Silence.

Just the other day, I had a conversation with an 11-year-old who is very close to my heart. She mentioned she doesn’t like silence.

I hear that often. It bums me out.

I asked further exploratory questions.

Me: “Hm. Why do you think you don’t like silence?”
Her: *shrugs* “I don’t know, it makes me anxious.”
Me: “Do you think that’s something you could explore someday? Maybe start to exercise times where you have silence? Doesn’t have to be long.”
Her: “Hm, I don’t know.”

Let me explain why that bums me out.

First, I know, a lot of people don’t like silence. For various reasons.
-Maybe it makes you anxious, too.
-Maybe something happened that made it hard for you to have silence around you.
-Maybe you’re not used to silence because you have kids/siblings/pets.
-Unfortunately, I think we were also raised that way.

I mean, I get it.

We live in a fast-paced society.

Social Media is extremely noisy (both mentally, emotionally, & physically-as I explain here) and is part of most people’s every day (or every hour) life.

It’s quite the expectation of life these days to be on-the-go.

Silence is not typical for most people.

But what would happen if we cleared out some of those worries about sitting in silence, and actually started embracing it?

The complaint I hear most often about silence includes the overwhelming thoughts and feelings that can happen when you try.

Valid.

And to be honest, those things aren’t going to go away by filling the space with more noise. Or pushing it back further/avoiding it with more noise.

If anything, those thoughts and feelings will get louder when the silence occurs.

I like to introduce silence as a way to reset and reintegrate into the day. Learning to embrace silence is a skill that we aren’t quite born with. I mean, even babies don’t like silence.

We begin life with noise, and it’s up to us to figure out how to respond to that. Life isn’t quite fair when it comes to reducing the noise. Life is proven to increase the noise. That’s just what it does.

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So…what if we tried it?

-What if we ate breakfast without any visual noise (books/TV).
-What if we went on a walk, alone, without any physical noise (podcasts/music).
-What if we laid down at bedtime without any mental noise (thoughts/worries).

What do you think that would feel like? Or…what about if we did the hard work. What would it feel like, eventually?

Reach out, let’s find out how to help you feel comfortable with the uncomfortable.