The Power of Silence
You haven’t heard from me for a while. I was harnessing the power of silence. Have you experienced its power yet ?
Silence is so much more powerful than noise or talking – in so many ways. You can’t use it though, unless you feel comfortable with silence. Most people don’t.
You may remember the “awkward” silence in a conversation you had and remember how fast one of you “covered’ it with saying something, anything, …just so it wouldn’t feel so awkward. Silence is hard to stand, hard to maintain….unless you decide to focus on it, decide to become comfortable with it and train yourself in staying silent. Why ?
In conversation, silence encourages your counterpart to keep talking, to deepen his/her statements, to reveal more of the motives behind his/her earlier sentences. It signals that you are listening and ready to hear more. Silence provides space for depth and encourages exploration. It creates deeper relationships, relationships in which it is ok to just BE together.
Staying silent on your own is another matter. Most of the time noise and clutter dominate our lives. As a result we feel constantly busy. Some of us have grown so used to feeling busy that they get confused when they are not. They instinctively fill any empty slot with a new task, cramming more things into their fast noisy lives. The result is that you can’t see the wood for the trees. You are IN your life, driven by immediate requirements, emergencies, commitments. What you miss is seeing ONTO your life. Leaving the day-to-day behind and reflecting upon what’s going on for you from a perspective far above your daily actions.
In fact, being silent for a while and stopping the mad routine of DOING DOING DOING, is the only way to reflect about BEING, about who you are in this life and more importantly about who you are still becoming. This is where I have been.
I have to say that I was shocked myself how easily one gets sucked up into the DOING-TRAP, working off to-do lists, completing task after task (our move, the establishment of the international coaching practice in both Dubai and Germany) and even feeling accomplished in the process of it.
And then, one day I woke up and realized I was not walking and enjoying my life but running it, sprinting the last months along. Why ? There is no rush, there is no point in arriving. The whole point about living a happy life is about enjoying the journey and regularly correcting the course of the journey by reflecting upon one’s life. This is what I took my time of silence for in the past week, reflecting – just being still and listening, just writing down what I heard, just viewing my life from a “mountain” – is what I have been doing in the past weeks.
I have come to some great new insights and visions for my next life phase. I feel refreshed and full of energy to enjoy the next stretch of the journey. I have made a commitment to spend regular time in silence - treating myself to this pleasure on a weekly basis. How about you ? When do you harness the power of silence ?
Your Perfect Summer Holiday in the Bavarian Alps
Entries RSS