The Value Of Silence

What is scarier: sitting in silence or the fact that you are afraid to sit in silence?

In this episode of The Reality Check Podcast I discuss how technology has granted us the ability to endlessly occupy the space that was once filled with silence. The benefits of which are obvious: education, entertainment, content and connection - but at what cost? What do we lose by blocking off access to such a fundamental aspect of the human condition?

Transcript

If you find that you struggle to be by yourself,

If you feel anxious in general,

Or if you feel like there's always more that needs to be done and there's this resting level of tension,

This podcast is for you.

I think we chronically undervalue silence as a species.

And this concept has come around and around and around again in my thought process.

And today or this episode,

This share is prompted by my interactions with a couple of my coaching clients.

Because almost sort of serendipitously,

I've had a few different people come to me from different aspects and different sort of approaches talking about the idea of silence,

A fear of silence,

Or not really sure how to use silence as a tool for self-improvement,

Self-development,

And self-connection.

So what I'm sort of talking about in this episode is an amalgamation of sort of my responses to all of those people individually,

As well as sort of a deconstruction of my thoughts about silence.

So we're going to go down a variety of different approaches and ideas and conceptions of silence in this episode.

But we're sort of looking at the idea of undervaluing silence and not using it as a tool for self-improvement.

So first and foremost,

Why?

What is the value of silence?

Why should we approach it?

Why do I think that we as a species undervalue it?

Well,

We live in a technological utopia,

So to speak,

In the sense of we can do and have access to things that would be considered miraculous,

Wondrous,

Godlike compared to the people of the past.

In our pockets,

The device you're listening to,

The fact that we have electricity,

Interconnectivity,

Access to infinite knowledge and access to infinite distraction,

Gives us a tool upon which we can just grow civilizations to epic mega proportions,

Billions of people living together.

I'm not going to say harmoniously,

Obviously,

But we have grown the ability to survive as a species off the back of technology.

But technology is a double-edged sword.

It can help and it can hinder.

And oftentimes,

We don't see the problems of technology until we're way,

Way,

Way down the line and go,

Okay,

We can look back and go,

Oof,

That wasn't that great.

And obviously,

There's vested interests,

There's money,

There's a whole variety of things pushing different agendas.

It is good for me getting meta here for you to listen to this podcast.

You listen to this podcast,

I get a higher rating.

If you like it,

Rate it,

All that sort of stuff.

It grows,

Then I can sell you my stuff.

The platform that this podcast is on,

The more people that use the platform,

The more they get to promote their advertisements,

The more they get to make money.

Same thing with social media,

The eyes on gets them advertisement money.

The advertisement money,

If it works,

Gets them to sell their product or service.

This is base capitalism.

But the point is,

Is that there is a significant level of vested interests in keeping people's attentions on something,

On the external.

And we carry in our pocket a device that if we choose to allow it to can take every waking moment from us.

I can wake up and instantly check my email and my social media.

I can play music.

I can listen to a podcast.

I can watch videos.

I can do all of these things continuously and forever.

One of the goals of the social media platforms is to get you checking back in,

The users.

You're called a user because you are using the product.

Now,

I'm framing all of this and I've said all of this before in previous episodes.

I'm not going to harp on this anymore,

But I need to set the context of where we are currently as a species.

Now,

This devices,

Our access to tech and our access to all of this information is also good.

I can have an idea or a concept that I want to explore and I can very easily and quickly look up peer-reviewed scientific literature on the topic.

I can look up endless deconstructions of that topic.

I can read endless books on that topic at the click of a button and maybe with a little bit of a price,

Maybe not.

So,

I have access to self-improvement tools that are unrivaled for people in the past.

How does a person in the past learn something?

They have to have the wise elder.

They have to be apprenticed or it has to be like hard fought trial and error wisdom.

We don't have to do that anymore.

We just turn on a podcast and go,

Oh,

We're there.

We just sign up to a course and be like,

Yes,

I've got this.

