PEBBLE
Notes don’t make music until you learn to insert silence between them.
~Ben Folds, shared by Tracy in Wautoma,WI
BOULDER
Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word.
-Eckhart Tolle, submitted by Terry in Oak Creek, WI
PONDER
There is a lot of noise out there these days….noise about the holidays, the noisy hustle bustle as the year wraps up, and plenty of noise about the state of things. Some of this noise is useful. Some of it is not.
One of the best ways to figure out which noise to listen to and which to mute is to carve out time for silence. The holidays create a natural break in my work flow of speaking and training engagements, so this is the time of year I usually remove myself from work stuff and social media stuff so that I can insert some additional silence into my life. Whenever I aside time to withdraw from all the noise and spend time in silence, I emerge with increased clarity, increased creativity, and an increased sense of calm.
I appreciate that now may not be the ideal spot in the calendar for you to withdraw for an extended amount of time. I’m curious, though: might setting aside some small blocks of quiet time allow you to experience the impact of inserting silence into your life? Try it and see what happens!
