How doing nothing can change everything.
Silence isn’t just golden; it’s essential.
Have you ever tried going into an empty room, closing the door behind you, sitting on the floor with your eyes closed, and existing only with silence and your thoughts for 10 minutes?
For a lot of us, that’s a pretty terrifying thought. I mean, who really goes to the bathroom without their phone in their hand, or falls asleep without a show or podcast on in the background? Who works their 9–5 without putting on ear buds and listening to their go-to Brain Food playlist?
The Great Distraction
Nowadays, it’s incredibly difficult to disconnect from some form of entertainment. With infinite sources of information and distractions at our disposal, we can’t help but gorge on anything and everything that’ll keep our brains engaged. How many times have you caught yourself binge watching a show that you really don’t care about or just incessantly scrolling through your phone for no reason whatsoever? It could be our short attention spans, it could be FOMO, or we may just be desperate distract ourselves from what scares us the most: our own thoughts.
A quick search online will lead you multiple studies that have (possibly unsurprisingly) concluded that rates for anxiety and depression-related disorders have steadily increased over the last century and have reached unprecedented levels in the last decade. Why is that? The world’s a crazy place, I get it, but it’s always been that way, right?
Today’s brain has been conditioned for constant stimulation. Leave yourself to your thoughts for more than a few seconds and most of us will start to feel that insatiable itch to reach out and touch our phones. We try to shoo our fears and anxieties away through entertainment instead of facing our thoughts head on. Why not? It’s easier that way. Being plugged into something at all times is the norm now. But is it normal?
What Silence Does to Your Brain
We all have anxieties and troubling thoughts that linger in the backs of our minds, whether we like them or not. We’re stressing about losing money, our failing dreams, our broken relationships, etc., but we can’t solve these problems if we don’t give our brain the time and silence it needs to take a deep breath, relax, and figure things out.
A recent Healthline.com article states that there are several psychological and even physical benefits to giving your brain a little peace and quiet every once in a while.
These benefits include:
- lowering blood pressure
- improving concentration and focus
- calming racing thoughts
- stimulating brain growth
- reducing cortisol
- stimulating creativity
- improving insomnia
- encouraging mindfulness
So do yourself and your brain a favor. Find a quiet spot, set a timer on your phone for ten minutes, place that phone outside the room and shut the door on it. Sit on the floor or on your favorite chair, close your eyes, and for once, just be present.
Call it meditation, call it distraction dumping, call it whatever you want, so long as you use the time to truly experience your mind.
It might feel like the longest ten minutes of your life the first time you try it, but make it a regular habit and you may realize that you actually enjoy listening to yourself, hearing your own ideas, and experiencing these small increments of tranquility. It’s said that our mind experiences over 6,000 thoughts a day, aren’t you interested in what yours has to say?
