Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's May twenty fifth, seventeen eighty seven, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and the normal morning hustle is beginning to take over
Speaker 1: the streets. Horse Drawn carriages pound over stone cobblestones, as
Speaker 1: vendor carts with their loud iron wheels trickle into the road.
Speaker 1: Merchants chat with potential buyers, and pedestrians who cross the
Speaker 1: road get their usual taunting by the men incarcerated in
Speaker 1: the four story Walnut Street prison who are seeking out alms.
Speaker 1: It's in the midst of this bustling eighteenth century urban
Speaker 1: scene that dozens of powdered wig leaders from across the
Speaker 1: land begin filing into Pennsylvania Statehouse. They'd soon be taking
Speaker 1: part in a series of conversations that would change the
Speaker 1: fate of the nation. The stated goal of their historic meeting,
Speaker 1: which news papers at the time called the Grand Convention
Speaker 1: of States and history books would later call the Constitutional Congress,
Speaker 1: was to fix the previously ratified articles of the Confederation.
Speaker 1: But the real intention of the convention was to do
Speaker 1: something which at the time had never been done before.
Speaker 1: The delegates planned to draft a constitution that would create
Speaker 1: a new kind of government. If you're at all familiar
Speaker 1: with US history, you probably know what happened in the
Speaker 1: months that followed the US Constitution was born. And from
Speaker 1: today's vantage point, it might seem inevitable that these leaders
Speaker 1: would succeed in their grand mission. But back on that
Speaker 1: sweltering seventeen eighty seven morning, it wasn't so obvious how
Speaker 1: the fateful meeting would go. Tensions were high at the
Speaker 1: start of the so called Great Experiment. The task of
Speaker 1: figuring out how to create a union from so many
Speaker 1: diverse states was a really difficult one. If these lawmakers
Speaker 1: were actually going to change the course of history, they
Speaker 1: needed to concentrate in spite of all the bustle and
Speaker 1: noise on the Philadelphia streets outside. The delegates started by
Speaker 1: closing all the windows of their forty by forty foot
Speaker 1: conference room, even though the record breaking heat had them
Speaker 1: sweating badly through their waistcoats and powdered wigs. But clamping
Speaker 1: all the windows wasn't enough to quiet the din of
Speaker 1: galloping horses and wagon wheels streaming by outside, So the
Speaker 1: delegates decided to call in a big favor from the
Speaker 1: local Philadelphia government. The city leaders got as much dirt
Speaker 1: and gravel and straw as they could find and threw
Speaker 1: it on top of the cobblestone roads surrounding the Statehouse.
Speaker 1: It was the sort of seventeen eighty seven equivalent of
Speaker 1: noise canceling headphones. And the delegates to the Constitutional Convention
Speaker 1: actually had this giant earthen noise barrier constructed because they
Speaker 1: wanted to have pristine quiet, because they didn't want any
Speaker 1: street vendors or the sound of carriages outside or conversations
Speaker 1: to disturb their intense deliberation, their deep thinking. They're deep work,
Speaker 1: so this was a value that they had. This is
Speaker 1: author and congressional strategist Justin Zorn in his work on
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill Today. Justin has seen that two hundred plus
Speaker 1: years later, twenty first century legislators don't really seem to
Speaker 1: prioritize Christine quiet in the same way our forefathers did.
Speaker 1: And I found that it was such erratically different reality
Speaker 1: for US lawmakers today. Everywhere you'd go, there were TVs
Speaker 1: blasting alarms, blasting signaling floor votes. There were industry lobbyist
Speaker 1: schmoozing and backslapping and open bar receptions, phones ringing that
Speaker 1: back then there was for all the problems of that age,
Speaker 1: there was, at least in that work, a culture that
Speaker 1: honored quiet time, a culture that valued Christine human attention,
Speaker 1: which is something that's not so present in the cultures
Speaker 1: today in most of our society. Over the last few episodes,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the importance of listening to our wise
Speaker 1: but quiet inner voices, and how doing so maybe the
Speaker 1: key to feeling happier in the new year. But how
Speaker 1: can we actually hear those inner voices and a society
Speaker 1: filled with so much noise. So, in this final episode
Speaker 1: of our special New Year's season, I want to examine
Speaker 1: what we might be losing in a culture that doesn't
Speaker 1: make room for true silence. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the costs of too much noise and explore whether there
Speaker 1: are strategies we can use to fight back against all
Speaker 1: the unnecessary stuff that grabs our ears and our attention,
Speaker 1: so that we, like those thoughtful constitutional delegates back in
Speaker 1: the day, can get the calm and attentional quiet we
Speaker 1: need to really flourish. Our minds are constantly telling us
Speaker 1: what to do to be happy, But what if our
Speaker 1: minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
Speaker 1: leading us away from what will really make us happy.
