A few weeks ago I started a series of posts I’m calling Recover You. The series is focused on practices and habits that I believe lead to a healthier mind, body and spirit, a healthier business and ultimately a healthier economy.

You can catch the entire Recover You series here.

Business is noisy. A typical day might involve dozens of conversations, meetings, decisions, tasks and insights.

Every thought, conscious or otherwise, roars through our heads like the intersection of trains headed into the station.

We get pretty good at muffling the noise, become almost use to it, but it takes its toll no matter what we think.

In fact, in response to dealing with the noise we often lose our ability to actually think, to consider the vision for the business, to make conscious decisions about the impact of every act.

One of the best ways to return our focus to things like purpose and vision is to practice being quiet long enough to turn down the noise.

This isn’t as easy at it might sound. Try this right now. Close your eyes and just sit for five minutes and see how noisy your brain is. Most people can’t do this for more than 30 seconds without beginning to fidget.

We’ve trained our brain to be on and that leads to constantly talking, considering what to do next and reaching for our phones whenever we have a down minute to fill.

I believe we need to retrain ourselves to be still or run the risk of losing touch with why we do what we do.

Here are some of the ways I’ve found to turn down the noise in my head.

Go analog

Set up an area in your office with crayons and paper and other crafty kind of materials and every now and then unplug and go draw, cut and paste while taking your mind off your to do list.

Journal

Get a big notebook or use any text editor and get in the habit of free flow journaling. When I first started doing this is was so goofy what spilled out of me, but I didn’t edit a word or judge what I wrote in any way and eventually it became an outlet for releasing thoughts that were somewhere rolling round blocking my intentions.

Meditate

I’ve written about this before and certainly many now agree on the benefits of a meditation practice. It’s hard for people to do I think because they believe it is supposed to be this path to enlightenment. If you put that kind of pressure on anything it won’t be enjoyable. Think about it as five or ten minutes a day to simply witness your thoughts and experience first-hand how noisy it is up there. Then you can take little steps.

Get outside

I am amazed at the healing power of nature. Every single one of us should get outside and lay on our backs in the grass and watch the white puffy clouds go by for about ten or fifteen minutes a day minimum. If you really want to experience the power of nature take a daylong hike or pitch a tent in a forest near a stream. The bigness of it all is one of the most quieting tonics available.

Sit and listen

Try this one for a little different perspective. Close your eyes and sit and listen to all the sounds near by. Don’t think anything just notice. Then slowly move your perception out farther and farther picking up sounds just outside, traffic maybe, and then a train off in the distance. See how far you can tune in. I don’t know why but this little exercise seems to open up pathways in my thinking and quite the noise that’s right around me.

Retreat

Of course the biggest, scariest and most awesome things you can do is lock yourself away for a weekend retreat with no computer, phone, TV or need to make any conversation at all. I realize this is pretty impractical for most, but what if you tried it for even half a day? I would write and read inspiring passages but mostly I would slow down and think about the things that really matter, the things I know I’m meant to do, the things I’m grateful for, the intentions I have for my business and my life.

It’s a shame in some ways that being quiet is so hard. Part of this is just the world we live in and part is self-inflicted. The good news is we still have the ability to dial it up and down as a choice in the infinite number of choices we get to make.