April 19, 2024 • 20 mins
In this thought-provoking episode, join De Hicks as he talks about understanding the power of silence and its unexplored benefits in our fast-paced, noise-dominated society. Hear how silence can transform your leadership and personal life in ways you may have forgotten.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When was the last time that you were in silence for more than just an accidental moment?
Can you even remember that? Well, I'd like to suggest that the great challenge
that you and I face today is not like Chuck Yeager's challenge breaking the sound barrier,
but our challenge today is breaking the silence barrier.
(00:23):
Music.
Hi, I'm Dee Hicks, and welcome to the School of Leadership, leveraged lessons
from high-impact leaders.
For the past 30 years, I've researched the disciplines, habits,
(00:47):
mental models, and assumptions of the most effective leaders.
This podcast takes what I've learned from over 2,000 of these influencers and
distills it into practical tools and tips you can use immediately.
Music.
(01:15):
It was 1947. That was the year that Chuck Yeager flew his Bell X-1 aircraft to about 45,000 feet,
way above California's Mojave Desert, and he broke the sound barrier that's flying just over Mach 1.
Before that accomplishment, scientists and engineers and pilots,
(01:40):
even Chuck Yeager himself, didn't know what would happen if an aircraft flew
faster than the speed of sound.
There'd been a lot of previous attempts by others, even by Yeager himself,
and some of those had ended in catastrophe.
So Chuck Yeager had attempted himself to reach that Mach 1 several times before,
but had failed. But on October 14th, Yeager succeeded.
(02:05):
But just two nights before his scheduled flight, Yeager broke two ribs falling off a horse.
He was in a lot of pain, and instead of going to a military doctor to get checked
out, he went to a civilian doctor who said, said, yep, you broke two ribs and
just tightly taped them together.
(02:25):
Jaeger told only one other person that he was about to fly the next day with broken ribs.
That was his friend and fellow project pilot, Jack Ridley.
And that injury was quite painful. And he knew that if he did not fly,
he would not get a chance for quite some time.
Most people expected that the breaking of the the sound barrier that,
(02:47):
of course, like I said, is flying faster than the speed of sound.
That's outrunning your own sound waves.
Traveling in dry air, that means you're going to be flying at about 770 miles per hour.
So most people thought that there would be a traumatic shaking to the aircraft
and the aircraft would break apart and the pilot would die.
(03:07):
But Jaeger, when he got back on the ground and folks asked him what was it like
to break the sound barrier, said, you know, it was like putting my finger through jello.
He was a bit surprised by that.
Well, you know, we've been going faster and faster and faster ever since.
Our lives are noisier, we're surrounded by sound, and we place a great deal
(03:32):
of value you on speed and on learning how to do things more and more and more
efficiently and faster and faster and faster.
Today, we live in near constant sound. We fill every moment of our lives with sound.
Back in 2008, that's really before the advent of the ubiquitous smartphone that
(03:53):
came out the year before, American adults experienced, as near as we can tell,
a little over an hour of of silence every single day.
And that was real silence. That is no noise, absolute quiet,
no noise, about an hour every day.
Of course, that's not 60 or 65 minutes all strung together.
(04:15):
It might've been 10 minutes here and 20 minutes there and 30 minutes here and
30 minutes there, something like that.
But now fast forward to where we are today.
Some of the more recent study suggests that we have about 12 minutes of silence per day.
And that's research around those who live in urban environments.
(04:36):
Because of connectivity, even those who live in suburban or rural environments
have even about 16 to 18 minutes of silence per day.
And again, not all strung together in one block.
Connectivity, for all it's done wonderfully for us, has increased our noise
levels and our input levels and our stimulus levels, and digital connectivity
(05:01):
has begun to change our ability to focus.
It has, to borrow a phrase, stolen our focus. But you know that.
You know that as well as I do.
And now we have a couple of big challenges that come with this noisy world in which we live.
We have a challenge of creating silence And of knowing what to do with it when
(05:22):
we get it When was the last time that you were in silence For more than just an accidental moment?