Speaker 1: The good news is that understanding the science of the
Speaker 1: mind can join us all back in the right direction.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: It really came from a place despondency where we were
Speaker 1: pressing in our various places of work, Justin on Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: me working with scientists and engineers, trying to work on
Speaker 1: climate chains or removing toxic chemicals. So these things that
Speaker 1: are so important where there's so much urgency, and that
Speaker 1: experience of everybody's speeding up, adding more meetings, right more
Speaker 1: everything that we found ourselves at the end of our rope.
Speaker 1: This is Justin's collaborator, Lee mars Lea and Justin are
Speaker 1: evangelical about the problems that stem from the noise in
Speaker 1: our modern society. In fact, they've recently co authored a
Speaker 1: book entitled Golden, The Power of Silence in a World
Speaker 1: of Noise. The book argues that we'd all be a
Speaker 1: lot happier if we could begin controlling the noise in
Speaker 1: our lives. I asked Lee to explain what she meant
Speaker 1: by this idea of noise. Noise can be described in
Speaker 1: two words as unwanted distractions, and usually that comes at
Speaker 1: us through our ears, through our screens, and even internally
Speaker 1: through our own thoughts, ruminative, worry, things like that. So
Speaker 1: unwanted distraction, So that which gets in the way of
Speaker 1: what we want, our deepest intentions for being here, and
Speaker 1: things that get in the way of us doing what
Speaker 1: we're here to do in the world. And so let's
Speaker 1: talk about the three ways you've described that this kind
Speaker 1: of noise, the sort of unwanted distraction comes in. You know,
Speaker 1: one is the way we typically think of noise, which
Speaker 1: is auditory noise. But you will have argued that that's
Speaker 1: actually getting a lot worse. Yeah, we we did ask
Speaker 1: the question is it really louder? And the evidence is
Speaker 1: showing absolutely. Across Europe and estimated four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people are living, that's about sixty five percent of
Speaker 1: the population are living with dess levels that are thought
Speaker 1: to be harmful to health. According to the World Health Organization,
Speaker 1: siren levels have gotten six times louder in order to
Speaker 1: pierce through the den and get our attention than these
Speaker 1: loud urban soundscapes. So it is definitely, without a doubt
Speaker 1: louder and it's not just auditory noise that's going up
Speaker 1: justin You've also talked a lot about informational noise. What
Speaker 1: do you mean by that and why is it getting worse? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just the noise in our ears, it's the
Speaker 1: noise on our screens and in our heads. And thinking
Speaker 1: about the screens, we look to a two ten statement
Speaker 1: that Eric Schmidt, who is then the CEO of Google,
Speaker 1: made this estimate that every two days we now create
Speaker 1: as much information as we did from the dawn of
Speaker 1: civilization up until two thousand and three, and researchers have
Speaker 1: found that most people switch between different online content every
Speaker 1: nineteen seconds, that the average person spends one full hour
Speaker 1: per day every day working to get back on track
Speaker 1: after dealing with interruptions from phones and social medias. So
Speaker 1: in aggregate, we take in about five times as much
Speaker 1: information most people in the United States as we did
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six. So it's like we're trying to
Speaker 1: drink out of a fire hose of information. And so
Speaker 1: that was informational noise. But you've also argued for a
Speaker 1: third kind of noise, which you call internal noise. Lee.