And that's ostensibly the model that I am living off.

I write books.

I share courses.

I share talks.

I do these things and people pay me for that service,

For that privilege,

Or they get the one-on-one time and that's what I'm offering them.

I'm offering them the accumulation,

The deconstruction,

And the combination of the wisdom that I've acquired through tech,

Ostensibly.

But,

And the but is important here,

There's the risk of us not ever stopping or slowing down or sitting in silence because what did the people of the past have that we don't?

They had silence and aspects of their own individual thought,

Prolonged time,

Forced time to just be with themselves.

We don't get that unless we carve it out for ourselves.

So,

They had a problem of a,

Like,

You know,

Acquiring carbs,

So to speak.

You needed to get carbs out of the ground and that was a lot of effort.

We have got endless and infinite carbs.

I can go to a shop,

Spend a very small amount of money,

Relative,

And have more carbs than I need to consume in a day,

Every day.

This isn't feeding my brain.

This isn't feeding my brain.

Every day.

This isn't feeding me well,

But I can survive,

Right?

People of the past had to work a lot for that.

But what they didn't have access to,

So they didn't have access to that.

They also didn't have access to the information that we've got,

But they had access to silence and their own reflective thoughts.

Working in a field,

Hunting,

Doing the sort of manual labor,

They didn't have access to,

You know,

The constant external influences.

Seeing a show,

Listening to a live musician,

That was the only time you could actually get that entertainment.

You know,

By the campfire at night over dinner,

Someone telling a story.

That was a sort of a big event.

It's like,

Phew,

Let's really pay attention.

Now,

You could just pause this podcast,

Flip to another thing,

Flip to another thing,

Scroll up,

Scroll,

Scroll,

Scroll,

And you're getting instant,

Constant bombardment.

So,

That frames the discussion here.

So,

What I'm wondering is,

And what I'm positing is,

And what I think is,

Is that we are losing something.

We have lost silence from our lives.

And I understand the irony of me sharing this to you in a talk,

Because I'm taking up potential silence.

And,

You know,

Once again,

Getting meta here,

If you think that the next however long this podcast is going to go for would be better spent in silence,

Right?

Pause it,

Turn it off,

Set your timer for however long the rest of this podcast is going to go for,

And just sit in silence.

It will serve you better.

Silence will serve you better than anything I'm going to say here,

And anything anyone else is going to say here.

No matter what you're doing online,

Right?

Sit in silence.

It is better for you.

Why?

Why is it better for you?

Well,

There's a whole variety of research going into the need to just sit and settle by ourselves,

To be able to let,

I suppose,

The concrete settle,

So to speak.

So,

Like,

I look at information as us sort of laying down fresh concrete.

It's wet.

And if you stand in that wet concrete,

It gets wrecked.

And you have to,

You know,

It's a whole process of laying it out appropriately,

And then you've got to let it rest a little bit.

Then you can apply another layer and another layer.

I'm not a concreter.

I am probably wrong,

But you get the analogy that I'm going for here.

But if we constantly are putting wet concrete on top,

On top,

On top,

On top,

On top,

We're never letting ourselves a chance to settle into that information.

Let's say I read an amazing book,

And it just resonates,

And it hits hard.

And the moment that book ends,

I instantly go to the next thing.

I've not really used my time reading that book wisely or appropriately,

Because I haven't applied it to my life.

Let me tell you this.

Is it better to read one book and apply it thoroughly to your life,

Or 10 books and just sort of have that just knowledge in your brain?

Because I've been doing the latter,

But I'm very strongly realizing the power of the former.

Read one well-written book or,

You know,

Listen to one podcast,

One video,

Yada,

Yada.

I'm using a book as an example here,

But listen,

Read,

Consume one piece of content and apply it.

And once you've sunk in that application,

Then move on to the next thing.

There's a cognitive bias,

I guess,

Where we want to sort of keep adding new information into our brain,

Because it's beneficial.

You know,

The more information we had,

Evolutionarily speaking,

The more safe we were.

