I have just sent out today's newsletter - if you have subscribed, then hopefully it will have gone straight into your inbox. If not, check your spam.
Here is a sample of the newsletter article that was sent out today, and an option to subscribe if you haven't already to see the rest of the article, receive future articles, and also get a free eBook with common questions and answers on inner peace,
What To Do If You Are Disturbed By Noise
It might be a car alarm going off from a few streets over, it might be someone shouting next door, it might just be someone’s tone when they are speaking to you, it could even be someone complaining, radiating negativity, which makes you feel as if you are being dragged down.
In all these cases, what creates a disturbance is often the idea or belief that these noises should not be happening. They seem to have no benefit to you, they seem to just harm you inwardly, so they surely should not be happening. Rather than just the noise occurring, there is the noise, and then there is something inside us, inside our heads or bodies, which tightens up, resists, and seems to feel like a victim of the noise, being poked and prodded or stung by the noise that is happening.
The same goes for inner noise - mental chatter. The main pain comes from the resistance to the noise, the extra ideas we have about what is already happening.
For many people who feel particularly sensitive, it is probably because your attention and energy feel tightly linked to this automatic resistance that flares up to a certain kind of noise occurring.
Rather than waiting until something happens to provoke your resistance, take time when things are more quiet, to spread your attention away from being consumed by your head and reactions.
Ways to spread your attention so it is more balanced throughout your body:
- Notice your breathing more than your thoughts - most of the time thoughts can suck up attention like a hungry little monsters. Attention is used to going into thoughts, and all the resistance that come along with it. Notice your breathing more, when you are doing simple things - sitting, cooking, eating, driving, lying in bed - your breath is a kind of intelligence itself. Spend some time giving it more attention than the constant mental chatter, which really isn’t serving you but to keep you stressed and out of touch with the universe.
- Practice non-labelling. When you are doing simple things, take a moment to not call life anything. Don’t give the moment a label. See that whatever you think about the moment - is just a thought, it is extra, it is not intrinsic to the moment. Coupled with simple breath awareness, this can begin to take your energy out of habitual resistance patterns, so that when challenges do arise, you will not feel so overwhelmed or sucked in.
When noise occurs, in whatever form, notice the resistance flare up, the tightening or constriction, then simply notice if this resistance is doing anything to stop the noise or prevent it from happening again.