Of all the things that are the most uncomfortable for me in the world, silence was near the top of the list.

I hated when things were silent and filled my life with noise at almost all times.

And then I discovered the power of the The Silence and the massive impact it can have in my own life. Discover the sound of silence!

Learn more in this episode.

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover the 5 secrets to run your business like a Special Operator: https://www.adamliette.com/sof

Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of smooth operator. I'm Adam Liette. So good to have you here today. And I'm gonna unpack something that's actually a little uncomfortable for me to talk about because it was a big learning point, big revelation.

And it's actually one of the things that used to make me the most uncomfortable in the world. And that was silence. Silence was one of the things that just I couldn't deal with, I needed to be surrounded with noise, white noise, any kind of noise all the times. And I hated when things were silent. And so I would fill my life with that.

And I think part of that is related to my background. As a musician, I always had music in my ears at all times over the years, that evolved from needing to listen in the car, and then got to when I was walking to and from places.

If you're old enough to remember when the iPod first came out, I was one of the first people to buy one. I'd study with music on I had playlists for different music that was good for writing. I do carpentry. So I was always attended a podcast when I was out in the workshop. I was I was never without my trusty iPod Shuffle.

Yes, I still have not just one of those.

But I bought three, one, when I knew it was being discontinued. So I had to have backups. Because it's part of what I do. As I started working from home in a remote position, one of the things that I missed most was the sounds of being in the office. Just hearing people talk hearing the shuffling of papers, hearing everything.

So what did I do? Naturally, I replaced them, I would replace them with various background noise. I used to always have background noise on movies that I'd watch 100 times old reruns music podcasts.

One year, I even watched every single Indians nationals and Cubs game. As I bought it, I bought the MLB package. So I could play baseball games all day, every day. I'm serious, I didn't miss a single game that year for three different teams, that's got to be some kind of a record.

That was until I took this course called TCP. So TCP is the transformational coaching program. And that changed all of that for me. And if you haven't heard of this program, I really suggest you search out Jim Fortin. This program really changed my life the way that I showed up to work in a big way, not by showing me some neat funnel trick or management style by helping me to optimize myself first. Now there's an exercise in this program called the silence.

And simply put the silence is just what it sounds like. It's immersing yourself in complete and total silence, no reading, no writing, no watching TV, no talking to yourself, no walking to distract yourself, sitting and being comfortable with your subconscious being and letting your mind relax, and explore. And getting to know your subconscious.

Some most comfortable I've ever felt, because this is not just 30 minutes, it's not just an hour, it's four hours long. But after a while I really got into it, being completely alone with my thoughts, realizing the amount that I'm really capable of accomplishing all the things about me that were always there. I had to find them by getting deep into my subconscious. And it really discovering a lot about myself and what was truly possible, what my visions are, what my dreams are, what my reality is, the strengths and the vulnerabilities that I have there right there.

But we often drown them out on a regular basis. We get so distracted with life. It's so purposely distracted with everything that we're doing that we don't take the time to listen to ourselves. I know this has been powerful for me, so I had to do some research. See what other observations have been found about this type of exercise. And here's a couple I want to share.

The first is sitting in silence gives you courage. sitting in silence helps you find peace of mind. sitting in silence helps you to connect with the divine with them. By reducing the stimulation that's all around us all the time, you are better in touch with with your subconscious, you're able to think through problems and other opportunities that are in front of you with clarity, curiosity, and honesty. It's a big one.

I now purposely look for those opportunities everywhere in my life. I know when I have difficult decisions to make, or I'm highly involved in a big project, that's going to require a heavy degree of critical thinking, I don't need white noise. Now I need silence, complete silence. And just sitting alone, letting myself be in that moment. Imagine my future and what I'm going to do to get there, and then coming back into the real world and making it come true.

Now, I also still need white noise, don't get me wrong. Something has to fill the vacuum of very long day working in a room completely by myself. So I still have old movies, reruns a TV shows baseball games, podcast, you know, everything. I've even, you know, there's there's a couple really crazy things I'll talk about here in a second. But this is only for part of the time.

And I find that and when I reflect on this, when do I need the white noise, it's when I'm doing highly tactical tasks, where I honestly need to block out the critical thinking part of my brain or the creative part, just so I can stay focused in and not wander off.

Some examples are these are if I have to do some programming of email sequences, if I need to look through discussion boards, looking for testimonials, organizing files, responding to the same customer service email for the 1000 1000 time in my career, like I need that distraction, it helps and I don't deny that part of my life. But now it's much more balanced. I

'm much more aware of how much the noise that I have in my working environment has a direct correlation to the impact of the work that I'm able to accomplish. So I mix it up. And I'll frequently listen to q&a recordings from programs that I purchase. Educational long form podcast interviews, there's even these crazy white noise tracks on YouTube, you might find like topics like working from an airplane. It's one of my favorite ones or rainy forests.

These tracks are crazy cool, and some of them are super long. There's like 10 hours long, you could hit play and not think about it for the rest of the day. But when it's strategic planning or heavy thinking time, it's always complete silence. That always prefaces action, when I need to make big decisions, when I need to immerse myself in a big project.

When I need to be the most successful and show up with my best self, the silence is always part of my preparation phase. It's part of preparation phase for a call. If I have an important call with a vendor or a potential partner, or my team. Silence is how I prep for that.

Because silence is where I get my biggest revelations. It's where I get my biggest strength. It's where I get in touch with myself in tune with what's around me in tune with what I'm doing. And I'm able to come out of it with clarity, with hope. With abundance with prosperity. I'm ready to iron out everything that needs to be done and stay in action for extended periods of time.

It silence almost rejuvenates me recharges my batteries. Staying in the silence during those high moments, keeps that clarity front of mind gives me the strength and wherewithal to implement the solution without missing a beat. And it's now a core part of the middle of my day after after I eat lunch. I have time with the silence. It gives me a refresher or pick me up it's it's even better than a cup of coffee, although a cup of coffee sounds really good right about now.

So, all this is a challenge.

I'm really challenging you to make this a part of your day, especially during routine times. If it can be part of your morning routine. The first thing you do when you get in the office, resist the urge to turn on that music turn turn on that podcast to turn on that video or whatever it is that you fill your silence with. resist that urge at the beginning of the day to give yourself the peace of mind that you need to tackle the day. Don't just jump in, run into your office, turn on the computer and go immediately into action.

Take five minutes in the silence and I think you're going to find that This frees up so many cobwebs, so many things, some of the shit that we carry with ourselves into our work life, you know, that's out there. And we need to address that we need to be with our life, but we need to find a way of cleansing ourselves from it.

And oftentimes, I really find that when we consume ourselves with all of this, it's it's a distraction, it's, it's a need to distraction at times. But not when you need to take radical action, you need to have clarity. And it'll help pull you out of overwhelm more than a so called break, watching a television show or anything else ever will. Right, so embrace the sound of silence.

Alright, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining me. If you have I look forward to seeing you just come over to www dot Adam liette.com and see some of the what we have in store for you there and I can't wait for the next episode, where we're going to talk about a different kind of massive clarity and massive action, and how often we're our own worst enemies during this most critical part of your business evolution. Alright, take care. This is Adam Liette from smooth operator, and I'm out