You Cannot See Your Reflection In Boiling Water

Stillness brings clarity. Clarity brings power.

James E. McGinley, PhD
3 min readJun 24, 2022
Water drop falling into pool of water.
Photo by César Couto on Unsplash

We all need some quiet time. Typically, it means getting away from all the external noise in our lives, such as overlapping demands, chaotic conversations, and pressure to do or think what others want us to. The result is we get saturated and overloaded. We just want to get away from it all for a little while.

We need a little quiet time so we can put ourselves into perspective.

Chaos creates confusion.

Each of us has a different level of tolerance for stress. We all tend to perform better under a light stress load. We need just enough tension and challenge to motivate us and inspire us to do our best. But when we have much stress, we perform worse as we become anxious and overloaded.

Regardless of our preferences, we won’t know them unless we take some time to quietly look at ourselves first. If we can do that and really learn about ourselves, then we can take on the world on our own terms, not its terms.

You can’t see your reflection in a pot of boiling water.

We need to shut down and get away from all the conflicting signals around us and look clearly at ourselves. This can take some time.

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James E. McGinley, PhD
James E. McGinley, PhD

Written by James E. McGinley, PhD

James McGinley, PhD is a professor, author, certified life coach, and licensed counselor.

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