The Noise Inside - I May Ruin This For You
In my work with the members of my various peer groups, I am privileged to get to know many highly successful people. These people are not only successful in business but also in their personal lives. Often, when we talk individually, the conversations are more personal, and we talk in depth about all sorts of things. One of the things I’m discovering is that it’s not just me, but many people have a lot of thoughts banging around in their heads, thoughts that often stand in conflict with other thoughts they might be having. This seems to be the norm. I’ve dubbed all these thoughts “noise”. And you know exactly what I am talking about. The thoughts, at their worst, keep us awake at night. But more insidiously, they sap creativity, they create decision fatigue, and simply wear us down.
So, I am using the word noise here, to be sure, in a pejorative way. It is a problem. It is not so much that it clouds our thinking as it is the actual cloud itself. It’s a cloud of thoughts. The thoughts just sort of appear and just sort of disappear too, often without any intervention from us. To me, it sometimes feels like I am “watching” an ongoing conversation that I am having with myself. The whole thing seems messy. It’s often difficult to really process something because of all the attendant noise that accompanies the thinking. What I know I want and, I suspect, what others want is less noise and more clarity. If only there were a way to quiet the noise. Well, what I’ve discovered is that there is.
So, let’s start with a sidebar of sorts. The words we use are intended to convey ideas, and often a given word means something to someone and perhaps something entirely different to someone else. Since I am about to use a word that I know has many different meanings (all valid), I want to try and avoid the possible confusion and take a moment to define what I am talking about with enough precision that we are all (hopefully) thinking about this in the way I intend.
There is a mental technique that I use that can help quiet the noise in one’s head. The word that I use to describe it is “meditation”. Again, there are many kinds of meditation, and I don’t profess to know if all of them offer this potential benefit or not. (I suspect not, however.) I’ve now been meditating for about 30 years and, at least with the methods I use, my meditation practices help quiet my all-too-active mind. Here is what I can tell you about what life is like when the noise disappears…it is marvelous. Probably 15 years ago, I was in the habit of meditating in the morning with a group of other men, a group meditation. (In my experience, meditating with others has a positive, compounding effect.) As I was walking back to my car, I realized that I was having no thoughts. I wasn’t “thinking” this, I was simply “aware” of it. The noise was completely gone, and what I was left with was something that sort of felt like nothing and everything, all rolled into one. (More about that in a moment.) It was fantastic. The noise slowly reappeared over the next half hour or so, but the “damage” was done. I now knew that I didn’t have to live with the dysfunctional noise. (And if you thought there was nothing you could do about the noise in your head, perhaps I have now ruined that idea for you, too!)
In the subsequent years, I’ve never had a duplication of that experience to the degree that I had then, but what has been happening to me is a gradual shifting. With the passage of time and my continued practice of meditating, the noise is not as “loud”; it is fading out of my awareness. It is so much easier to think than it used to be. Conversations get easier. Inner reactivity lessens. There is more creativity. Many things that once would have felt urgent and important are clearly not so important and not so urgent. There is less need to “reason” because the answers or options are simply more visible, unclouded (or at least less clouded) by those clouds of noise inside the head. So, it isn’t that the noise disappears, it’s that there are many positives that quietly arrive.
When I was talking about what it was like when the noise was completely gone that one morning, I said that I was left with something that felt like nothing and everything, all rolled into one. When the noise was completely gone, I was still aware. I was, in reality, more aware. I was much more in touch with who I really am and could see things much, much more clearly and cleanly. I was still Greg, but I was a better, truer version of me. (And even when the noise returns, some of that better lingers.)
The biggest problem most people have with sitting quietly and allowing thoughts to subside is that it feels like the antithesis of productivity, and virtually everyone in our Western culture values productivity, most of us to the point of some level of addiction to it. When we sit quietly, we often become antsy, as if we aren’t doing anything (and in a sense, that is true), and so we fidget. For many, this seems to trigger more thoughts, not fewer. Yep.
Here is an experiment you can do. You need to do this when you are alone and in a quiet environment. (Definitely not while driving!). Just sit in a comfortable posture, close your eyes, and put your attention, your awareness, on your breathing. Just watch it, feel it, hear it… experience it going in and out. Do not expect this to be a thought-free experience. Thoughts will appear, and that is OK. But when you realize you are thinking about the report that is due tomorrow, or what to have for lunch, or whatever, become aware that you are no longer paying attention to your breathing like you were before. So, just go back to doing that. (More thoughts will continue to come. There will be a lot of “going back”.) If you find yourself getting antsy, just realize that the “antsy-ness” and the attendant thoughts are just thoughts and go back to focusing on your breath. You know what will happen when you do all of this. Probably not much. Try it for about 10 minutes. But notice how you feel AFTER you do it. As one of my early meditation instructors told me, “Meditation is preparation for activity.” It is about what happens after you do it. When you are “doing it” properly, it is a non-doing. In my opinion, it should be easy, natural and effortless. Like seeing a sight, smelling a smell. If you are “trying” you are messing it up. (And there is normally a huge temptation to “try”!)
Then let me know how it went for you!
If you found this issue helpful and want to hear more from Greg, be sure to subscribe to his podcast, Pants Around Ankles Prevention, where each episode delivers a punch of truth to help you wake up, gain perspective, and live with greater clarity and purpose. Listen and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or YouTube.
This issue was originally published by Greg Hayne on Substack.