To try: just be quiet a little more often

I find silence perhaps one of the most enjoyable things there is. I still remember that during the viewing of my house, I walked into the garden and only heard some birds and a bleating sheep in the distance. It was as if my mind cleared up.

Research also shows that this is indeed the case. At the moment we truly experience silence, a certain part of the brain that is responsible for your creativity is activated. But not only that, because suddenly you find a solution to that one problem, you put events in perspective, and all of this generally makes you happier and healthier. Did you know that probably 12,000 people in Europe die prematurely each year due to the effects of noise pollution? Never knew that noise could be so deadly, but even the WHO is concerned about it.

I think the week of March 16 was perhaps the quietest in the Netherlands in years. During my evening walk with the dog, it was even strange when a car passed by, because where are you going then? After a measurement, it turns out that the average noise pollution at the national level decreased by 3 decibels during the corona crisis, around Schiphol it was even 10 to 15. Fewer airplanes, fewer cars on the road, less noise. People suddenly also hear the benefits of a quieter country.

Not surprising, because being quiet after excitement leads to enormous relaxation. The corona crisis actually caused this on a national level, but it also works like this on a smaller scale. Even some tinkling on a piano in the background already leads to less concentration; just imagine what an open office space does. It is much more intense there because you don't have control over those sounds. Concentration actually increases in places where sound is only natural, like by the sea or in the forest..

To recover, you need to be quiet, because only then is this mechanism in the body activated. It takes buckets of energy to filter out all the background noise all day long. Think of it as sailing: you don't actually hear the engine until you turn it off and only have the water and the wind. Our brain has a filter for background noise, and that filter is located deep in your brainstem. Normally, I can hardly hear the road in front of our house, but now that I am more aware of it, I hear every car and motorcycle zooming by and the truck that is backing up over the driveway at the neighbors.

The research from Psychologie Magazine also shows that especially among women and higher educated individuals, silence provides peace. Almost no one perceives silence as something negative, until it becomes a dead silence because that is not natural. To remember: birds only chirp when they feel safe. Just nice to know when you are alone in a cabin on the heath and suddenly hear absolutely nothing...

Source: Psychologie Magazine