Speaker 1: What's that and why is it such a problem one
Speaker 1: for us. So everything we just mentioned is external, but
Speaker 1: thinking about our internal soundscape internal noise. Ethan Cross, the
Speaker 1: professor at University of Michigan who wrote the book Chatter,
Speaker 1: estimates that we listen to something like three hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty State of the Union addresses every day of compressed speech,
Speaker 1: and that speech is not often helpful, as you know
Speaker 1: very well, could be worrying, fixating, ruminating of all kinds,
Speaker 1: just looping and carving those pathways. When we get back
Speaker 1: from the break, we're going to discuss solutions to all
Speaker 1: the problems that stem from unnecessary noise. We'll see that
Speaker 1: there are strategies we can use to deliberately seek out
Speaker 1: the pristine attention Justin mentioned. If we're willing to put
Speaker 1: in some time and effort, the Happiness Lab will be
Speaker 1: back in a moment. Authors Lemars and Justin Zorn argue
Speaker 1: that we need to start paying attention to some of
Speaker 1: the negative consequences that come from being around too much noise,
Speaker 1: whether that unwanted distraction comes from the auditory world, the
Speaker 1: endless information streams around us, or the soil of thoughts
Speaker 1: inside our head. Over the last few years, the pair
Speaker 1: has begun mindfully noticing what happens in their bodies and
Speaker 1: their minds when there are too many demands on their consciousness.
Speaker 1: When I become irritable, this is a telltale sign that
Speaker 1: I am saturated by noise, because that's not my default.
Speaker 1: They also notice some physical things like tightness in the
Speaker 1: jaw the diaphragm, have trouble filling my lungs with air,
Speaker 1: even to the point where I have panic attacks at night.
Speaker 1: But I'll also notice relational tension. So it's it's physical things,
Speaker 1: it's emotional things, and also things with relationships. They're not
Speaker 1: going as well as they typically are. Justin did you
Speaker 1: experience similar things we talk about noise. The experience of
Speaker 1: noisiness is a feeling of contraction. It's like this contracted
Speaker 1: state of being, And that's often what it feels like
Speaker 1: for me when I'm like constantly reaching from my phone
Speaker 1: to check my email, or constantly looking to be stimulated,
Speaker 1: constantly seeking some kind of auditory or informational distraction. There's
Speaker 1: a kind of contractedness in my whole being. As a society,
Speaker 1: we tend to view happiness as a kind of contracted state.
Speaker 1: As the dopamine rush. But there's a deeper, more sustainable
Speaker 1: kind of more fulfilling happiness that's more akin to what
Speaker 1: Aristotle talked about, like eudaimonia. That's not that contracted dopamine
Speaker 1: go go go rushed state. It's a more open, expanded
Speaker 1: state of happiness that corresponds to the kind of Christine
Speaker 1: attention we're talking about. But you all are really really
Speaker 1: worried about this, Like you made the strong claim that
Speaker 1: all of the world's problems are in part due to
Speaker 1: this noise. Well, we're living in a time when we
Speaker 1: often mistake feelings of stress for aliveness. We look in
Speaker 1: the book at how noises our most celebrated addiction these days.
Speaker 1: How we often measure progress and productivity in terms of
Speaker 1: how much mental stuff we're creating. We look in the
Speaker 1: book at how we measure GDP, for example, in terms
Speaker 1: of how much industrial stuff we're creating, but also how
Speaker 1: much sound and stimulus, how much data and content we're creating.
Speaker 1: If you take our attention and you chop it up
Speaker 1: and turn it into eyeballs on a Facebook page that
Speaker 1: juices advertising revenue, then that increases GDP. But if you
Speaker 1: keep our attention whole, if you keep our attention pristine
Speaker 1: in a moment of undisturbed play with our kids, or
Speaker 1: admiring a beautiful piece of art in a museum, or
Speaker 1: enjoying a walk in nature. That's not optimizing GDP. So
Speaker 1: we just thought about how bizarre it is that the
Speaker 1: way we measure progress as a society is this measure
Speaker 1: of GDP is this measure of maximum sound and stimulus, maximizing, optimizing, increasing.