Can you even remember that? Well, I'd like to suggest that the great challenge
that you and I face today Is not like Chuck Yeager's challenge breaking the
sound barrier But our challenge today is breaking the silence barrier.
(05:46):
So why do we even need silence? We know that for all of us, our brain cell growth
and development is dependent to a large degree on silence.
Silence increases cell density in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
The hippocampus is associated with learning and memory and emotional regulation,
(06:09):
while the prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision-making and concentrated
focus and problem-solving and also emotional regulation.
In a Duke University study that I ran across,
they discovered that two hours of silence per day dramatically increases new
cell creation in the hippocampus and in portions of the prefrontal cortex.
(06:33):
So we need silence for our brain to grow and heal and develop itself.
There's a second reason why we need silence, and that's for stress relief.
Silence can release the grip of stress responses in our brain and in our body.
A study that I also ran across commissioned by the
(06:54):
journal Heart concluded that just
two minutes of silence was more effective in relieving physical and mental tension
and stress and fear than listening to 10 times as much of relaxing music or
even 30 minutes spent in mindfulness apps or music.
(07:15):
Mindfulness practices like that app Calm, for example.
Silence reduces cortisol. It lowers our blood pressure.
It increases serotonin and the availability of serotonin to the brain and to the body.
Silence is very good for us. Here's the third thing we found.
Silence helps us improve our memory.
(07:37):
It helps improve long and short-term memory, and it results in better judgment
and and better decision-making because as you probably know.
Our judgment is really a function of memory.
We are able to remember a bunch of small and large details and see them all
at once and then make connections between them and that's called judgment.
So silence improves our memory, which then enables us to get better judgment.
(08:01):
Here's the fourth thing we've learned. For mindfulness, there's a benefit for silence.
Now, mindfulness, in the way I'm using it, means we're able to focus and be
here, right here, right now, and not somewhere else.
We're not being batted around by the emotional or circumstantial pressures of others outside of us.
So silence promotes the ability for you and I to be here, right here,
(08:24):
right now, and fully fully engage with people around us or with our surroundings
and with our experiences to be, like I said, right here, right now.
Silence enables us to get better at doing that.
So there's another benefit of silence, and that is for creativity.
Silence helps us to unlock creativity as long as we don't spend that silence
(08:48):
time ruminating, petting the fur off of something and worrying and worrying and worrying.
I was going to do that with our silence. Silence helps us emerge from that silence more creative.
There's also a benefit for sleep when we've practiced a little bit of silence in the day.
So practicing deliberate moments of silence throughout the day,
(09:08):
especially in the last 45 minutes or so, maybe 60 minutes before you go to bed,
practicing a little bit of silence significantly improves the quality of our sleep.
So the list of benefits of you and I Getting in a space every day and practicing
a few minutes of just silence goes on and on and on and on.
(09:30):
Silence is good for us, but we have to break the barrier of silence.
Perhaps our lives have that barrier everywhere we go.
We have to therefore work at it
since our world doesn't give us very many moments of accidental silence.
(09:50):
Our twitchy, dopamine-addled brain causes us in any moment of silence to reach
for our phones and try to figure out what to do to occupy our brains.
So maybe we have to deliberately break the barrier between all the noise and
silence that we need so we can enter into that valuable practice of silence
(10:14):
and experience those benefits.
Well, how do you break the silence barrier? barrier. I practice silence regularly.
And here's what I have learned. Number one, I have had to learn that silence,
as I mentioned above, has huge benefits.
I have to recognize the value of it.
And the value is often not experienced when I'm in silence, but it's afterwards.
(10:40):
So number two, I need to notice how challenging this really is.
There is resistance all around me and within me to being silent.
Our world is not built the way we've created it in the last while to reward
silence or to make silent places.
Here's the third thing I've learned. It's set some realistic expectations, I would recommend.
(11:03):
You won't really feel like creating a few moments of silence every day.
You won't feel like it at all. You won't feel like you're being productive.
You feel like you need to jump up and run around and get some stuff done, right?
And those of you who are real extroverts. It might be harder than for those
who are introverts, but it's still challenging for both folks,
both types of folks along that spectrum.
