How to hear yourself in our noisy world

You slowly open your eyes, yawn, stretch and are immediately strangled by thoughts about the day ahead, the goals you have to achieve, and other people’s expectations. If you resonated with any of that, you’re not alone. We’re all servants to what author Prem Rawat, calls the “busyness of life.” We let trivial things control our agenda to the point where time seems to melt into thin air. And, in doing so, we miss out on all the rich experiences that life has to offer.

It seems to me like every day, we wake up to more noise than there was the night before. The modern world is a chaotic place. We live in overcrowded cities, where we’re surrounded by traffic, noise, and pollution – and work ourselves to death. Faced with distractions and the demands of everyday life, we’ve forgotten how to access the sense of peace that has been inside us since we were born. 

This is why sometimes we feel empty and alone even when surrounded by loved ones and friends. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways to reconnect with our inner self, and they don’t have to involve escaping to the mountains or living as a hermit!

Just think about how many hours a day you waste on your phone. The need to be constantly connected means continually scrolling social media feeds and emails, responding to messages, and then feeling dejected if you miss out on something cool. But technology’s not the only thing at fault. Your internal pressures, desires, and expectations also play a big role – things like getting a promotion, advancing in your career, or worrying about whether other people think of you as “successful.”

It’s not wrong to be ambitious. But the constant drive for achievement is a distraction from what is good in the present moment. It’s like driving from A to B as fast as possible, without pausing to look out of the window. Many of us might acknowledge that our lives are noisy – but our problem is that we seek peace in the wrong places. We flee from stress by going on long vacations to remote islands or escaping up high mountains. But unless we can find peace within ourselves, the noise will always follow us.

Reconnecting with the peace within isn’t about cutting yourself off from technology or civilization. It’s about building a solid foundation of calm and strength – and then using that to keep you steady, even in the darkest of times. 

Peace comes when you let the unimportant things in life fall away.

Think about your favorite shirt for a moment. Imagine taking it out of a drawer, putting it on, and then heading out the door feeling fresh. Throughout the day, that shirt will get dirty – while you’re working, running around, or eating spaghetti. Once the day is done, you’ll probably want to wash it. What happens when you wash clothes? You remove the dirt. That is, you don’t bring cleanliness from elsewhere and put it inside the clothes! You take away what’s not desired and leave what is: a clean item of clothing. 

This same idea applies to finding your inner peace. You don’t create peace and install it inside yourself. Instead, you uncover what’s already there by letting go of what is trivial and not needed.

Try this this week, and let me know if it works in the comment section. I will share more steps in another post.