Speaker 1: So we just thought about how bizarre it is that
Speaker 1: the way we measure progress as a society is this
Speaker 1: measure GDP is this measure of maximum sound and stimulus, maximizing, optimizing,
Speaker 1: increasing the number of claims we're making our unconsciousness. Justin
Speaker 1: and Lee wanted to better understand what's needed to get
Speaker 1: to that expanded state of consciousness. They mentioned that sense
Speaker 1: of Christine attention. So they decided to explore how we
Speaker 1: can successfully quiet the noise that's around so many of
Speaker 1: us all the time. To do so, they asked an
Speaker 1: eclectic group of lay people and experts how they find
Speaker 1: silence in their lives. The question we pose to neuroscientists
Speaker 1: and politicians and artists and a whirling dervish is what's
Speaker 1: the deepest silence you've ever known. When we asked this question,
Speaker 1: we expected some of those answers to be really auditorily quiet,
Speaker 1: right moments maybe on a mountain peak, profound moments of
Speaker 1: deep and deep meditation. But what they pointed us towards
Speaker 1: instead were moments of awe births, deaths, and moments that
Speaker 1: were sometimes auditorily quite loud, which again kind of led
Speaker 1: the way to looking at that internal state of it
Speaker 1: and not just the external one. So you use that
Speaker 1: question and all these kind of interesting answers, you get
Speaker 1: to come to this definition of silence. You know, justin
Speaker 1: how are you thinking about silence? So, at one level,
Speaker 1: silences the absence of noise. It's the space where no
Speaker 1: one is making claims on the consciousness. It's the space
Speaker 1: where no one is interfering with your clear perception and
Speaker 1: also your clear intention. It's not so straightforward, because silence
Speaker 1: is often scary. Silence is often uncomfortable. So it's like
Speaker 1: we're wired now to believe that happiness is the opposite
Speaker 1: of silence. Yea. And even for those tiny examples like
Speaker 1: awkward silence. I have a teenage daughter, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: more horrifying than awkward silence in her world, the horror
Speaker 1: of the vacuum, the space where we have to confront ourselves,
Speaker 1: confront the unknown and what might become known. So experiencing
Speaker 1: silence is scary, But talk to me about some of
Speaker 1: the science showing the unexpected power of silence. We look
Speaker 1: at to the neuroscience and we ask this question, what
Speaker 1: if there were a mute button for the mind? Well,
Speaker 1: Mehi Chick set me high. We turned to his work
Speaker 1: on flow states where people really express a lot of
Speaker 1: joy being in flow. It's an incredibly universal experience. He
Speaker 1: describes in one piece of that we describe as internal silence.
Speaker 1: That's a place where there's no more space for self
Speaker 1: referential thought. You're no longer talking to yourself about yourself,
Speaker 1: and he says that turns out to be a very
Speaker 1: enjoyable experience. You know, you're tearing down a hill, skiing,
Speaker 1: we're in a dance class with a music blasting, but
Speaker 1: you're using that attention that you need in order to
Speaker 1: focus on that activity so much that there's no more
Speaker 1: space for that self referential thought. And that turns out
Speaker 1: to be a very happy experience for us. And so
Speaker 1: flow is the kind of thing that brings us happiness.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, it also seems just the absence of auditory
Speaker 1: noise can make us feel good. Yeah, there's been some
Speaker 1: brain studies looking at the effects of different types of
Speaker 1: on the brains of mammals, and it was found that
Speaker 1: it was silence, more than classical music and white noise
Speaker 1: and other soothing sounds that stimulated the growth of neurons
Speaker 1: in the hypocampus, which is the region of the brain
Speaker 1: most associated with memory and with the researchers, these researchers
Speaker 1: at Duke Medical School found was that the act of
Speaker 1: trying to hear in silence activates the brain and promotes
Speaker 1: neural development. So it's not just silence, but this act
Speaker 1: of paying attention to the silence. So far, we've heard
Speaker 1: some of the benefits of silence, whether that's experiencing less
Speaker 1: auditory noise or just calming the rapid chatter inside our heads.
Speaker 1: But when we get back from the break, we'll hear
Speaker 1: more about practical strategies we can use to achieve these
Speaker 1: blessings and to find the Christine calm that silence can offer.
Speaker 1: The happiness lab will be right back as I chatted
Speaker 1: with authors Lee Mars and Justin Zorn about ways we
Speaker 1: can all get a little more silence in our lives.
Speaker 1: I was surprised when Lee began her list of strategies
Speaker 1: with a bit of a confession. Lee used to be
Speaker 1: a smoker. And the confession really isn't so much that
Speaker 1: I used to smoke, it's that I loved it. I
Speaker 1: absolutely love the ritual of taking a break from crisis work,
Speaker 1: which is what I was doing at the time, or
Speaker 1: everything would just paused stop. I would take a deep inhale,
Speaker 1: deep exhale with that cigarette, Watch the smoke rise, hear
Speaker 1: the sizzle of the flame, things like that. So I
Speaker 1: loved that, And well, I'm really glad that I quit.
