Do you ever feel like everything is screaming at you? Countless messages, notifications, everything competing for your attention? Even your comfort show that you put on for background noise is broken up with five-minute long advertisements that raise the volume on your TV?? (Shoutout to California for banning that practice.)
Our brains and nervous systems are under attack, mostly by marketing. It’s impossible to avoid it entirely, but here are five simple ways you can turn down the noise and find a little peace in your day-to-day life.
1. Have one noise-free meal each day
If you have a house full of kids, “noise-free” is going to be relative. What I mean is to commit to one meal each day with no screens or “entertainment”. You don’t need a YouTube video or a podcast or an episode of How I Met Your Mother to keep you company.
For one thing, we have so few moments of quiet in the day for our brain to catch up with everything. When you lay down at night, are your thoughts going a million miles a minute? If that happens to you, it’s probably because that’s the first moment of “down time” your mind has gotten that day. It’s playing catch-up. Dedicating some moments of silence throughout your day WILL improve your sleep quality and help you fall asleep faster.
For another thing–eating peacefully makes the food healthier, in a way. If you’re not familiar with the Rabbit Effect, I’ll summarize it for you: A study focused on heart-health and cholesterol accidentally uncovered something peculiar–rabbits given the same unhealthy diet as another testing group were mysteriously…healthier. Turns out, the caretaker was being kind to them. While they ate their garbage food, they were comforted and loved, and it had a less adverse effect on their physical body. The peaceful environment while they ate made the food healthier in their body!
Isn’t that wild?
Giving yourself a peaceful space to eat your food can make you feel better. It also gives you a moment of mindfulness. Try it. You’ll notice you eat slower, you’re full before you’ve finished, and you feel calmer after. Truly an effortless change I made to my day that had a HUGE difference.
2. Hit “unsubscribe”
Social media platforms are making it harder and harder to curate what we WANT to see–instead, algorithms and AI select content to show us based on what will make us stay on their app longer.
That means the best way to curate our social feeds is to DELETE THE APP.
You can always reinstall it if you want. In fact, that’s how I manage my own social media. I’ll reinstall Instagram when I want to make a post, keep it for a couple of days while I catch up with my wider social circle, then delete it again. Because always having it makes my life worse!
Further, EVERY stinking platform wants our email address to access it, meaning they can send us fourteen promo messages every hour on the hour… but wait–does it mean that? No! There’s an “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of every email for a reason, and I urge you to use it liberally.
If a newsletter isn’t providing value to your life, clip it. If the only purpose it serves is to fill your inbox, home, and life with more junk, UNSUBSCRIBE.
This makes your email inbox something useful again.
3. Declutter your house
The visual noise in our homes can drown us. Declutter your physical space for some internal peace. I honestly cannot sing the praises of a decluttered home enough. The calming effect it has on your nervous system is worth every ounce of effort it takes to achieve.
Let me make it easier for you–here’s a free list of 100 items you can declutter from your home TODAY to start feeling a difference:
4. Say “no” and mean it
We HAVE to stop half-no-ing people–talking to myself here, too, trust me. If we don’t want to do something, we MUST say it with our chest. Those “maybe”s and “I’ll come if I can”s just hang over us like threats. Free yourself! Say no, and mean no. We can do it together! ðŸ‘
5. Stop carrying your phone around like it’s a baby
This is embarrassing to admit, so I’ll admit it for all of us: We are the problem.
We’re soooo stressed and overstimulated, and certainly it has nothing to do with this tiny box of doom that we keep with us 24/7. Oh wait… Yeah, it’s definitely the tiny box of doom.
Put the doom box in another room!
My most effective life hack is to keep your phone attached to its charging cord in one place. I call this “leashing” it. If you need to use the phone, you have to walk to it and then stand there while you use it. Then put it back down and go about your day.
Yes, I reinvented the landline. And yes, it works.
It’s like magic. Suddenly, you have your life back. You can see the sky and the grass and your children’s faces again. Make a friend outside! Talk to a neighbor. Pick up an old hobby. Your nervous system will thank you most profusely.
What are you doing to regain some peace today?
