Hi friend,
This week I asked a room of women to sit in silence for ten minutes.
Most of them would rather have done almost anything else.
And I get it. I've spent years being very good at not being quiet. There's always one more program to build, one more thing to fix, one more reason the stillness can wait.
Here's what I told them, and what I want to leave with you on a Sunday.
Silence doesn't make the noise. It lets you hear it.
The scroll. The podcast in the car. The next task. The full calendar. The vacuuming at 9pm. None of it is neutral. It's all doing a job, and the job is keeping something at a distance.
The thought that floods in the second it goes quiet is not random. It's the one you've been working hardest to drown out. What gets loud first is the most honest thing about you.
For a lot of us, stillness reads as danger. A body braced for the next demand doesn't trust the absence of one, so it reaches for motion. That's physiology, not a character flaw. (I say that as someone with the board certifications to back it up, and as someone who still feels it anyway.)
Here's the part I can't talk anyone out of.
You can mute the mind. The body keeps broadcasting. The 3am wake-ups. The short fuse. The jaw you didn't know you were clenching. The shoulders up by your ears. Whatever you keep quiet doesn't leave. It moves underground and runs the show from there.
When it got quiet in that room, the thing that got loud for me was simple. For years, when I didn't trust that my work was good enough, I just made more of it. Another program. Another offer. Anything but sit with the question. The noise was the point.
So here is your Sunday, if you want it.
You don't need ten minutes. Three counts. Five counts.
Get still. Go quiet. Listen for the first thing you hear. Don't fix it. Don't solve it. Just name it: this is the thing that got loud the moment it got quiet. Then ask one question: is it true?
The silence didn't put that thing there. It's been underneath the noise the whole time. The noise was just what kept you from it.
You don't have to walk away with an answer. You only have to walk away knowing what got loud, and knowing you didn't run from it.
That's the whole practice. That's the week I won't forget.
Hit reply and tell me one thing. What got loud for you?
With so much love,
Ali
P.S. In case you need a nice Father's Day gift. Try the workout I gifted Mark. Download Here.