Speaker 1: When we quit our smoke break, we also quit quiet breaks.
Speaker 1: We quit that interruption of constant working and flow. And
Speaker 1: so you've talked about how finding these kind of healthier
Speaker 1: versions of the smoking break, or at least these kind
Speaker 1: of healthier rituals of silence, start with this idea of
Speaker 1: recognizing what's in your sphere of control. Justin what do
Speaker 1: you mean by sphere of control? We look at this
Speaker 1: idea of what's in our sphere of control, even in
Speaker 1: our busy lives. We talk in the book with someone
Speaker 1: who became a kind of guide for us in Jarvis
Speaker 1: Jay Masters, and Jarvis has spent thirty years on death
Speaker 1: row for a crime that the preponderance of evidence shows
Speaker 1: that he didn't commit, and he's learned how to study
Speaker 1: his own mind and study what's possible within an extraordinarily
Speaker 1: constrained set of circumstances where he's not even allowed to
Speaker 1: decide when he goes outside, when he takes a shower.
Speaker 1: He's able to find these little moments of silence in
Speaker 1: his life, have quiet time, and have the space in
Speaker 1: his life to just be immersed in doing one thing.
Speaker 1: So we take that as a kind of signal that
Speaker 1: we can find it too. One of the practical suggestions
Speaker 1: that you've started with is this idea of just listening.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by just listening and why can
Speaker 1: it be so powerful. There's this ancient practice out of
Speaker 1: India called Nada yoga that's a kind of meditation on silence.
Speaker 1: Have just listened to nothing, and it's something we incorporated
Speaker 1: into our lives. Sometimes just stepping outside and listening to
Speaker 1: the sound of the breeze, or stepping into a quiet
Speaker 1: room and actively listening to nothing in particular, and it's
Speaker 1: really the essence of what the researchers at Duke Med
Speaker 1: School who were studying the effect of listening in silence
Speaker 1: intentionally listening in silence can do. Just listening to nothing
Speaker 1: is edifying for the brain, and as a friend of
Speaker 1: ours says, helps reset the nervous system. But you've also
Speaker 1: found just in that even just listening when there is
Speaker 1: noise can kind of help your reset. You told a
Speaker 1: funny story about your daughter and an annoying toy, which
Speaker 1: I wanted you to share. In the spring of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the COVID lockdowns, my wife and
Speaker 1: I are twins, had just been born, and at the
Speaker 1: time our four year old was home from school, of course,
Speaker 1: and it was this moment when the babies were just crying.
Speaker 1: There was the home of the robot vacuum cleaner and
Speaker 1: oatmeal burning and Disney musicals blaring all the time, And
Speaker 1: that was one of those moments when I think, like
Speaker 1: many people in our society at that time, I was
Speaker 1: just overwhelmed with the noise and I realized how all
Speaker 1: the external noise going on, you know, as I was
Speaker 1: trying to be on conference calls amidst that whole all that,
Speaker 1: did you know all the external noise was creating an
Speaker 1: internal noise in me. It was this feedback loop I
Speaker 1: was finding between the noise in my ears and the
Speaker 1: noise inside. And my four year old daughter at that
Speaker 1: time had this little book that had a tiny little
Speaker 1: speaker in it that played the Frozen song let It Go,
Speaker 1: Let It Go from the Disney musical, and one day
Speaker 1: I was just listening to it, about to lose it,
Speaker 1: and I just listen to that message, Oh wait, let
Speaker 1: it go, let it Go. Maybe a Dina Menzel and
Speaker 1: her soaring mezzo soprano is trying to tell me something
Speaker 1: here that I can find ways to let go of
Speaker 1: the internal noise even if the external noise is overwhelming.
