I wish my life had a built-in mute button for things like:
- My Brain
- People on Speaker Phones
- Influencers
- Nagging relatives
- Whiny negative people
However, outside of wearing earplugs or medication, I’m not sure its possible.
Filtering out all the micro-moments that bombard us each day is a useful skill. It’s amazing how irrelevant, useless, hypothetical and distracting noise drains our brain of focus and energy. Outside of limiting the amount of negative input you decide to consume, there’s not a lot of easy answers. But here’s a few to start.
1 Understand our own learning process.
Think about it, are you a visual learner (you must see things) or an auditory learner (you must hear things). Do you learn and process information more by reading, writing, listening, visualizing, touching or even smelling.
For example, I don’t remember much from what I hear from lectures. But if you can show me a picture, diagram or visual example (like a lab class) I can see it in my mind for a long time. This is why I stopped watching horror or extremely violent movies when I was 10.
Visually is how I remember best. Which means, I don’t need help muting things I hear, it comes naturally. However, learning how to block visual stimuli is important if I want to mute something. I haven’t found any simple method to mute visual stimuli, but it has taken some willpower and discipline to limit the amount I allow myself to see.
2 Understanding what we’re sensitive to
Like number one, the things were sensitive to make it harder to mute. Knowing what you’re sensitive to will help determine which areas are easier or harder to mute.
For example, my skin is very sensitive. When I lay in bed, I can feel anything that’s under me. Even grains of sand or a wrinkle in the sheet bothers me. Tight clothes, especially ties, bother me for as long as I have them on. I also am very sensitive to detergents, colognes, and even lying in grass. But muting these is easy, because I have control over them. I can change clothes, clean my sheets, or put on anti-itch cream.
However, it’s harder if were hypersensitive to others’ colognes, voices, loud vehicles etc. Being able to mute these is not so easy. Again, being sensitive means, it only takes a little interaction to bother us. In the end, everyone needs to find a way to deal with these issues if we want to stay Cool, Calm and Collective.
3. Deal with issues you can and ignore those you can’t.
This, of course, is easier said than done. We must put up with things that bother us. That’s part of life. Like my mom also said: It’s not about you. And her all time favorite: The world doesn’t revolve around you.
There are something’s you have to just put up with and can’t ignore. However, to keep our sanity there are times we need to mute out stuff around us. Through trial and error most of us find our way.