But that goes on overdrive.

The problem is it's very easy.

What's the answer?

It's very easy to switch trees,

Right?

So imagine that information is apples on an apple tree.

You climb up the apple tree,

I.

E.

You enter an app or you open up a book and you start reading and consuming.

You're harvesting those apples.

Now,

In the past,

It would take a long time to find an apple tree to start off with,

Using this analogy.

And then you have to climb up it and get it.

And there's a very long transfer and the apple tree is far away.

It's not guaranteed.

So you just stick with your current apple tree,

I.

E.

You stay apprenticed under the master.

You keep listening to the wise man in the village,

Etc.

Wise woman,

Wise person,

Whatever.

But now,

At the flick of a button,

There's,

You know,

You can switch from app to app to app to book to resource to podcast.

There's so much and so much abundance.

There's so many trees at your disposal that you can just jump and hop and jump and hop and jump and hop and sort of go between everything.

The cost of change has been reduced to almost nothing.

Now,

That's great,

Like I said,

But the problem is,

Is that you never really get this deep application and understanding and consumption.

You may not be aware that some of the apples on some of those trees are rotten and will effectively rot the rest of your brain.

I am deep diving into my master of counseling reading.

And one of the things that it said to do was be aware of the sources of your knowledge.

There was scientific research suggesting that we remember what we read and we consume it,

But we often forget the source.

So if you fill your mind up with non-credible sources,

In a year's time,

You may withdraw that information from your brain thinking it's credible,

But actually it's not.

Indeed,

You might find information that was,

At the time you were consuming it,

That was uncredible and you knew it was wrong,

But you've encoded it into your brain and then you withdraw that from your brain without the added encoding of the knowledge that wasn't great,

Knowing the fact that it was from a disreputable source and you were reading it sort of to counter that knowledge,

Because you knew it was from someone that wasn't informed or scientific or evidence-based.

The point is,

There's this temptation to switch between sources.

There's this temptation to just consume.

And there's a bit of a trap that I've noticed myself falling into.

I think that I'm doing something good for myself.

I think that I'm researching,

Going deep,

Understanding,

But I'm just feeling the silence.

Right?

It's like,

Oh,

I've got to consume this next book.

Oh,

I've got to consume this next podcast.

Oh,

I've got to.

And it was like,

I felt like,

Because I wasn't,

Quote unquote,

Binging on a Netflix show or just sort of being lazy,

Because it was information coming in,

I justified it to myself that it was better use of my time than silence.

Because in a way it is,

Right?

Oh,

I'm learning more.

Oh,

I'm learning more.

But I realized that the learning,

I was learning for learning sake and I was learning because I was afraid of the silence.

And this is where I sort of really want to drill into.

Do you fear silence?

Do you fear silence?

And I'm saying this because coming up soon in,

Oh,

What,

A week and a half,

Two weeks,

I'm going to be doing a 10-day silent retreat.

And 99% of the people that I've said this to have been like,

Oh,

I couldn't do that.

That's scary.

That's odd.

They freaked out about it.

And they freaked out about it because they fundamentally realized that they couldn't handle it.

They were afraid of what would happen.

And that's really fascinating to me.

And don't get me wrong,

I have those fears too.

So it's like,

I'm putting those fears back on myself.

I'm afraid of the silence a bit.

What am I afraid of?

What am I afraid of that is in that silence?

Me?

More of me?

A deeper part of me?

So am I fundamentally putting all of this new information into myself over and over again to just avoid the silence of my mind?

Because what happens when you sit in silence?

Well,

What happens depends on your mood,

Depends on what you've been doing,

All of that sort of stuff.

But very quickly you start to realize how loud and chattery and inane your mind is.

There's a meditation concept known as the monkey mind.

And the monkey mind is just this chattery,

Animalistic,

Like pop,

Pop,

Pop,

Pop,

Pop sort of thing.

You're replaying past thoughts,

The memories pop up,

And it's like all of this stuff comes up.