(11:25):
Here's the fourth thing I've learned. I need to plan for that silence.
I need to schedule it. And I learned to start small with a few minutes every day in just silence.
There's no music. There's no talking.
There's no book in the background. I started small,
and now I have a few more minutes every day that I'm able
to do that you'll feel like somebody is threatening
(11:46):
your addiction by the way when you do that to sit silently or
to go for a walk silently and not engage and
not have music in your ear or not have some other kind of
external stimulus of cacophony of
noise and you deliberately decide to just be silent for a little bit of time
you'll find that someone's trying to it'll feel like someone's trying to take
(12:06):
your bottle away from you right so another thing i learned in order to get this
these moments of silence in my day and in my life is I need to make the silence real.
To listen to a book is not silence. And I love audible books.
I really like them. To listen to music or a podcast like this one or any of
the other ones that you might be listening to, those are hopefully really valuable
(12:28):
for you, but that's not silence.
So silence means there are no intentional external inputs.
Silence is pretty simple to understand. It's just silence.
Now, if it's noise or input from nature like wind or water or something like
that, of course, that's fine.
Silence is to try to achieve a place where the noise that is created by us in
(12:53):
our society is managed so that there's none of it around me.
Here's the sixth thing. So I need to practice silence, either sitting still
or moving. Either way works.
But if you can take a few minutes and be absolutely silent with no intentional
inputs and no distractions, whether you're walking or whether you're sitting,
works really, really well.
(13:14):
Seventh thing I've learned is to calm your mind and your body as you step into that silence.
Just take a breath and just start to slow that Jack Russell Terrier on cocaine
brain that you've got down just a touch and step into the silence for just a few minutes.
Here's the eighth thing I've learned. To slowly expand the length of time that
(13:37):
I spend in silence from a couple of minutes to a few more minutes to a few more minutes as time goes on.
And and as i begin to experience or notice the benefits of silence then that
makes it easier for me to to build that discipline into that practice into my
life so the ninth thing is like i mentioned a little bit earlier but now more
(13:58):
specifically notice that you're probably going to feel pretty.
Unproductive it's okay if you're a driven person if you're an extroverted person
if you're a high energy person it'll be probably a little harder for you to
break the silence barrier a few minutes every day, but you still need it.
In fact, you may need it even more than other folks do.
(14:19):
Here's the 10th idea. Don't evaluate this practice of silence if you can put it into your life.
Don't evaluate it like you would evaluating a phone call or any kind of work
that you've been doing or a conversation you have with somebody.
Don't evaluate silence like that. Just do it.
After you've practiced breaking that silence barrier for a little while,
(14:40):
you're going to begin to see the the benefits, but don't evaluate it right after you do it.
Here's the 11th idea. Later, as you get a little bit better at having a few
moments of silence every day, take opportunities when they accidentally come up.
I'm talking now about those accidental ones that are kind of rare.
And don't fill them up with just noise because it seems like an awkward, silent moment.
(15:06):
Maybe you're in the car by yourself, and I would recommend that you don't answer
the phone, Don't return a phone call. Don't turn on a music.
Don't turn on a book or something like that. Just sit silently in the car while
you're driving for a few minutes and notice what happens.
Maybe at home you will find a rare opportunity for things to be silent at home.
(15:28):
And don't fill it up with noise. Just see what happens in your mind and your
heart and your soul when you step into that silence.
Think of breaking the silence barrier. And the barrier is almost all internal.
Our need to have noise around us because we don't like ourselves when we're silent.
I don't know, maybe that's not you.
Also, you want to resist the need to fill silence in conversations when it occurs.
(15:54):
You want to resist the need to fill silence all over the place.
You'll notice it quite a bit as soon as you start to practice a little bit of silence.
So when space opens up in your calendar too, you might want to realize that,
oh, I don't have to fill that in with with frenetic activity,
because I've practiced this not filling in silent moments with noise.
Maybe I can, if there's a little bit of a gap in my calendar,
(16:17):
I can not rush forward to fill that in.
So you'll find that as you practice silence a little bit here and a little bit
there and a little bit every day in true silence, just take a breath and sit
in that silence for a while, that you will not feel as frenetic as you go through your day.
