“Silence is a lesson learned through life’s many sufferings”
—Seneca—
It was either this Stoic reference from Seneca or the wise words of the one and only, Ronan Keating…. “You say it best, when you say nothing at all”; I’ll let you decide if I made the right call or not. Seneca ever so slightly edges it for me, due to the inclusion of silence and suffering in the same statement.
In my experience silence can provide a space for suffering to manifest itself. The void allowing our minds to potentially self-inflict misery that can result in suffering. Therefore, there can be a tendency to drown out any potential silence using podcasts, TV, audiobooks, music and the odd motivational video on YouTube. I myself, have been guilty of this, drowning out the silence to prevent my mind from wandering.
Afterall, this wandering can lead down some unpleasant, anxiety lined avenues where I worry about everything and anything. This inability to be comfortable when alone with one’s thoughts leads me to reflect on the old African proverb that reads:
“When there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm.”
My question is, how do you get to the stage where there is no enemy within?
The truth is, that is an answer that is a work in progress for me, but this blog reflects on a partial answer. It is the first steps I am taking that are allowing my mind and I to communicate. Allowing a space for the problems in my life to reveal themselves. Where instead of reaching for my headphones to drown out what I’d rather not hear, I am content letting my mind, my conscious do what it needs to do because, maybe it will have something of use to tell me?
So far none of this blog may have resonated with you, but I believe this next section might. It is, upon reflection, the most consistent place that I utilise distractions and crutches to avoid suffering. When I exercise. Whether it is before the workout, during a set or space between sets, there was never silence, always noise. That led me to the conclusion that anything that was slightly unpleasant, required a distraction. In essence, suffering and silence did not occur. Any, predominantly self-induced, suffering was drowned out by any noise I could find.
Now, the reason that my suffering is self-induced is that in my experience there is always a positive action that I can take to counteract the negative emotion or thought process that may be stirring between my ears. Yet, in what can only be described as the most detrimental form of procrastination, I use those aforementioned audio distractions, to avoid taking action or even reviewing what is troubling me.
Why is that? Well, to start taking action I first need to identify what the problem is. It is only once I have identified what exactly is troubling me that I can begin to work out the action I need to take to rectify the situation. That means I must let those uncomfortable thoughts have centre stage. I must immerse myself in whatever stupid, irrational thoughts are going through my head and from there work towards identifying potential solutions. I must immerse myself in suffering, and who really wants to do that when you have such great alternatives readily to hand?
It is not only the convenience of the distractions that makes them difficult to eliminate. They are supported by years of habit formation. We all know the action we ought to take will probably be quite unpleasant at the best of times, and let’s face it, with all these desirable alternatives at our fingertips and significant habits formed in association, it really is easier said than done.
One day while distracting myself with the Joe Rogan Podcast I came across an episode with David Goggins. They discussed working out without music or as it was termed, “a crutch”. Anyone who is familiar with David Goggins will know that the guy is a different animal, who talks about using suffering to build “calluses on your mind”, toughening yourself mentally.
It stood out to me because I had tried running without music before, when trying to focus on my breathing when running to improve my running rhythm and become more in tune with my body. It didn’t last long. Safe to say that suffering and silence wasn’t a fun cocktail for me at the time.
However, the podcast motivated me to try it again with the sole focus of “developing calluses in my mind” and toughening up having felt the strain of lockdown, which I am sure a lot of you reading can relate to.
So, I went out for a run and left the headphones at home, but this time I wasn’t approaching it from a technical perspective but to embrace the discomfort and toughen up.
Typically, as I got into my natural running rhythm my mind started to drift. My mind finally had silence to operate in. Instead of it being bombarded with external data (music, television, etc) it now had space to drift through my internal processes. As if it were naturally performing an internal scan to identify problems and troubleshoot solutions.
As expected, it circled towards the thoughts I often tried to suppress and ignore. The sort that would usually dishearten me and result in me reaching for a podcast or playlist to drown them out.
But in this case, I was already training. These negative thoughts were challenging me, but this was different to enduring them in pure silence. I was out running and feeling pretty good about myself. I was conducting something productive, bettering myself and I was surrounded by some beautiful countryside rather than the image of myself in the gym mirror, sweating buckets as I squat (Okay you got me, I was doing vanity curls, but my point still stands!).
The natural process continued, and as I battled with these demons, solutions came and went until a eureka moment came, and I had to stop, writing it down on the notes on my phone so that I didn’t forget it. I then carried on and although there was more than one demon, more than one problem to contend with, there was a little less stress, worry and anxiety.
That evening I fell asleep quicker than usual too. Brilliant! But why? Was it the exercise? I didn’t think so. It wasn’t really a change to my current routine or activity levels.
As I thought about it more and more, a few more runs, even cycles went by, and the correlation with a better night’s sleep, or more specifically an improved ability to GET to sleep was emphasised.
Then I realised, the ONLY time in my day where there is true silence, is when I am going to bed. Therefore, the only time my brain is not being constantly, and intentionally side-tracked by external data is right before I sleep.
It is the only time I allow my mind to work internally, processing whatever I need to actually process. My runs and cycles with no headphones were providing my mind the time to work internally and not have to deal with the external, freeing up those precious minutes before sleep to unwind rather than fixate.
I am sure that advocates of mindfulness and meditation will be reading this screaming, DUH!! But sometimes you just need it to click in a different way. I feel the benefits of meditation but have never, for whatever reason, committed to it being a part of my daily or even weekly routine. Training is already an important part of my routine that I am doing regardless, so leaving the headphones at home is a minor change that has had a profound impact on my mental wellbeing.
I would like to leave you with a question. Ask yourself, are you turning off the external distractions to enable the internal to focus on what it needs to do?
Why not give it a try? Leave the headphones at home and get outside, even if it’s just a walk. Why not see not only where you wander, but your mind as well? Maybe we can confront and overcome our suffering through silence.
Thank you for reading.
Lee
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