Quiet on the Set
Monday: How can I cut through the noise and get to what’s important?
I wish that my mind was like the television. I could just find where I last put the remote control and press a button to lower the volume of my brain. Even better have one of those fancy sound boards that you can raise and lower certain frequencies so I can raise the ones of the important sounds in my brain and lower the distractions. I am old enough that the first television remote control was having one of my parents tell one of us kids to get up and change the channel or turn the sound up or down.
We don’t have those things to use with our brain. We don’t have those things to use when interacting with other people. We have to do these things manually. There are many techniques to do so. Some of us have learned what works for us from books. Some of us have learned what works for us from watching YouTube videos. Some of us have found out what works for us through classes and seminars. Some of us have found what works for us simply from trial and error and getting to know our own minds and bodies. Some of us are still searching for something that works some, most, or all of the time. The key here is we need to find what works for us. Because something works for someone else does not mean it will work for me or you.
Some methods like meditation have been around for centuries. But even meditation has different schools, theories, and techniques to get that quiet mind. Sometimes it is more difficult to quiet the mind and once in a while it simply doesn’t quiet when we want it to. It is often better to have a “toolbox” full of methods to quiet the noise. Doctors have found that it is not good to give out antibiotics for every little calamity because the body grows resistant to them and when something serious comes along they may not help. Quieting the noise can be the same if we only use one method.
I want to talk about a couple of the things I have used that work for me. First of all like every doctor recommends with any physical or medical situation, early detection and intervention is the key. If I ignore the noise in my head it rarely goes away on its own. I have buried too many traumas from early in my life that took way longer to deal with when I finally got around to dealing with them to learn that. Some of the noise in my head is residual effects of things like that. If I deal with noise that is a nagging whisper it is much easier to manage than when it is screaming through the megaphone at me.
The technique that works best for me lately is active meditation. My hour plus swims of rhythmic repetition of muscle memory and a sound cadence often ends up Zen like. I focus on the breathing, the cadence, the feel of the water on my body and my brain quiets. My brain goes to what it sees as important. It might be a prompt I am struggling with. It might be a new writing idea. It might be just staying in the moment and realizing that worrying about things I can’t control like when my name is going to come up in the queue for the Covid19 vaccine takes place. Once I grasped that I was doing all I could by the way I was living and worrying would not bring me closer to getting my shots I grew much more at peace with the situation.
When something pops up in my brain when I am swimming, I ask myself if I have control over the situation. If the answer is no, I do my best to release myself from the worry. It often works. If the answer is yes, I ask a second question. Am I ready to do what is needed to change what I am thinking? If the answer is no, I again do my best to release myself from the worry. If I am not ready to make it a priority I need to realize I made my decision for the time being and let it go. If I say yes I work out a plan to deal with it.
A fresh example of that happened today during my swim. I was swimming along feeling the water on my skin, focusing on inhaling and exhaling. Going through my cadence thirty…..three…thirty…three and a thought jumped in my head it is 1 March. That day has no special meaning in the United States but in my other home of Romania it is Mărțișor, the traditional start of spring. Here we think of spring starting towards the middle of March. I put it in my mind to wish my friends there Happy Mărțișor. I was not consciously thinking about spring, it is just another rainy day here, but it has always been important for me to wish my friends there Happy Mărțișor on this day. The noise was out of my mind and my mind was free to think of this special day.
My second go to technique is based on how I know my mind works. I have an abstract-random brain. This means that things tend to pop into my brain when it wants them to do not necessarily when I want it to happen. This both works to the advantage and disadvantage to keeping a quiet mind. When something needs to be dealt with and I don’t have the solution handy. I will it out of my active thoughts. This is sometimes more difficult than others but most times it works. I am mentally putting it on a back burner. I am letting my mind know I am working on it but letting it simmer like you do things on the back burner of your stovetop. Usually within a couple days a solution idea pops up in my mind. The key here is that I am not telling my mind to forget about it, I am letting the natural processing method of my mind work on it the way it does best.
The other time noise comes into play is when you are talking with people. The words to not match with the other information you are getting. An extreme example is a hysterically crying person telling everyone they are fine. The signals are usually much more subtle, but the body language doesn’t match the words. The emotion doesn’t match one or the other. Your gut feeling is telling you what you are being told it not right. The empath in you is getting mixed signals.
When this happens I go from actively listening to hyper listening. I focus on body language. I reach down to my empathic self and switch it to high. I feel the words as well as listen to the meaning. It is often that they are not lying as much as they are not ready to face the situation themselves and thus are not ready to share it with anyone else. It would be wonderful if people that are in our inner circle would say something like “I have a lot of shit going on and I haven’t even processed it enough for me to deal with or resolve and you might not be the right person to talk to about it right now.” That is a lot to say instead of “Everything is great, never been better.” We have to give people in our lives the space to deal with things as they do. You can let them know if they do wish to speak about it that you are there for them. Pushing them is rarely going to help the situation. A hug when it is back safe to do that with people might help if they are the type of person to accept them.
Those are some of the things I do to quiet the noise. I am looking forward to see what works for other people. That is the other great part about these prompts we get to share about us and learn about others.
Peace be with you