You'll also find that when When there's some silence in the conversation around
(16:38):
you, you will not feel the need to jump in and finish someone's sentences.
You'll probably find yourself listening a little bit better.
This is a very, very old practice. It's not some brand new thing and it's not
some fancy thing. It's just really simple.
You've probably got a very, very challenging job that requires you to be on
(16:59):
all the time and to be focused and to perform at a pretty high level.
Most of you who are listening to this podcast are leaders or managers or supervisors
or your influencers in some way and people look to you to have good judgment
and they look to you to be able to manage your own emotions and not expect them
to manage their behavior so that you don't have certain emotions,
(17:19):
right? So people look to you.
One of the ways that you can be what Bowen called the non-anxious presence is
for you to be a person who practices a moment here and a moment there of a discipline of silence.
Just a fun thing to think about, but even more than that, it will deeply enrich
your ability to work with and lead people.
(17:41):
And it'll enable you to be pretty resilient as time goes on as well.
So Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and he said it was like putting his finger through jello.
I want to challenge you to notice how noisy your world is and your life is and
to break the silence barrier by creating a few moments every day at the the
(18:04):
beginning of the day, the end of the day,
wherever you can intentionally create those moments where you can be truly silent for just a few minutes.
Get over the discomfort of it because it'll be very uncomfortable the first few times you do it.
And then you'll notice how incredibly valuable it is as you build that practice.
All right. Hey, maybe, maybe you could do it right now.
(18:26):
Maybe as this podcast comes to an end, you can break the silence barrier.
It'd be be fun to hear from you. Like, yeah, I was silent for a minute and a
half and just about lost my freaking mind.
Anyway, we need you to do good work. You're doing good work.
We need you to do it for a long period of time.
So this is one of the simple practices you can put in place that will enable
you to be a bit more resilient and robust in your job.
(18:51):
Well, thanks for visiting with me today. Thanks for taking a few minutes to listen to the podcast.
I do not have a bourbon review to go with you today.
And I do not have a cigar review. Ah, well, maybe next time.
Well, for sure. Next time we do a podcast, I'll have some of that for you. Hey, take care.
Music.
When was the last time that you were in silence for more than just an accidental moment?
Can you even remember that? Well, I'd like to suggest that the great challenge
that you and I face today is not like Chuck Yeager's challenge breaking the sound barrier,
but our challenge today is breaking the silence barrier.
(00:23):
Music.
Hi, I'm Dee Hicks, and welcome to the School of Leadership, leveraged lessons
from high-impact leaders.
For the past 30 years, I've researched the disciplines, habits,
(00:47):
mental models, and assumptions of the most effective leaders.
This podcast takes what I've learned from over 2,000 of these influencers and
distills it into practical tools and tips you can use immediately.
Music.
(01:15):
It was 1947. That was the year that Chuck Yeager flew his Bell X-1 aircraft to about 45,000 feet,
way above California's Mojave Desert, and he broke the sound barrier that's flying just over Mach 1.
Before that accomplishment, scientists and engineers and pilots,
(01:40):
even Chuck Yeager himself, didn't know what would happen if an aircraft flew
faster than the speed of sound.
There'd been a lot of previous attempts by others, even by Yeager himself,
and some of those had ended in catastrophe.
So Chuck Yeager had attempted himself to reach that Mach 1 several times before,
but had failed. But on October 14th, Yeager succeeded.
(02:05):
But just two nights before his scheduled flight, Yeager broke two ribs falling off a horse.
He was in a lot of pain, and instead of going to a military doctor to get checked
out, he went to a civilian doctor who said, said, yep, you broke two ribs and
just tightly taped them together.
(02:25):
Jaeger told only one other person that he was about to fly the next day with broken ribs.
That was his friend and fellow project pilot, Jack Ridley.
And that injury was quite painful. And he knew that if he did not fly,
he would not get a chance for quite some time.
Most people expected that the breaking of the the sound barrier that,
(02:47):
of course, like I said, is flying faster than the speed of sound.
That's outrunning your own sound waves.
