Ep. 75 Kerri Sackville on the power of solitude, tips for turning inward and the great cost of avoiding ourselves.

Kerri Sackville is a writer and columnist for Sunday Life magazine in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. She’s also the author of five books, including her most recent, The Secret Life of You – How a Bit of Alone Time Can Change your Life, Relationships, and Maybe the World! 

Now, those listeners who know me well, know that even though I’m endlessly curious, I am not a voracious reader of books, and although I own thousands of books I’m more of a skim reader than a cover-to-cover gal. 

So I even surprised myself when I deep-dived into Kerri’s latest book, and found myself highlighting like a kinder kid who’s drunk too much red cordial!

In this conversation, Kerri explains that while we want and crave solitude, we avoid it like the plague, and when we do have alone time, we often fill the space with distractions including other people, or technology, work, or TV rather than becoming more deeply acquainted with ourselves. 

In this illuminating and perhaps at times, confronting chat (confronting because truth bells were ringing for this pod-host), we discussed the oddly non-sensical societal rules of solitude that leave many of us feeling that there while alone time is acceptable in small doses, being in the company of others is often sold to us as the norm and the ideal.

Whether the struggle to sit with solitude relates to our relationship status, patterns of work, family and home set up, expectations, friendship circles, personality style, belief systems, fears, or our social media usage, Kerri shares her own awakenings and the significant benefits of alone time, lamenting that she wished she had turned inwards earlier and not waited until she was single, after her 17 year marriage ended, to figure our who she was!

While we all know that down time is vital and being with ourselves provides a richness like no other, it’s easy to over-ride or avoid this need. Reading Kerri’s book was a slap-in-the-face wake-up-call to me and she adeptly explains why in this illuminating episode.

Here’s my chat with Kerri…

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Guest: Kerri Sackville
Links: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn
Hosts: Sabina Read and Mads Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with previous guests :)

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