Quiet please!
Do you suffer from anxiety, memory loss, depression, and/or overwhelm?
A recent article from McKinsey caught my attention. “Noise, notifications, anxiety. Internally and externally, life has never been more distracting—which is why - finding moments of silence has never been more important.”
(July 8, 2022 Author Talks: Quiet!)
For years, I’ve been touting the need to carve out time for silence. In each of my coaching sessions, I ask my clients to spend some time sitting with their eyes closed. They learn to ‘drop into’ the stillness, where no talking is allowed. In the article, the authors presented how crucial it is that we begin to take the need for silence seriously.
As noted, “Noise isn’t just what we hear; it’s also what we see, think, and feel, and though the world has gotten noisier, our brains haven’t gotten any better at processing information. To avoid being overwhelmed by the magnitude of today’s stimuli, people should take time for quiet moments throughout the day—doing so might even regenerate nerve cells.” (Zorn and Marz).
In today’s overly noisy world, scientifically proven to be louder than at any time in history, finding mental clarity and maintaining our mental health may only be found when sitting in silence.
Your mind, quite simply put, needs a break. Carving out fifteen minutes a day in silence allows for your brain to reset and gain some much needed solitude.
Turn it down!
Silence also allows you to think more clearly and to tap into your intuitive (aka: internal) wisdom. Without silence, the small inner voice is inaudible. It simply won’t compete with the external clamor.
Can you compute?
With noise levels increasing, our ability to process incoming information is declining. You simply can’t mentally grasp all the sensory streams demanding your attention. This overload leads to memory loss and an increasing inability to make sense of the information with which you are presented.
Sparing you any more mental input, I’ll wrap this up with a simple fact:
Silence really is golden.
Make time for it.
Learn to love it.
Embrace silence as your most reliable antidote to all that the world throws at you.
Start there.
Start.