How do you feel about quiet time? For many of us, sitting quietly feels like doing nothing. If you feel that doing something or at least saying something creates a feeling of control, quiet time can be disturbing. Many of us are in love with our own noise so we constantly attack silence.

Author Thomas Merton once observed that many of us fear silence because we sense we may hear the sound of our own suffering, and the suffering of the world, and in a single moment our hearts will turn over and grow old.

Why do we need quiet time? On a primitive level, silence with ourselves offers clarity and solutions to problems and concerns that only we can answer. It can also reveal what is important to you in this vehicle we call "life."

Check out the lives of the great religious leaders. You will find each one of them spent considerable time alone. Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed and Gandhi all spent time in solitude away from the distractions of life.

Dictator Adolph Hitler and comedian Tim Allen both used forced solitude (jail time) to completely change their lives, albeit totally different paths. Hitler created his famous book Mein Kampf and Tim Allen put together his comedy routine that made him a household name.

Many of us fail to tap our creative inner power because we confer with everyone else except ourselves. We don't trust our own thoughts. We shun independent thinking and turn to newspapers, radio and friends to find out what they think. This leads to a lack of purpose, a lack of personal stability and uncertainty of making decisions.

David Schwartz, Ph.D., author of the book The Magic of Thinking Big sponsored a professional development program. As part of the instruction, he requested the trainees to shut themselves off from all distractions for one hour each day for two weeks. Each was asked to think constructively about anything that came to mind.

After two weeks each trainee, without exception, said the experience proved amazingly practical and worthwhile. The trainees enthusiastically reported they had gained a much better understanding of his/her strengths and weaknesses than they had ever had before.

Each trainee also discovered something else that was very significant. They found that decisions and observations made alone in managed solitude have an uncanny way of being 100% accurate. They realized when the fog is lifted the right choice becomes crystal clear.