Sips of Silence (SOS)

Make no mistake, I love a well-planned day.

Because of this, my life has no shortage of routines—including my full-glass-of-water-before-coffee habit stack and my targeted task lists—that help me to feel efficient and productive.

I also spend a lot of time working with clients to help them adopt tools and mindsets to break through feeling overwhelmed and learn to manage their time in a way that feels aligned with their priorities.

But sometimes my bias towards efficiency and productivity becomes a little too dominant.
Rather than just sitting in my garden, I drag out the weeding tools; rather than plucking a book of poetry off my shelf, I re-read “The Power of Habit” or other work-supportive reading. I often make choices to avoid feeling like I am wasting time.

However.

I now also fully embrace what I call Sips of Silence (which conveniently creates the acronym SOS, and who doesn’t love a good acronym?!): moments that are intentionally meant for me to be in silence or with whatever ambient noise is around. AND. NOTHING. ELSE.

Sips can be hard to implement. We feel sooooo busy and setting aside time that appears to be idle feels like we’re compounding the problem. “Don’t just sit there, do something!” echoes through our collective consciousness.

[Don’t even get me started on the impact of toxic capitalism that has convinced all of us that time is money and sitting in stillness is the equivalent of flushing dollars down the toilet.]

Overwhelm creates a cycle of believing that every moment not spent in a way that is demonstrably useful will only make things worse. But one of the best ways to disrupt this cycle is to actually step out of it and give ourselves an intentional, deliberate break. Including our ears.
Scott Young explains this in his Foundations course as a paradox: “It’s not the good times that require the most uninterrupted thinking, but the hard times, when we feel overwhelmed and challenged—when we doubt that we have the resources or capacities to overcome our problems. We most need time to think when the feelings of guilt about our idleness are at their peak.” (emphasis mine)

This makes the SOS acronym particularly apt.

It sounds easy in theory. But in practice? Not so much.

When I first started my silence practice, I felt a lot of guilt (so many shoulds! shame around privilege!) and also discomfort (“So…is something supposed to be happening right now?” or “Oooh, these thoughts I’ve been distracting myself from are coming up and now I don’t feel so great. Back to distraction!”). But I think you will find that once you start SOS you will CRAVE them. I now find if I fill my days too much, or give in to the compulsion to fill my ears with a podcast or news, or I let my inner critic berate me into action with the relentless “prove your worth” messaging, my body is less regulated, I am less creative, and I feel more frazzled. A little sip of silence brings me ever so slightly—and sometimes less slightly—back to baseline. It creates an opening for my own thoughts to crystallize rather than just absorbing the thoughts of others. I feel spacious. Your results may vary. But many great thinkers over the years have found it to be essential, and I suspect you will too. Oh—and if you’re waiting for permission to just be in silence, I hereby grant you that permission. (And if you’re wondering who gave me permission to grant permission…who told me I couldn’t? 😉)

Try It! Five Possible Ways to Start

• Keep your stereo off in your car for the first or last five minutes of every drive.
• Go earbud-less when walking.
• Settle into a comfortable meditative position wherever you are right now and set a timer for five minutes. Or two. And just notice the silence.
• Sit in a chair that you don’t normally sit in for a few minutes—in your home, on a bench in a park—and resist the temptation to pull out your phone.
• Try the New York Times’ “The Starry Night” challenge.

“The beautiful spring came, and when nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.”

---

Receive the “Slice of Sunshine” in your inbox by subscribing to the Department of Practical Sunshine newsletter.

Text…

Try it!

Text…