“Silence is a source of great strength.”
Lao Tse
If you want to be really successful, you’ll have to shut up! Oh really. Stop talking, turn off the smartphone, turn off the TV, and sit quietly. And here’s the fat kick… do nothing. Regularly.
Am I talking about meditation? Not exactly… stick with me on this. It is something both easier and much more difficult… but extremely rewarding…
You want to be rich, right?
Yes, I mean financially rich but also rich in every area of your life. Do you want your life to produce gains that lead to satisfaction, excitement and happiness?
In that case you need ideas. Yes, wealth (of all spells) comes from good ideas, in the first place.
Ron G. Holland, leading innovator and business guru, says that running a successful business requires not just ONE good idea, but dozens, if not hundreds, of them.
He has written 20 books, Millionaire Mindset, the internationally famous Talk and Grow Rich, and The Millionaire Secret, to name a few, that make use of his classic formula for wealth:
Stillness
· Silence
Loneliness
He says he discovered this by accident when he was trying to set up a chain of motorcycle shops, but couldn’t afford the stock to fill it.
While he was lounging around – doing nothing – it occurred to him to bring all the bikes that the others couldn’t sell and get a commission from the sale of each one. This made him very successful.
He swears by the practice of sitting quietly waiting for ideas from his subconscious which he does every day for between 5 minutes and four hours. He visualizes the result he wants with strong emotion… and then lets his mind generate the solutions to achieve it. Like a successful businessman, he sits… until ideas come.
He’s not the only one. I read about a company that pays one of its top executives to do nothing but come up with new ideas. Yes, this process can be forced: just read A Bump in the Side of the Head or Serious Creativity. But why not let your mind do the work?
Sam Adeyemi, author of Ideas Rule the World says:
“Every human being is potentially rich and prosperous. The poor person is the one who has no ideas because ideas are the seeds that guarantee a future harvest. A mango seed is in the end a mango forest”.
More than likely you have accidentally experienced this yourself. Have you ever been pondering (or fretting over) a thorny issue in your life and couldn’t figure it out?
He put his hands up (or kicked the dog) and went off to do something else.
You got out of your own way and (inadvertently) let your oversized unconscious do the processing. When your brain is winding down or doing something repetitive, it enjoys some downtime and can start processing the data previously fed to it.
For me it’s walking, but it could also be doing the dishes, kicking a ball, or mowing the lawn. It’s a cliché that people get their best ideas in the shower, but it’s true!
And this is what you have to do.
1) Visualize it resolved, examine it from every angle you know of. Build as much emotion to experience it as you can.
2) Sit quietly until you get answers
I try to get at least ten minutes of downtime every day. I put on my industrial headphones (the kind those guys wear with bulldozers!) and clear my head. The effect is cumulative and at first, you may only get a few seconds (Andy Shaw says the goal is 15 seconds), but keep clearing your mind (don’t cheat, start over if you see or hear anything) and you’ll see. be able to do it longer and longer.
After just ten minutes, I am refreshed and sometimes I have received an amazing idea. The trick is not to force it. We have approximately 86 billion brain cells. Let them do the work!
During this time I have already received new ideas for mobile accessories, ecological power generation in shopping centers (!) and I am working on a women’s jewelry project after receiving some designs that seem unique to me.
I have also received information and publicity copy for a gold and silver deal I am assisting with. All this seems reward enough to shut up!
Are you afraid of silence?
Aim…
“Silence only scares people who compulsively verbalize.”
William S. Burroughs
We are a society addicted to movement…
A lot of people in the tech generation can’t stand to be without some kind of noise, some kind of distraction. I was on the platform waiting to catch a train the other day and I looked down to see that everyone had a smartphone in front of their faces.
My teenage son at one point started physically shaking if his phone vibrated while he was talking to me. If he couldn’t look away, he would get anxious.
But all this stimulation comes at a cost. It leaves us…frankly…overstimulated and unable to relax.
I myself have experienced the other side of NO downtime. I have nervous exhaustion, I yell at loved ones, I get depressed and fatalistic.
So visualize passionately, and then do nothing.
We have had personal development gurus repeating in our heads that we must take action, action, action. But frantic action without a plan is just spinning around.
“Act without taking any action.”
Joshua’s ancient proverb
Before all you beer-drinking couch dwellers start cheering for the above, I should mention that you NEED to take physical action, write, make calls, study, etc.
I also realize that not everyone can see the images in their mind.
Win Wenger, pioneer and innovator of some truly amazing creativity techniques, said that the subconscious mind ALWAYS shows you the answers to the questions you ask, you’re just not aware or used to seeing them.
For those of you who don’t see images, I recommend learning Image Streaming, a descriptive technique for generating ideas and becoming more aware of your responses.
You can find a free eBook here. I have personally taught this technique and had someone just feel their responses ‘break through’ to viewing images within a few minutes.
The advantages of clearing the channels of communication mean that you can more easily tap into your intuition and the more trust you build with your unconscious, the faster you can get answers.
The other night I was looking for ideas for an ebook cover. I looked at several covers of famous personal development authors, spent a few minutes thinking about them, and went to bed.
The next day, I was out for a walk and BAM: cover ideas popped into my head, titles popped up, and I recorded them on my smartphone. Later that day I made some mockups of some covers, sent them to the author and he really liked them. I KNEW my mind would give me the answers I needed.
“In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and you will see how the pattern improves.”
rumi
Using silence properly leads to mind control… which leads to… everything?
If you read books on quantum physics, many of them bluntly state that you actually create the reality that you see around you. Personally, I don’t think this is true* but I certainly agree that if we play the game that we are responsible for creating our personal experience of reality, we will pay more attention to how we think and act.
In The Complete Guide to Genius it is said that ‘control of the mind leads to control of everything… If you want to create a certain physical result, the way to do it is by using your MIND and CONTROLLING the mind.
Whether true or not, intentional silencing of the mind leads to greater mind control. Andy Shaw, creator of the Bug Free Mind series calls it No-Mind and the Genius guide says:
“When you control the mind you enter Silence. This is the state of nothingness and it is a form of consciousness within you. All the great geniuses of all time were able to keep their mind in SILENCE at all times. When you enter Silence In the silence, you are in the overlay state to manifest whatever results you desire.When you are not in the silence, you are trapped in the physical plane of reality and you are just a human cog in a great physical machine.Controlling the mind to enter into SILENCE is about NOT HAVING ANY THOUGHT. It is the CONTROLLED ABSENCE of thinking that allows you to enter Silence and nothing else. If you thought you could “think” your way to genius, you are wrong. You must consciously stop your thinking and enter in the silent state of mind for success to happen”.
So there it is. In fact, silence is literally gold in the sense that during silence you can get insights that are worth solid gold. So visualize your goals, get excited about them, and then SHUT UP!