Speaker 1: And this seems to relate to another thing you suggest,
Speaker 1: which is this idea of making friends with noise. We
Speaker 1: maybe give us some strategies for how we can do that,
Speaker 1: especially when the noise is really not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing we want to be listening to. Yeah, we turn
Speaker 1: to the poet Padrick Otuma for this one. He says,
Speaker 1: this is actually some of the oldest technology out there,
Speaker 1: is that we say hello to the noise, we greet it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: when noise does show up, to just notice what's arising. Again,
Speaker 1: this is kind of going back to that noticing, noticing
Speaker 1: what's happening in the body, taking it as that moment,
Speaker 1: maybe adding some humor. And then, of course the other
Speaker 1: thing is actually when that noise stops, to then throw
Speaker 1: your own little quiet party celebration acknowledgment, acknowledgement that noise
Speaker 1: is past, and feel some gratitude there. But making friends
Speaker 1: with noise can help. But it all kind of go
Speaker 1: a little better. And that's not again to say we
Speaker 1: want to create more or invited more, but noise happens,
Speaker 1: and so how can we greet it with grace? Justin
Speaker 1: you had a lovely story about this that involved a
Speaker 1: particular noise I hate, which was being on hold with
Speaker 1: some sort of awful customer service line and how you
Speaker 1: were able to greet the noise in a more welcoming way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was remembering being on hold for a couple hours
Speaker 1: for something in a customer service line with like particularly
Speaker 1: annoying music playing, and I was back to that interplay
Speaker 1: between the external noise and the internal noise. But having
Speaker 1: to listen to that sound was creating a kind of
Speaker 1: noise within me. And this is something that Jarvis J.
Speaker 1: Masters really has figured out how to navigate in prison,
Speaker 1: Like he quieted the noise of Death Row, where you
Speaker 1: just have these constant, constant low fi radios playing and
Speaker 1: screaming and hollering and then just kind of the fear
Speaker 1: of the place. He told us that he quieted the
Speaker 1: noise by quietening his responses to the noise. Flip side
Speaker 1: of this idea making friends with the noise is we
Speaker 1: also have to take advantage of times when there are
Speaker 1: no noise, right like when there's actually these little gifts
Speaker 1: and moments of silence, And so just to talk about
Speaker 1: how we can make good use of these tiny moments
Speaker 1: of silence, you know, it often comes back to this
Speaker 1: idea what we were talking about before, of like shifting
Speaker 1: our idea of happiness of well being. For me, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm in the car and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the music stops streaming, and sometimes I like instinctively freak out.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh my god, the music stopped or
Speaker 1: the podcast stops streaming. What happened? But it's like, can
Speaker 1: we take a moment and relax into that sudden quiet,
Speaker 1: or maybe even we're stuck at the post office in line.
Speaker 1: It's really frustrating. And sure, you know, maybe we have
Speaker 1: other things we need to do, and that's legit, that's real.
Speaker 1: But it's like, can we take these little inconveniences like
Speaker 1: the podcast stops streaming, or we're stuck in line at
Speaker 1: the post office, and rather than seeing it as a
Speaker 1: burden or even a cause of stress, can we shift
Speaker 1: our orientation to see it as a little gift, a
Speaker 1: little pocket of silence in our lives. This was a
Speaker 1: really helpful suggestion for me. Right after I read your book,
Speaker 1: I was waiting for some zoom call and someone was
Speaker 1: coming lee and I was sitting there and I was,
Speaker 1: you know, my internal noise was about to start raging.
Speaker 1: Where is this present my times a value? Lada? And
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, this is a gift. I can
Speaker 1: stay here and just breathe and hear the silence and
Speaker 1: you know, again, it wasn't that long, but it meant
Speaker 1: that I greeted that moment in a completely different mindset
Speaker 1: than I would have otherwise. We have so few unstructured
Speaker 1: moments that when they show up that we could just
Speaker 1: actually do that expanding that Justin was pointing us towards,
Speaker 1: instead of contracting in that moment because we're not maybe
Speaker 1: in control or didn't go completely as we'd hoped, that
Speaker 1: we could expand and that greet that moment and celebrate
Speaker 1: that little moment of silence that we got. We'll make
Speaker 1: for a very different day and a very different zoom call.
Speaker 1: As you surely found absolutely what you were just saying about,
Speaker 1: like that feeling like, oh my god, I'm so busy,
Speaker 1: I can't be waiting for this Like that for me
Speaker 1: has been such a learning because we look at the
Speaker 1: connection between silence and humility, like silence as being comfortable
Speaker 1: in this space of being able to let go of
Speaker 1: one of life's most basic responsibilities these days, which is
Speaker 1: having to think of what to say. It's like, this
Speaker 1: silence is about resting the mental reflexes that protect our
Speaker 1: reputation and promote our point of view. And it's like
Speaker 1: there's something so relaxing and nourishing and edifying about coming
Speaker 1: into that humility of not having to constantly fill the space.
