3 Keys to Quieting Your Mind and Lightening Your Emotions

Author Ryan Holiday recently wrote a book called Stillness Is the Key. In the book, Holiday makes the argument that "stillness" has always been difficult to experience. Yes, we now live in a world where we have the internet in our pockets. We are constantly getting pings and dings and billions of dollars are spent daily to curate the perfect marketing messages just for us, 24/7. But stillness has always been a needed skill. The ancient philosophers sought stillness in the midst of their own context and challenges.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Elaine Glass, who is a certified coach specializing in helping people experience deep internal quietness. She has collaborated with habits expert, Dr. BJ Fogg, on her work. Elaine helps people get quiet and uses BJ's methods to turn it into a lifelong habit.

Here are Elaine's three keys to experiencing "quiet," so that you can connect more deeply with who you are and discern what you personally should do, right now.

Environment > Body > Mind

"If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us." ―Marshall Goldsmith, Triggers

The first place to start, according to Elaine, is your environment. This makes perfect sense. Humans are contextual beings. Dr. Ellen Langer of Harvard argues that if we want to be "authentic" and "intentional," we must first create a context that facilitates those. Creating your context is crucial to growth and mindfulness. As Langer states:

"Social psychologists argue that who we are at any one time depends mostly on the context in which we find ourselves. But who creates the context? The more mindful we are, the more we can create the contexts we are in. When we create the context, we are more likely to be authentic. Mindfulness lets us see things in a new light and believe in the possibility of change."

Elaine recommends a full-scale "reset" to your environment. Don't leave any stone left unturned. Delete all your text messages. Remove contacts from your phone which are no longer relevant. Delete social media, or at least, create far better rules. Go to your closet and remove the clothes that no longer resonate with your current or future selves. Author Gretchen Rubin may have said it best with the title of her 2019 book: Outer Order, Inner Calm.

After you've "cleared" your environment, you will immediately experience an inner "lightness." Everything in your life impacts you at the emotional and subconscious level. By clearing and cleaning your environment, you'll feel lighter emotionally. Lightening your emotional load is how you quiet your mind. Which takes us to your physical body, which according to Dr. Candace Pert is an emotional system. Your physical body is your subconscious mind.

Clearing your body starts by looking at what you're putting inside of yourself. Two years ago, Elaine was 30 pounds overweight. After clearing her own environment, she started walking and feeling herself more—literally feeling her body in ways that had previously been numbed or inaccessible.

By feeling lighter, she felt greater access to her intuition or subconscious, which suggested she should stop taking the medications she had been on. It turned out, she was allergic to some of the "inactive ingredients" in the meds she had been taking, and the reaction was messing up her entire system and her ability to feel, make choices, and think straight.

Elaine says we all take in toxins of some form throughout the day, whether that be from food we consume or even relationships. By clearing our environment and relationships, as well as being more mindful of what we put in our body, we will start to feel more emotionally light. Clearing our bodies is the key.

Environment Essential Reads

How Nature Makes Us Human

How Outdoor Activities Build Resilience in Children

After we've cleared our environment and body, it's time to focus on our minds. Elaine recommends meditation in this case. But a very specific form of meditation, where you train yourself to quiet your mind.

One strategy for doing this is by creating a word that has no particular meaning to you, such as "Barboo," or some other made-up word. Get yourself into a quiet environment, close your eyes, and say your meaningless and made-up word, over and over. Inevitably, thoughts will rise to the surface. According to Elaine, these thoughts are energy being released. Therefore, you shouldn't be mad or frustrated or disappointed when thoughts enter your mind as you meditate. "Those thoughts are the point of meditation," Elaine says.

By releasing those thoughts, and consciously going back to your word, you'll eventually reach a point of quietness. Through this process, you'll experience clarity of mind and thought, so you can make important decisions in your life. You're clearing your environment, body, and mind so you can be "empty." This emptiness gives you direct access to yourself so that in your more connected state, you can make the decisions that will best serve you here-and-now.

Obviously, there is a huge amount of research on the benefits of meditation. But I believe Elaine's insights and strategies could be very useful to some people. Indeed, there is a huge misconception that meditation is about "not thinking." I like Elaine's notion that meditation is about "releasing thoughts" which need to come up so that you can then reach that essential place of quietness and connection.

Conclusion: Staying Quiet

It's not enough to "get quiet" once. Elaine believes you must be "hypervigilant," which may sound dramatic, and from her perspective, it is that important. "You must be serious if you want to stay connected and light," she told me. "There are endless shiny objects out there, influences, influencers, and more trying to capture your attention. To stay in-tune with ourselves, we must be on constant alert and maintain our daily practices."

How "quiet" is your mind? How "light" are your emotions? How "clear" is your environment and body? These are some deep questions I challenge you to deeply consider.