But over time,

As you sit in silence,

That all settles down.

And if we go back to the,

There's a couple of analogies here,

The concrete analogy.

I feel like all of those things popping up is past concrete trying to settle.

It's you trying to process and just allow those things to settle down.

That's one thing.

The other thing came from Naval Ravenkant's idea of inbox zero.

The idea being that his meditation practice is to sit in silence for 60 minutes,

For 60 days,

And just do nothing.

Just sit and do nothing other than just allow your brain to process.

And that silence is allowing your brain to process,

And it's just getting your brain to the inbox zero.

Things pop up and you process it,

And that email has been answered,

So to speak.

That's another way or another analogy of looking at this process of just allowing your brain to settle.

Now,

I like that approach.

I like the wet concrete approach.

I like the analogy of just looking and investigating.

It's like shadow work.

I'm in the process of,

And by the time you listen to this,

You might have seen it,

A premium course on my website called Hunt Your Own Shadow.

It is going deep into the shadow work.

The idea and the reason why I'm in this idea of shadow work and of internal inner child work,

Subconscious work,

Is because through the silence,

You get a gateway into yourself.

You see the parts of yourself that you otherwise avoid.

Once again,

I'm speaking for my own self here.

I put podcasts on,

Content on,

All of these things on,

Because in the silence lies demons of my past,

Past traumas,

Past thoughts,

Past embarrassments,

Past things I haven't processed and accepted.

But the thing is,

Is they're always there,

Like that monkey mind,

That chattering mind that appears when you're silent.

It itself is,

Oh,

It's always there,

Right?

It's undermining you in every turn until you address it and turn the light of attention and consciousness on it and sit and look at it in the face and say,

Hey,

I see you,

I accept you,

I'm listening to you,

And I'm going to allow that to go through and process.

When I sit in silence,

Memories of past issues with my father,

Past issues with my mother,

Past issues with my family members,

Past girlfriends that I have unresolved feelings over that I didn't process at the time,

Embarrassments from when I was in school,

All of these things are popping up all of the time,

Right?

But the longer I sit,

The less they pop up strongly,

And the things that do pop up continuously,

I go,

Okay,

I've got unfinished work that I need to look at here,

And I start to see how those things that I haven't quite addressed yet are impacting my current choices.

Why do I have issues around money?

Well,

Things are popping up about the past,

Living quite poor,

Moving out of home at 16,

Yada,

Yada,

Yada,

Living off charity,

Okay,

There's why I've got some money issues.

Oh,

Issues around,

You know,

Insert whatever thing you've got going on will pop up and appear.

Now,

There's a reason to be afraid of this.

You're afraid of it because you've run from it.

You've run from it in the past because back then you couldn't handle it.

It is being stored in the silence.

It is being stored in your body.

So sitting in silence,

Those things pop up,

And you need to address them because you weren't strong enough or able to address them in the past.

So yes,

I get it,

But far out.

That is such good self-work.

It is such good inner work to do.

And,

You know,

Like in terms of that,

Like let's say you do sit in silence and you start,

This chattering monkey mind appears.

That's good as long as,

Not as long as you do whatever you like with it,

But one of the things I would like to suggest is if it gets too strong,

Realize that you are not those thoughts.

You are the observer.

So sort of like take a breath and step back from it and go,

Okay,

The observer part of me is what I'm going to embody,

The metacognitive part,

The sort of higher part,

However you want to look at it,

Whatever your spirituality is in this and your psychology is in this.

There is psychological research on this and spiritual research.

It's all very similar when you get deep in it as my studies on these topics through the Master of Counseling and the spiritual topics that I've done have discovered.

But basically you sit in silence and you just watch your mind tick over and you go,

Okay,

With a curiosity,

Look at what my mind is doing.

I'll sort of sit there and be like,

And I'm just cackling,

Laughing internally to myself at the irrationality,

At the chaos,

At the emotionality of my mind.