Traveling in dry air, that means you're going to be flying at about 770 miles per hour.
So most people thought that there would be a traumatic shaking to the aircraft
and the aircraft would break apart and the pilot would die.
(03:07):
But Jaeger, when he got back on the ground and folks asked him what was it like
to break the sound barrier, said, you know, it was like putting my finger through jello.
He was a bit surprised by that.
Well, you know, we've been going faster and faster and faster ever since.
Our lives are noisier, we're surrounded by sound, and we place a great deal
(03:32):
of value you on speed and on learning how to do things more and more and more
efficiently and faster and faster and faster.
Today, we live in near constant sound. We fill every moment of our lives with sound.
Back in 2008, that's really before the advent of the ubiquitous smartphone that
(03:53):
came out the year before, American adults experienced, as near as we can tell,
a little over an hour of of silence every single day.
And that was real silence. That is no noise, absolute quiet,
no noise, about an hour every day.
Of course, that's not 60 or 65 minutes all strung together.
(04:15):
It might've been 10 minutes here and 20 minutes there and 30 minutes here and
30 minutes there, something like that.
But now fast forward to where we are today.
Some of the more recent study suggests that we have about 12 minutes of silence per day.
And that's research around those who live in urban environments.
(04:36):
Because of connectivity, even those who live in suburban or rural environments
have even about 16 to 18 minutes of silence per day.
And again, not all strung together in one block.
Connectivity, for all it's done wonderfully for us, has increased our noise
levels and our input levels and our stimulus levels, and digital connectivity
(05:01):
has begun to change our ability to focus.
It has, to borrow a phrase, stolen our focus. But you know that.
You know that as well as I do.
And now we have a couple of big challenges that come with this noisy world in which we live.
We have a challenge of creating silence And of knowing what to do with it when
(05:22):
we get it When was the last time that you were in silence For more than just an accidental moment?
Can you even remember that? Well, I'd like to suggest that the great challenge
that you and I face today Is not like Chuck Yeager's challenge breaking the
sound barrier But our challenge today is breaking the silence barrier.
(05:46):
So why do we even need silence? We know that for all of us, our brain cell growth
and development is dependent to a large degree on silence.
Silence increases cell density in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
The hippocampus is associated with learning and memory and emotional regulation,
(06:09):
while the prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision-making and concentrated
focus and problem-solving and also emotional regulation.
In a Duke University study that I ran across,
they discovered that two hours of silence per day dramatically increases new
cell creation in the hippocampus and in portions of the prefrontal cortex.
(06:33):
So we need silence for our brain to grow and heal and develop itself.
There's a second reason why we need silence, and that's for stress relief.
Silence can release the grip of stress responses in our brain and in our body.
A study that I also ran across commissioned by the
(06:54):
journal Heart concluded that just
two minutes of silence was more effective in relieving physical and mental tension
and stress and fear than listening to 10 times as much of relaxing music or
even 30 minutes spent in mindfulness apps or music.
(07:15):
Mindfulness practices like that app Calm, for example.
Silence reduces cortisol. It lowers our blood pressure.
It increases serotonin and the availability of serotonin to the brain and to the body.
Silence is very good for us. Here's the third thing we found.
Silence helps us improve our memory.
(07:37):
It helps improve long and short-term memory, and it results in better judgment
and and better decision-making because as you probably know.
Our judgment is really a function of memory.
We are able to remember a bunch of small and large details and see them all
at once and then make connections between them and that's called judgment.
So silence improves our memory, which then enables us to get better judgment.
(08:01):
Here's the fourth thing we've learned. For mindfulness, there's a benefit for silence.
Now, mindfulness, in the way I'm using it, means we're able to focus and be
here, right here, right now, and not somewhere else.
We're not being batted around by the emotional or circumstantial pressures of others outside of us.
So silence promotes the ability for you and I to be here, right here,
(08:24):
right now, and fully fully engage with people around us or with our surroundings
and with our experiences to be, like I said, right here, right now.
Silence enables us to get better at doing that.
So there's another benefit of silence, and that is for creativity.
