The following blog posts were written on my original blog over five years ago. This article is part of my 37 Life Lessons From My Youth Series. Note: I’ve matured a lot since then and my “voice” has changed since. Enjoy.
If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?
Only if you let it. Only if you acknowledge it’s existence.
Because everything and everyone can make noise.
But not all of it is going to be useful to you.
Some will be downright bad for you and you must be deaf to it.
However, we are more comfortable with hearing noise rather than silence.
Instead of silently listening to noise from others, you must embrace silence to make noise yourself.
Would you rather listen to someone else’s noise or your own noise?
Dark noise or white noise.
Dark noise is air that’s already been tainted from someone other than you.
It’s where you take and always consume.
It can lack soul. Like a roaring jet engine taking off or drilling construction down the street.
These soulless, dark noises cause depression and anxiety.
But then there’s dark noise that’s been given a soul.
Music, news, social media, people.
The mind doesn’t need to think. Because all it does is take, take, take.
When you get in the car and turn on the radio, you take and consume noise, noise, noise.
Music, television, and social media directly and indirectly tells you what to like and how to live.
You are told to place your thoughts on these many things.
Diversifying your attention, when you should be focusing on one thing at a time.
Noise, noise, noise.
That noise that you keep taking in, that you keep consuming.
Do you think it makes you happier?
People who watch romance movies tend to be unhappier. Because they’re given an unrealistic idea of how their romantic life is supposed to be.
The same applies to social media.
It’s why social media users are prone to anxiety and depression. Because social media is dark noise.
If you listen to dark noise, what are you going to think about your own life?
Subconsciously you will feel inadequate.
Because it raises expectations to be beyond your present reality. Reality that is out of reach for the majority.
Outside what motivates you, you are being told what to do and what you should be.
But you can’t be like them. Because those people are them and you are you.
Dark noise is grotesque. A wretch to your ears.
Because dark noise doesn’t validate you. It invalidates you.
Dark noise tells you what to want. When only you know what you want.
The second type of noise is white noise.
With white noise you don’t consume.
Instead, it is near silence.
It is the vibration in your car as you drive on the open highway, the fan that blows wind throughout your room, or the distant call of a waterfall.
White noise doesn’t interrupt your thought.
White noise allows you to think. That’s why it’s white. A blank slate for your mind to draw onto.
The purity of white noise lets your mind rest from taking. Instead the mind can recover and create.
White noise lets you think to yourself and talk to yourself.
Because it gives your mind the room to do so.
It gives you the chance to speak what you truly want rather than be told what to be.
White noise allows you to speak aloud what you truly desire.
Because when you talk to yourself you let out what’s inside and you speak the truth.
You validate yourself.
Because that’s what white noise is. It’s self-validation.
The white noise validates your existence. Because it gives you time to think and create.
How often do people use that blank white slate to talk to themselves?
Not enough.
Instead most people listen to other noise where they consume rather than create. They secretly worry about validation.
No.
Worry about the world validating you later.
Self-validation lets you realize yourself now.
It allows you to be selfish for your own good. Outside of soul-eating guilt and shame.
Your own validation for your thoughts frees you to pursue what you truly want.
It’s enough self-acceptance to push you towards your true aspiration – where you achieve genuine validation and success.
Respecting yourself now will bring you respect from others in the foreseeable future.
Until then, you must cut out the dark noise. Before they become whispers in your head that keep you from ever getting started.
Dark noises come from other people. And what you need is white noise, the next step. And that only comes from you.
Cut out the noise to lower your anxiety and increase your peace of mind. Because you need a stable mind for your life’s mission.
How do you cut out the noise?
Go for a drive and turn off the radio or put on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
Hear the noise seep into your periphery.
Did you achieve near silence? Did you find your blank canvas – your voice?
Great.