And if I can stick in that detached mindful part,

I can just see it and just accept it and hold space for it and offer it love.

You know,

We can add some visualizations and positivity in there.

You know,

With every in-breath you're offering yourself,

Your mind,

Love.

With every out-breath you're allowing it to release.

You're checking into your body to see if it's being held in your body as well.

And maybe you massage that physically or stretch it or,

You know,

Just see if there's a visualization that wants to express itself.

This is all intuitive guidance work,

Some of the stuff that I'm doing with the coaching clients as well.

But it's the idea of like finding these parts of yourself and just allowing them to speak,

Right?

So there's different approaches.

Mindfulness is a good tool for this.

Mindfulness,

Meditation.

Basically,

If you can learn to step back and not fall into the power of those thoughts,

There's power there.

And,

You know,

I've spoken on mindfulness many,

Many,

Many times,

But the basic way to practice mindfulness is to pick a meditation object,

For example,

The breath,

And you sit in silence and your mind wanders,

You bring it back to the breath.

You notice when your mind wanders,

You bring it back to the breath.

That's the practice.

There's a lot of depth to it.

I've written a book on it.

But that's the practice,

Ostensibly.

Now,

I'm saying all of that to say that when you develop these skills,

You will develop the skill of being able to sit in silence and you'll get the benefit from it by doing it.

You know,

There's a real risk of people sort of reading books after books,

After books,

After books,

After books,

Consuming podcast after podcast,

After podcast,

You know,

On any topic,

On business,

On psychology,

On self-improvement,

On exercise,

But they don't actually do it themselves.

You know,

And once again,

I'm speaking from a space of myself here.

It is really easy to read theory and not do.

But the problem is,

Is there's always a gap between theory and application.

And I know this firsthand from my martial arts practice.

I could teach you the theory of how to apply a Americana,

A V-lock,

A triangle choke,

Whatever it is.

And this is,

You know,

Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

And I could tell you all about it.

I could show you videos.

I could explain the theory.

But there is an embodied learning that when you actually do it on a resisting opponent in the training hall,

You learn it physically in a way that the theory doesn't apply.

So,

You know,

With mindfulness meditation,

With sitting in silence,

And with all the knowledge that we sort of appalling upon ourselves that I was sort of mentioning at the start of this talk,

If we don't actually apply it,

We're not actually getting the full knowledge.

We're not actually getting the idea of it.

You could be like,

Yeah,

I see the value in sitting in silence.

But unless you do it,

You won't be in the trenches yourself.

You won't be seeing the reality of your own mind.

Because I can be the finger pointing to the moon.

I'm realizing,

You know,

My role in life is to be a couple of things.

It's the finger pointing to the moon.

It's like,

Hey,

Consider this.

I point to the goal.

You know,

I help you.

I see you.

I guide you.

And I'm like,

Hey,

Your goal's over there.

But it's on you to take that step.

It's on you to let go of the safety rail and fly.

You know,

That's one of my roles.

The other role is to be the mirror to the self,

Mirror to the soul.

The more I get to know you,

The more I engage with you,

The more I connect with you.

I can be like,

Hey,

Consider this.

This is what I'm seeing.

This is what I'm seeing.

What do you see?

You know,

And one of the ways that I can help people to see and what I'm hoping to distill in this episode now is silence.

Silence is a mirror.

And I encourage you to look into that mirror.

Start small if you're scared.

Start small,

One minute a day.

Just one minute of silence.

Try five minutes.

You know,

If you can,

Up it.

See what happens if you sit in silence for an hour.

Oof,

There's some power there.

Now,

Some people,

Depending on who and what you are,

Your disposition,

Your personality,

Maybe your physical body,

Whatever,

Can't sit.

You know,

Sit in meditation posture.

I get it.

Okay.

Be in silence.

Now,

By silence,

I don't mean like,

You know,

Like pure silence.

I mean a lack of inputs.

So,

You know,

A walk in nature would suffice.

