection and the surge of great ideas. As a lifestyle, it erodes our creativity and well-being. No human being is self-sufficient, no country can live in autarky, not even bodies of water can keep nurturing life without receiving from and giving to other elements in nature.

Left unattended, feelings of guilt wreak havoc on our happiness, energy level, and future. We must understand them as signals that our behavior was out of sync with our beliefs and values. Instead of beating up on ourselves, thus setting up conditions for repeating the same mistakes, we must embrace hope and change. 

If your bank accounts leave much to be desired, why don’t you check your hospitality skills? Treat people, in particular those around you, as if they were staying in your own homes, just like Berdine. Your hospitality skills in action will turn you into a magnet for happiness and prosperity.

If you apply the advice of Benjamin Franklin, you will realize that “Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy.” Therefore, the question should not be why a task is so difficult, but how you can develop the pertinent skills and habits to perform the task. Once you improve your brain power, incredible achievements will follow. Develop industry, and most of all develop yourself.

It is in your best interest to resist the attraction of loneliness and to get involved through a grouping of your liking. In addition to serving and impacting your community, you will satisfy your need to belong and find opportunities to learn and grow. By all means, get organized and involved.

If we don’t choose our values deliberately, we get them by default from our upbringing, the school we attended, and the groups we hung out with. These default values cause us to reproduce the patterns we have been exposed to and makes it very difficult to change aspects of our lives we don’t like.