Silence helps us to unlock creativity as long as we don't spend that silence
(08:48):
time ruminating, petting the fur off of something and worrying and worrying and worrying.
I was going to do that with our silence. Silence helps us emerge from that silence more creative.
There's also a benefit for sleep when we've practiced a little bit of silence in the day.
So practicing deliberate moments of silence throughout the day,
(09:08):
especially in the last 45 minutes or so, maybe 60 minutes before you go to bed,
practicing a little bit of silence significantly improves the quality of our sleep.
So the list of benefits of you and I Getting in a space every day and practicing
a few minutes of just silence goes on and on and on and on.
(09:30):
Silence is good for us, but we have to break the barrier of silence.
Perhaps our lives have that barrier everywhere we go.
We have to therefore work at it
since our world doesn't give us very many moments of accidental silence.
(09:50):
Our twitchy, dopamine-addled brain causes us in any moment of silence to reach
for our phones and try to figure out what to do to occupy our brains.
So maybe we have to deliberately break the barrier between all the noise and
silence that we need so we can enter into that valuable practice of silence
(10:14):
and experience those benefits.
Well, how do you break the silence barrier? barrier. I practice silence regularly.
And here's what I have learned. Number one, I have had to learn that silence,
as I mentioned above, has huge benefits.
I have to recognize the value of it.
And the value is often not experienced when I'm in silence, but it's afterwards.
(10:40):
So number two, I need to notice how challenging this really is.
There is resistance all around me and within me to being silent.
Our world is not built the way we've created it in the last while to reward
silence or to make silent places.
Here's the third thing I've learned. It's set some realistic expectations, I would recommend.
(11:03):
You won't really feel like creating a few moments of silence every day.
You won't feel like it at all. You won't feel like you're being productive.
You feel like you need to jump up and run around and get some stuff done, right?
And those of you who are real extroverts. It might be harder than for those
who are introverts, but it's still challenging for both folks,
both types of folks along that spectrum.
(11:25):
Here's the fourth thing I've learned. I need to plan for that silence.
I need to schedule it. And I learned to start small with a few minutes every day in just silence.
There's no music. There's no talking.
There's no book in the background. I started small,
and now I have a few more minutes every day that I'm able
to do that you'll feel like somebody is threatening
(11:46):
your addiction by the way when you do that to sit silently or
to go for a walk silently and not engage and
not have music in your ear or not have some other kind of
external stimulus of cacophony of
noise and you deliberately decide to just be silent for a little bit of time
you'll find that someone's trying to it'll feel like someone's trying to take
(12:06):
your bottle away from you right so another thing i learned in order to get this
these moments of silence in my day and in my life is I need to make the silence real.
To listen to a book is not silence. And I love audible books.
I really like them. To listen to music or a podcast like this one or any of
the other ones that you might be listening to, those are hopefully really valuable
(12:28):
for you, but that's not silence.
So silence means there are no intentional external inputs.
Silence is pretty simple to understand. It's just silence.
Now, if it's noise or input from nature like wind or water or something like
that, of course, that's fine.
Silence is to try to achieve a place where the noise that is created by us in
(12:53):
our society is managed so that there's none of it around me.
Here's the sixth thing. So I need to practice silence, either sitting still
or moving. Either way works.
But if you can take a few minutes and be absolutely silent with no intentional
inputs and no distractions, whether you're walking or whether you're sitting,
works really, really well.
(13:14):
Seventh thing I've learned is to calm your mind and your body as you step into that silence.
Just take a breath and just start to slow that Jack Russell Terrier on cocaine
brain that you've got down just a touch and step into the silence for just a few minutes.
Here's the eighth thing I've learned. To slowly expand the length of time that
(13:37):
I spend in silence from a couple of minutes to a few more minutes to a few more minutes as time goes on.
And and as i begin to experience or notice the benefits of silence then that
makes it easier for me to to build that discipline into that practice into my
life so the ninth thing is like i mentioned a little bit earlier but now more
(13:58):
specifically notice that you're probably going to feel pretty.
Unproductive it's okay if you're a driven person if you're an extroverted person
if you're a high energy person it'll be probably a little harder for you to
break the silence barrier a few minutes every day, but you still need it.