You know,

At worst,

A drive silently.

You know,

Driving,

You know,

If you've got to drive an hour,

Half an hour to work,

Just don't put the radio on.

Don't put a podcast on.

Don't put music on.

Just sit in silence.

Just be in your mind.

You know,

Like that sort of thing.

A silent shower.

But there is a deeper power in like,

You know,

All of those things,

You're still doing something else.

You know,

Like I've talked in one of my courses on the idea of making the mundane a meditation.

You know,

Doing the dishes without,

You know,

In silence,

So to speak,

Without the external inputs.

You know,

Cleaning,

Doing all of the house tasks,

The mundane things as a meditation.

And like,

Do that as well.

But there is something to be said about a formal practice of silent sitting.

And like I said,

For me,

I've been craving this for so long,

And I finally had the space and the mental clarity and the opportunity to do a silent retreat,

A 10-day silent retreat.

And I want to see what comes because I've never,

Never gone that deep before.

I've done single days.

I've done a bunch of single days,

Not even like at a formal place,

Just for whatever reason,

The family was away.

And I decided,

Okay,

I'm not going to speak and I'm not going to consume content for this whole day,

24 hours.

And that was interesting.

I felt a sense of peace and calm and clarity and like my anxiety dropped and I felt focused.

Okay,

Let's see what happens after 10 days.

And I'm not saying you need to do that level.

That's like a marathon runner saying,

Hey,

Like come run a marathon,

You know,

When you haven't gone for a walk.

You know,

I don't know what level you're at because,

You know,

Whoever listens to this,

We're at different levels,

Obviously.

But what I am encouraging you to do is take some time to sit silently.

Start at a level that you think will be a challenge,

But achievable,

Not just in one day,

But every day.

And oftentimes that's about a five minute mark,

Five minutes of silence starting out is good.

And if that sounds scary to you,

If that sounds terrifying,

If that sounds impossible,

Then I would ask you to contemplate that feeling.

Just really just resonate on the idea that if five minutes of silence scares you,

Something's going on there that you should consider.

That to me would be a massive warning sign of going,

Oh my goodness,

What is going on?

I've got some deep things that I need to unpack here.

Not a judgment call.

That's just a call to action.

And if five minutes sounds too much,

One minute,

One minute of silence.

If that sounds too much,

30 seconds.

If that sounds too much,

One breath,

Right?

Like start wherever you can,

But make sure it's a challenge that's achievable.

So if five minutes sounds hard,

But doable,

Do it.

If five minutes sounds way easy,

Start at 20 minutes.

You see what I'm going for here.

And I guess the final thing,

The follow-up thing,

This consumption of content thing all of the time.

And once again,

Speaking to myself here,

But to the people I'm working with and to the people that are listening to this and might want to work with me,

All of these things is there's a self-trust issue.

Now,

What is underneath the silence?

What is underneath it?

I feel like as a society,

Because we have access to high-class performers,

I can look on my phone and I can access a lot of resources for free or basically for free of people that are infinitely better than me in every aspect of my life.

People that are better than me at my martial art,

People that are better than me at my meditation,

People that are better than me at podcasting,

At writing,

At coaching,

At every single thing I do,

I can find people that are better than me,

Right?

So there's this obvious,

Seemingly obvious answer to going,

Okay,

Well,

Who am I?

I must consume them again and again,

And again,

And again,

And again.

Cool.

But what we're missing here is the self.

There's a Bruce Lee quote that is something like,

Take what works,

Discard what doesn't,

And add a little bit of your own.

And I must admit that for years,

I wasn't adding a bit of my own.

I was this amalgamation,

Homunculus combination of me mirroring the best of what I saw in others.

But the problem is,

Even if I can do that,

I'm not them,

But I am me.

There is a me-ness that will best help me to prosper moving forwards.

There is a me-ness that will best help me to help other people.

I can offer the world something that no one else can,

Right?

And so can you,

If you trust yourself enough to discover that.

