How sound can help us filter out the noise in our lives

I was sitting on a relatively remote beach in Cornwall last week when my wife told me about a news story that she had a notification and I just thought how perverse it was that we had walked so far to be away from everything and then the noise in the world just followed us anyway.

On that same beach, I walked barefoot in the waves along the shore as I spied a plastic piece of rope washed up. This beach was pristine, so I thought. It was golden sand and sand dunes looking out to the Atlantic flanked by tall black cliffs to one side. Clear blue sky above our heads and a mirror of wet sand beneath our feet; it was a little bit of paradise. I picked up the little bit of plastic rope and then a few steps later, I found another, so I picked that up too. As it turned out, the beach wasn't as pristine as I thought and the more I walked, the more plastic I found. I kept picking it up and then my kids saw me with a handful of plastic bags and rope so they started helping me pick up more. By the time we got to the path through the sand dunes to get back to the car, I was wishing I'd come prepared with a bin bag!

Noise in our lives works like that plastic on the beach; it can become your purpose without meaning to, but unlike the beach where I felt I was paying something forward to others because it was the right thing to do, noise in the news, in social media, at work, at home; it's everywhere in life. Everything is competing for our attention all the time. It can get overwhelming and lead us to spend our energy and time on things that don't really add any value to our lives; they just distract us from the things that do.

Sure, there are tools now that help us save time, especially content-generation. I've used AI to give me drafts for these posts in the past and then I've changed 50% of it (at least) so I can make sure it sounds like me and gets over the points that I want it to make, but this time, it felt so personal, I'm going Old School, because there are so many things out there now on social media where you have no idea what's real and what's not anymore and so much going on in the world that feels like it should be generated by fiction but isn't. It's more important than ever to know how to rise about that feeling of overwhelm, view the noise as nothing more than noise and be able to judge what actually really matters to you right now.

So here are my top tips (Andy Intelligence rather than artificial intelligence) for reconnecting with what really matters to you and get some control back in your life.

The second you realise you're feeling like something is too much- that is not a weakness; it's an asset. It's a signal to look away and reset.

This is something that I like to call the "Next Step Breath".

1. If you're able to get outside, do so. If you're unable to get outside then you need to ideally get up and move to somewhere quieter. If you can get near a window; this is ideal. Otherwise, you can try closing your eyes and imagining that you're outside.

2. Natural sounds are the best way to ground quickly so get outside. If it's warm enough, go barefoot. Stand on grass, on your patio and notice that connection to the Earth. Notice the sensation of that connection. Notice the way it's supporting you. Breathe that feeling of strength in from your feet all the way to the top of your head, like you're a tree filling yourself up with water from the ground.

3. Take 3 deep breaths. Fill up your lungs. Imagine that sensation of the ground beneath you, supporting you filling up your whole body. Let that breath go with a sigh. Anything that you feel in this moment you want to let go, imagine that you're breathing it out and it's disappearing far out into the sky, far, far away. Notice the sound of your breath, the sensation of letting that breath go with a sigh and how you feel afterwards.

   
   

   If you feel to self-conscious to let go with a sigh, focus instead on your breath totally leaving your body, like you're watching it go further and further away until it's out of sight.

4. Then ask yourself a question, "What really matters to you right now?"

5. You might not have an answer straightaway, so notice your surroundings. Notice the sounds around you; what's natural and what's not and without judgement focus on what they are; not as what is making them, but think of you can describe the sounds you here to yourself. Is it low or high? Short and melodic or a drone? etc.

   
   

   When you feel calm, like you're in a gap between waves, ask yourself the same question and if you don't get an answer, repeat the practice and eventually something will come to you. You're not looking for a grand plan; just a Next Step. Even if it is simply, "I want to feel calm like this more often".

When you question whether you should be spending time thinking about something that may not be serving you correctly, ask yourself whether it is working towards your Next Step. If it's not; it's noise. Let go. If it is, then you know you're concentrating on the right thing so you can be sure now that it's time well spent, even if you're not yet where you want to be, you're taking a step in the right direction.

It's a good practice to get into where you periodically review what your next step is, because it will change from week to week, month to month. It could be a big life decision, like moving house or changing jobs, but actually it's the little decisions in our lives that can make the biggest difference and taking lots of smaller steps is more achievable that one massive decision that feels out of reach.

Thank you for reading this and I hope this practice helps someone else as much as I've found it's helped me.