We live in a very noisy world where people are constantly shouting over each other. Where we fight with others to convince algorithms to give us more time and space. We fight with others as well as with ourselves to grab more people’s attention.
With each post, video, blog, podcasts that we create, we are only adding more to the noise.
We feel overwhelmed, we struggle to focus and concentrate because there’s simply too much out there fighting for our attention.
We are so used to this constant noise, that when we can sit in silence for a moment, we get anxious, and our brain will amp the volume on our inner thoughts to fill the silence with internal noise.
There is no escaping to the noise!
It’s either coming from the outside, or it’s coming from our inside. It’s within us, and it’s making us go crazy.
What can we do about this?
We can really learn to focus, to pay close attention to fewer things, to be more selective and purposeful with how we spend our time, and how we use our limited attention.
We can also choose not to add to the noise. We can choose to post less, focus more on the quality and longevity of our posts, and to engage more with posts from others. We can focus on getting into deeper, more meaningful conversations around topics that truly mattered to us
We can also learn to sit with this, at first uncomfortable, feeling of inner noise.
That’s where mindfulness meditation, yoga, journaling, breathing exercises, gratitude, and other “slow” intentional practices come to play.
I love them all. They have different energy and impact on my life and I feel more inclined to do one or the other at certain times. It’s great to know that I have these tools in my back pocket, ready to be used when I needed them.
But the practice is crucial. Imagine that you have an amazing multifunctional Swiss knife in your back pocket, just in case. But you never used it before. And when there is a crisis, and you need to use one of its many functions, you end up cutting yourself because you didn’t know how to use it.
It’s similar to these good, helpful, practical tools I mentioned above. They can be used as a quick fix, but they work the best if you practice using them regularly in a safe and secure environment.
Then, when you truly need them, you will have them handy and know how to use them. They will automatically come to you and you will be able to use them to calm the inner noise or to navigate through the external noise.
* The End *
I hope that you enjoyed this a little different piece of writing. It came to me when practising free writing using one of the creative writing prompts shared by Alexandra Galviz in her latest #AuthenticAlex Newsletter.
