“Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.”
— Wayne Dyer
Are you listening? Not so much to anyone in particular, but to yourself and to your world? Or are you just responding?
There is SO much f*cking NOISE right now.
More than anything, there’s a cacophony of everyone trying to DO something, to create something, quickly…out of fear. And it’s making it that much harder to just listen.
But listening is what we need to all be doing right now.
Our world, it seems, has hit the big “pause” button in the sky. And that’s an opportunity for us. In the midst of this pause, of this open road, you have two choices: you can create just anything just so you feel and appear busy, or you can be brave enough to lean into the silence and recalibrate yourself and your world!
I don’t know about you, but for me, this period of stillness, uncertainty, and pause can feel scary. In a world that is in constant overdrive, we’re not used to being still.
U n d e r P r e s s u r e
On every social media app, you’ll see hundreds of people offering free courses, rushed-out videos, and downloadable this and that. You’ll see people advising, and prescribing, and chastising. You’ll see friends letting you know that they got in their workout this afternoon.
This bombardment of activity may inspire you, or it may just make you feel guilty. You must do SOMETHING, it screams at you. You MUST make use of this time because If you don’t raise your voice and say something, you won’t matter.
Unfortunately, amid that noise, it has become harder to listen, understand, and empathize — which makes it that much harder to respond in a way that might actually be meaningful.
So many people are so busy doing something, that they are leaving no room to do something that matters.
When we sleep (hopefully for 7-9 hours!), our bodies and brains get a chance to rest. It takes those 7-9 hours of silence — of stillness — for things to recharge and reset so that we can prepare ourselves for the next day of action-packed fun and functionality.
The quality of that sleep also matters. If we have a particularly active sleep, we have a harder time functioning the next day, whereas a deeper sleep in which our brains find a theta, or delta frequency, is optimal for healing and cell-turnover.
In the same way, we would be wise to use this time of quiet, pause, and uncertainty, to give ourselves the opportunity to rest, to heal, and to prepare for the action that comes next.
Intelligently finding our footing as the world turns upside down demands that you allow for a space of silence to exist. It’s the only way that you will ultimately be able to function at a higher level. And that’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss.