Speaker 1: Another thing you've talked about that we can do is
Speaker 1: that when we are engaged in activities, we can pay
Speaker 1: attention to those activities in a different way. We can
Speaker 1: kind of find silence in what we're doing. Well, give
Speaker 1: me an example of how something like that might work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe we look to a ritual that you have,
Speaker 1: for example, maybe making coffee in the morning as your ritual.
Speaker 1: If we can like slow that activity down by ten percent,
Speaker 1: bring that much more attention to it, then we can
Speaker 1: find the silence inside that. And really that's not a
Speaker 1: lot of doing, it's not a lot to ask, it's
Speaker 1: a light lift, right, So if we can bring that
Speaker 1: attention in, we can find the silence inside there. We're
Speaker 1: so interested in not adding more to the to do us,
Speaker 1: but just kind of taking away, simplifying, slowing down, finding
Speaker 1: that space and silence. And Justin and I are finding
Speaker 1: that silence nut by running off to retreats for six
Speaker 1: months of the time. But really, like in a full, busy,
Speaker 1: pretty compressed, demanding life, silence is always with us. And
Speaker 1: if you want to take it to the next level,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have time and space for a
Speaker 1: little bit of sanctuary. One of the things you suggest
Speaker 1: is finding space in nature that we can find silence
Speaker 1: in nature. Yeah, so nature is the way for many
Speaker 1: people to find their quiet, and it does seem connected
Speaker 1: to that self transcendent experience we touched on earlier, where
Speaker 1: you are getting more connected to a smaller sense of
Speaker 1: self but in relation and feeling connected to a larger
Speaker 1: sense of being. It's definitely one of the most common ways,
Speaker 1: including just listening. This doesn't mean you have to go
Speaker 1: far far out, even just stepping outside in the midst
Speaker 1: of a busy day and hearing bird song with birding
Speaker 1: in particular, birds are with us with it's the wild
Speaker 1: coming into our very being. We do look a little
Speaker 1: bit in the book at you know, for example, the
Speaker 1: research Amingkoo that shows that you just playing with soil
Speaker 1: for five minutes can actually change the activation of the
Speaker 1: parasympathetic nervous system from fight or flight, moving towards tend
Speaker 1: and befriend. So we have this practice in the book
Speaker 1: of How to Find Silence in the Mind through Nature,
Speaker 1: this practice of like once a day connecting with something
Speaker 1: bigger than yourself like a towering tree, your stars in
Speaker 1: the night sky, and once a day connecting with something
Speaker 1: smaller than yourself like a blossom or a trail of
Speaker 1: ants or a sparrow, and how these practices for us
Speaker 1: produce quiet inside. It's another way to get quiet inside
Speaker 1: is to really look very carefully at the things you're
Speaker 1: bringing into your life that are causing more noise. And
Speaker 1: one of the biggest ones for so many of us
Speaker 1: as our technology. You've advocated something that we've talked about
Speaker 1: before on this podcast, which is this idea of a
Speaker 1: tech sabbath. What is this and why can it be
Speaker 1: so powerful for finding silence? You know, with tech, one
Speaker 1: thing we come back to, and this relates again to
Speaker 1: silence and nature, is this space where nothing is making
Speaker 1: claims on our consciousness. It's like sometimes bird song could
Speaker 1: actually be really high decibel, or the sound of Niagara falls,
Speaker 1: or you know, a huge Russian river is actually super
Speaker 1: high decibel, but it's like, why is it not noisy
Speaker 1: for us? It's because it's not making claims on our consciousness.
Speaker 1: And technology, especially if you think about reminders and pinging
Speaker 1: notifications and you know, the urge to check our email
Speaker 1: when it's always available, like that's making claims on our consciousness.