Now,

You might be going through like a cocoon phase,

A growth phase where you have to consume all of this sort of stuff to even know where you're traveling.

And that was true for me too.

It's like I had to go through this deep consumption of a whole bunch of resources before I felt confident enough to step out onto my own and do it myself.

Now,

Don't get me wrong.

I'm still learning,

Like I said,

But I'm being far more particular and I'm being far more specific with the stuff that I'm consuming,

But I'm also placing a higher and higher emphasis on listening to the silence,

I.

E.

Listening to myself.

What do I think about this?

What is my opinion on it?

And I'm going to stand firm that I have something to say and something to know.

You know,

I went through uni and they taught you,

Well,

You know nothing because you don't,

Right?

So you source greater resources than you.

You source scientifically validated resources and you go,

Well,

This person suggests this,

This other person suggests that,

And you sort of prove the point based on other people's resources.

And you can,

You know,

There's many,

You know,

We all have self,

Not all,

A lot of us have self-doubt issues,

You know,

Brought by society and parenting and yada yada.

It's very easy to doubt ourselves and to not put our value on our own knowledge and our own beliefs and our own systems and what we think.

And for good reason,

Right?

But I think that a lot of us take it too far.

And if you've been listening to this podcast this whole time,

That may be you to some extent,

At least it is me.

And it is me still,

I still don't value myself enough.

I don't consider myself to be a,

A,

A expert enough on what I know,

But I,

You know what?

I am the expert of living my life.

I'm the expert of being Zach and you are the expert of being you.

And if you can be that expert and you know what works for you,

Then that's what works.

It's like,

What's the best morning routine.

I could give you what I'm doing,

But that's what works for me.

So,

So you might try my morning routine.

You try someone else's,

You try someone else's,

Try someone else's.

And then very eventually you realize you're like,

Oh,

The answer's in the middle.

The answer is what works for me is what works for me to produce the results that you want,

Right?

Because even if you follow my morning routine and it works perfectly for you,

Does it work perfectly for you for your goal?

Or does it work perfectly for you to attain what I think your goal should be or what my goal is?

Do you see,

Do you see the thing here?

It's like,

Let's start sitting with ourselves and trusting ourselves.

And I think we can learn to trust ourselves more by actually turning the lens of attention upon ourselves and seeing ourselves.

And I guess an extension of this,

The,

The extendo practice of science is silent journaling.

Get a pen,

Get a page and simply write,

Write down your thoughts.

And once again,

This is proven through,

You know,

Countless,

Countless research studies on the value and the efficacy of journaling and,

And sort of writing down your,

Your feelings,

Free flow expression,

Write down what you are feeling,

Express what you are feeling and just sort of discover and see it.

So step one is writing an expression.

Step two,

You might come back to that in a week later and reread it because then you get to see who and what you were in the past.

And you learn very quickly that this too shall pass all those feelings that you had.

You may no longer have,

You will see the truth in the lines and you'll see the lies in those lines.

IE you'll be like,

This always happens or this never happens or broad statements of supposed fact,

Because they were fact back then,

But they're not fact now.

Right?

So you start to see that truth and you can start to correct those truths,

Right?

You see that there's a truth that you had,

And now it's not quite true.

So you can look over and you start to get that feeling of who you are and you start to realize that you are a change changing process.

You are not you in this moment.

You are you in you,

You are the,

The flow.

You are you in the moment,

But that moment changes.

Therefore you are not that person who wrote those words.

You are changing.

So there's another way to engage with silence.

There is silent writing,

But that,

Once again,

If that sounds less scary to you and you're like,

Oh,

I'll do that instead.

I'll do that.

I'll do the handwriting one.

You're now adding noise.

You're now adding inputs by making the input yourself,

Right?

Me talking to myself right now,

I'm staring at a microphone.

I'm not in silence.

I'm in a state of verbal flow.

There is a difference here.

I'm trying to express a point I'm working.

This me being here by myself,

Isn't silence.