In fact, you may need it even more than other folks do.
(14:19):
Here's the 10th idea. Don't evaluate this practice of silence if you can put it into your life.
Don't evaluate it like you would evaluating a phone call or any kind of work
that you've been doing or a conversation you have with somebody.
Don't evaluate silence like that. Just do it.
After you've practiced breaking that silence barrier for a little while,
(14:40):
you're going to begin to see the the benefits, but don't evaluate it right after you do it.
Here's the 11th idea. Later, as you get a little bit better at having a few
moments of silence every day, take opportunities when they accidentally come up.
I'm talking now about those accidental ones that are kind of rare.
And don't fill them up with just noise because it seems like an awkward, silent moment.
(15:06):
Maybe you're in the car by yourself, and I would recommend that you don't answer
the phone, Don't return a phone call. Don't turn on a music.
Don't turn on a book or something like that. Just sit silently in the car while
you're driving for a few minutes and notice what happens.
Maybe at home you will find a rare opportunity for things to be silent at home.
(15:28):
And don't fill it up with noise. Just see what happens in your mind and your
heart and your soul when you step into that silence.
Think of breaking the silence barrier. And the barrier is almost all internal.
Our need to have noise around us because we don't like ourselves when we're silent.
I don't know, maybe that's not you.
Also, you want to resist the need to fill silence in conversations when it occurs.
(15:54):
You want to resist the need to fill silence all over the place.
You'll notice it quite a bit as soon as you start to practice a little bit of silence.
So when space opens up in your calendar too, you might want to realize that,
oh, I don't have to fill that in with with frenetic activity,
because I've practiced this not filling in silent moments with noise.
Maybe I can, if there's a little bit of a gap in my calendar,
(16:17):
I can not rush forward to fill that in.
So you'll find that as you practice silence a little bit here and a little bit
there and a little bit every day in true silence, just take a breath and sit
in that silence for a while, that you will not feel as frenetic as you go through your day.
You'll also find that when When there's some silence in the conversation around
(16:38):
you, you will not feel the need to jump in and finish someone's sentences.
You'll probably find yourself listening a little bit better.
This is a very, very old practice. It's not some brand new thing and it's not
some fancy thing. It's just really simple.
You've probably got a very, very challenging job that requires you to be on
(16:59):
all the time and to be focused and to perform at a pretty high level.
Most of you who are listening to this podcast are leaders or managers or supervisors
or your influencers in some way and people look to you to have good judgment
and they look to you to be able to manage your own emotions and not expect them
to manage their behavior so that you don't have certain emotions,
(17:19):
right? So people look to you.
One of the ways that you can be what Bowen called the non-anxious presence is
for you to be a person who practices a moment here and a moment there of a discipline of silence.
Just a fun thing to think about, but even more than that, it will deeply enrich
your ability to work with and lead people.
(17:41):
And it'll enable you to be pretty resilient as time goes on as well.
So Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and he said it was like putting his finger through jello.
I want to challenge you to notice how noisy your world is and your life is and
to break the silence barrier by creating a few moments every day at the the
(18:04):
beginning of the day, the end of the day,
wherever you can intentionally create those moments where you can be truly silent for just a few minutes.
Get over the discomfort of it because it'll be very uncomfortable the first few times you do it.
And then you'll notice how incredibly valuable it is as you build that practice.
All right. Hey, maybe, maybe you could do it right now.
(18:26):
Maybe as this podcast comes to an end, you can break the silence barrier.
It'd be be fun to hear from you. Like, yeah, I was silent for a minute and a
half and just about lost my freaking mind.
Anyway, we need you to do good work. You're doing good work.
We need you to do it for a long period of time.
So this is one of the simple practices you can put in place that will enable
you to be a bit more resilient and robust in your job.
(18:51):
Well, thanks for visiting with me today. Thanks for taking a few minutes to listen to the podcast.
I do not have a bourbon review to go with you today.
And I do not have a cigar review. Ah, well, maybe next time.
Well, for sure. Next time we do a podcast, I'll have some of that for you. Hey, take care.
Music.
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