Speaker 1: So when we think about a tech sabbath, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be too prescriptive. About it and say like, oh,
Speaker 1: you must do this, you miss do that, because you
Speaker 1: know we all have responsibilities. Back to that idea of
Speaker 1: our sphere of influence, in our sphere of control. I'm
Speaker 1: not in a space in my life I can totally
Speaker 1: put my phone in one of those lockboxes because I
Speaker 1: have little kids around and professional responsibilities that I have
Speaker 1: to attend to. But one thing I'll do, for example,
Speaker 1: is take the email app off my phone for a
Speaker 1: time a certain time a day, so I can only
Speaker 1: check my email when I'm at the computer, knowing that
Speaker 1: that's one little change I can make that's going to
Speaker 1: impact the number of claims made in my consciousness. And
Speaker 1: that leads to one of the last things I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about, which is that we also have to
Speaker 1: think about our own interaction in terms of creating noise.
Speaker 1: How many claims on other people's consciousness we're making that
Speaker 1: we don't need to be making, and so lee talk
Speaker 1: about ways that we could reduce the noise that we're
Speaker 1: causing for other people. Noise is a really subjective experience,
Speaker 1: right One person's noise is another person's symphony, and so
Speaker 1: we often don't think of our actions as noisy. You
Speaker 1: may have noticed, you know, when I play a podcast
Speaker 1: or the radio or the music or whatever in common space,
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking of that as disturbing others. So we
Speaker 1: can really open up. Actually a lot of this we're
Speaker 1: talking about individual experiences, but most of the time we're
Speaker 1: really in relationship right or either at work, we're at home,
Speaker 1: or with others. So this is so much of this
Speaker 1: is actually about negotiating creating some agreements around noise and silence.
Speaker 1: So we do invite the reader to first look at
Speaker 1: their own contributions, and if you're not sure how you contribute,
Speaker 1: you could ask a truth teller in your life about
Speaker 1: what habits you may have that create noise for them,
Speaker 1: and then really commit to lessening that. It comes back
Speaker 1: again and again to this idea of like, do we
Speaker 1: value that contracted state of the dopamine rush that's often noisy,
Speaker 1: or are we valuing as progress as what we're seeking
Speaker 1: states of Christine attention where we can really savor life,
Speaker 1: where we can really hear another person, and that includes
Speaker 1: at home, among families, among friends, in workplaces. So we
Speaker 1: talk in the book about what it would mean to
Speaker 1: find a society that honors silence, like, what if this
Speaker 1: was a value as workplaces and organizations and schools and
Speaker 1: even whole countries and communities to value pristine attention as
Speaker 1: a public good. For many of us these days, avoiding
Speaker 1: unwanted distraction isn't as simple as throwing a bunch of
Speaker 1: dirt onto the cobblestone streets outside our homes or offices.
Speaker 1: But I hope this episode has given you hope that
Speaker 1: the pristine attention our forefarther sought is possible in the
Speaker 1: modern day if we commit to using the right strategies.
Speaker 1: You can start the way Lee and Justin suggest it,
Speaker 1: and do a bit of a noise audit. What kinds
Speaker 1: of unwanted distraction or coming through your ears or your
Speaker 1: news feeds or the stressful thoughts in your head? And
Speaker 1: how does all that noise make you feel? If the
Speaker 1: answer is not so good, can you take a careful
Speaker 1: look at your own sphere of influence to find spots
Speaker 1: where it's possible to decrease some of that mental clamor
Speaker 1: or perhaps you can find small moments of silence to
Speaker 1: cherish and visit spaces that give you a sense of calm.
Speaker 1: And if changes like these are hard right now, given
Speaker 1: your circumstances, that's okay. Maybe you can find ways to
Speaker 1: befriend the noise around you, treat it with a little
Speaker 1: bit more grace, or just let it be. I hope
Speaker 1: that using strategies like these can give you the bandwidth
Speaker 1: you need to hear what your wise voice is saying
Speaker 1: you really desire. In twenty twenty three, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me on this special New Year's season
Speaker 1: of The Happiness Lab. And not to worry is my
Speaker 1: producers and I are already hard at work on our
Speaker 1: next full season, as well as some bonus episodes I
Speaker 1: think you'll enjoy. Until next time we meet, be sure
Speaker 1: to stay safe and stay happy. The Happiness Lab is
Speaker 1: co written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by Ryan
Speaker 1: Dilley and Courtney Guerino. The show was mastered by Evan
Speaker 1: Viola and our original music was composed by Zachary Over.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Shanebeard, Greta Kone, Nikole Morano, Morgan Ratner,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Jacob Weisberg, my agent, Ben Davis, and the
Speaker 1: rest of the Pushkin team. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries and by me doctor Laurie Santos,