If I was writing these words down,

That wouldn't be true silence.

So once again,

I want to swing back around and suggest that if this,

If this podcast,

If this episode is resonating with you,

Take a moment each day and just sit in silence and do it to a level where you can achieve it,

But it's a bit of a challenge.

And if you do this and it resonates,

Let me know.

I want to,

I want to prove one of the things,

My value,

My highest goal,

One of my highest goals is I want to be the catalyst for change.

I want to plant the seeds of possibility in people's lives.

And then they can look back upon it and go,

Oh man,

That thing Zach said,

That podcast about silence that changed me,

You know,

In a week,

In a month,

In a year,

In 10 years,

You hit me back up and you're like,

You know,

That podcast you did ages ago on silence that moved me.

You know,

That's what I want to do.

That's what I want to be for you.

So if this has made a difference with you,

Tell me,

Tell me about it because that that's the thing I want to hear.

And even if it doesn't,

I know that it will be resonating with people,

But having a bit of feedback is positive.

The positive,

Uh,

The positive approach to what I'm doing here.

So either way,

The,

The summary is this.

We have infinite access to fill the silence,

Infinite access to knowledge,

Infinite access to wisdom.

And that is a good thing.

But with that infinite access with that overabundance,

We are at risk of not embracing silence and evolutionarily speaking,

The animal that we are evolved to be in silence far more than what we are now.

And that will have detrimental impacts.

I believe if we don't allow ourselves the animal that we are to have some time.

So take a step,

Allow the knowledge to settle,

Focus deeply and begin to trust yourself.

You might sit in silence and start to see the chattering mind or the past issues and the traumas and the shadow works and all of these things start to appear.

If you can handle it,

Good,

Go deep.

You will find deep healing and therapy and unlocks that will revolutionize and transform your life.

You know,

10 X,

A hundred X from what you're doing in different ways,

Because you will just be,

We're stuck in this rut.

But if you can see the fact that you're stuck in the rut through the silence,

You might find that you go,

Okay,

There's a better pathway coming up ahead that I can take that will radically transform my life for the better.

But you won't see that unless you're detached enough.

I talked about the idea of practicing mindfulness meditation as a formal practice to give you the skill to detach,

To best observe the silent mind when it starts talking and is chattering.

We talked a little bit about the work that I do with some of my clients called intuitive guidance.

The idea of sitting in silence,

Finding a part of our body that's holding onto the tension and offering it loving kindness.

The breath work connected to visualization and positive healing.

That's one aspect that you can go down with this path for yourself as well.

I'm going to create some resources on that topic.

And in general,

The idea of finding an approach to life that takes what works for other people,

Discards what doesn't work.

So it takes what works for you from other people,

Discards what doesn't and adds a little bit of your own flair.

And the way we discover who and what we are is by finding and sitting in the silence and discovering our own mastery.

You are the master of your life.

You know,

Or at least you are in charge of where you want to be heading.

And if you don't know,

Sit in silence and find it out and just be,

Just be there for yourself and discover who and what you are.

You are this process.

And we'll also add the idea of journaling as an additional tool for this.

And the final takeaway,

If this has resonated with you is twofold,

Let me know about it.

But the takeaway,

The homework,

The practice that I want you to consider practicing is sit in silence for five minutes.

If that sounds easy and doable,

Make it 20.

If it sounds too hard,

Make it one.

We want to do,

We want to be successful,

But challenged.

Either way,

Thanks for listening.

And I'll see you in the next session.

Catch up.

Reviews

This was such a great podcast to share here on Insight Timer. I went on a silent retreat, probably 40 years ago and it was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced. I wanted to go on another one many many times, but there are none that I Have found that are close enough for me to attend. I live close to our nations capital but most of the ones I see are on the west side of our country. I wish I could find something closer. I feel it’s an amazing experience. If by chance you know of any that are on the Eastern coast near the mid Atlantic in the USA please let me know because I would be super interested in attending. thank you as always for this amazing journey