Thoughts on Excellence Free E-Newsletter Series
Volume 23, Issue No. 4a
December 1, 2024
By Dan Coughlin
In MWD (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) quiet is defined as free from noise or uproar, and as marked by little or no motion or activity.
Slow down. Find a space that is free from noise or uproar. Have little or no motion or activity.
That may sound like a pipe dream as you power through your work, marriage, family, community, and personal responsibilities. After all, aren’t you supposed to be an achieving machine all day long with lots and lots of people counting on you?
Not exactly.
Strengthening the health of your essence is another way of saying strengthening the health of your interior life. Your exterior life flows from your interior life. You need quiet in your life in order to truly focus on your thoughts, emotions, and will. Without this quiet time in your life, your exterior life is guided by exterior things: other people’s behaviors and comments, social media, the never-ending pounding to do more and have more, feedback from bosses and employees and vendors and customers and competitors, input from your spouse/significant other or children or parents or friends, and on and on.
When people say they have zero time in their life for quiet even though they realize that it is only in the quiet times that they can truly focus on their interior life, I often wonder what they would say if I told them they were too busy to breathe air. Somehow they squeeze time in to breathe and eat and sleep; otherwise they wouldn’t be here for very long.
But they won’t carve out time for quiet.
If you really want a healthy essence, then quiet becomes as important as air and food and sleep. In your quiet time you can slow down enough to really reflect on and discern the thoughts, feelings, and will that you want guiding your internal and external life. Everything you have covered so far in this series of essays is greatly affected by the amount of quiet that you allow yourself to have in your life.
Slow down. Step away from the noise. Breathe in and out. And give yourself some time in quiet. Slow your brain down and let go of the issues of the day that you are dealing with. Don’t move. Just sit quietly.
And then allow yourself to consider your thoughts, emotions, and will. Decide what you want to keep, what you want to let go of, and what you want to add. In this quiet time, save some time just to concentrate on your essence.
Essential Walk Questions for You to Consider
- When this week will you immerse yourself in quiet time?
- When you get to this time on your calendar, where will you go to experience quiet?
- When you get to this time and place, what specific aspect of your thoughts, emotions, and direction in your life will you think about?
Republishing Articles
My newsletters, Thoughts on Excellence, have been republished in approximately 40 trade magazines, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations over the past 20+ years. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with the name of the article you want in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document.