How to live a Quiet Life, in 2025
It's not about the right New Year's resolution. It's about where you direct your attention.
Dear You,
Are you looking for a quiet (or quieter) life this year?
A life attuned to depth and beauty (which exist, always, alongside the troubles of the world)?
A life in which you breathe deeply, not only when you remind yourself to breathe like that, but because you just do?
If so, I’d like to suggest one profound shift you can make: not a resolution, requiring vast amounts of will power, but rather, a gentle shift, in where and how you pay attention.
A quiet life is really about attention, and how you direct it. It’s about intellectual and emotional energy, and where you expend it. It’s about letting yourself be saved, as the poet Mary Oliver put it, “by the beauty of the world”.
You don’t have to look away from the troubles of the world, to use your attention this way. You can see its troubles and behold its beauty, simultaneously, or if not simultaneously then you can at least do both, in a single day.
Here is Oliver, describing how the Ohio woods were her refuge from a difficult childhood:
“To this day, I don’t care for the enclosure of buildings. It was a very bad childhood — for everybody, every member of the household, not just myself, I think — and I escaped it, barely, with years of trouble. But I did find the entire world, in looking for something. But I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.”
So: here are some questions to ask yourself:
*Are you directing your attention to people you love — or to those who aggravate you?
*Are you realizing that negative and unsettling thoughts are only that — thoughts — and that you don’t have to give them undue power over you? (nb: I’ve been doing this a lot more, ever since our Candlelight Chat with Joseph Nguyen)
*Are you focusing on stressful news or emails, or — as Oliver says, are you letting yourself be “saved by the beauty of the world”?
I’m not one for New Years resolutions — I think we get farther focusing on joy, rather than willpower. I started exercising only when I found activities I adored (tennis, hiking, yoga); I started eating vegetables only when I found dishes I loved. And I started writing only when I took to working in sunny cafe windows.
So instead of a resolution, I’d like to suggest that we simply ask ourselves whether we’re directing our attention properly: to recognize that we all have our light sides and our shadow sides, and every day, many times a day, without realizing it, we make a choice of which side of our natures to nourish. And where we choose to direct our thoughts has the power to change our emotions and actions.
We know this not only from poetry but also from neuroscience, which has a fancy name for this phenomenon: “experience-dependent neuroplasticity.” That is – our daily experiences literally have the power to rewire our brains, and thus our behavior, and thus our lives, and thus our societies.
“Attention changes the world,” writes the neuroscientist, philosopher and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist: “How you attend to it changes what it is you find there. What you find then governs the kind of attention you will think it appropriate to pay in the future. And so it is that the world you recognise (which will not be exactly the same as my world) is “firmed up” — and brought into being.”
But we’ve also known this for centuries. “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind,” said Marcus Aurelius. “Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”
So, here are three more questions for you:
What color is your soul now?
What color do you want it to be?
What color is it, under the storm clouds (think here of how the sky is always blue, underneath the Earth’s weather systems)?
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Here's a quote from James Clear (who wrote "Atomic Habits":
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Two simple rules:
1. You get better at what you practice.
2. Everything is practice.
Look around and you may be surprised by what people are “practicing" each day. If you consider each moment a repetition, what are most people training for all day long?
Many people are practicing getting mad on social media. Others are practicing the fine art of noticing how they have been wronged. Still more have mastered the craft of making plans (but never following through).
But, of course, it doesn't have to be that way.
What are you practicing?"
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I know that I "practice" brooding too much over negative relationships- when I could spend the time -- "practice" -- focussing on good things in my life.
I welcome Your "Attention" to where we place "Our Attention". A good reminder for a new year -- and every day.
As for the Color of my Soul: a light, bright violet-blue, with occasional (perhaps too many) gray splotches. I like the blue-violet - and would like to add more yellow. I also like the mention of Periwinkle. I used to weave, and loved that color a lot.
Thanks to all who comment - you help break my aloneness - and remind me of what and who IS out there!
One of the things I began to do some time ago, is to step out every night and look at the moon. So many of us love the full moon, super moon, and I do too. But last night I went out and was astounded by the beauty of a little sliver of moonshine. And Venus was sooo incredibly bright! All against a very dark sky, and I just wanted to stay out there and look. I do pay attention to all the hard things going on, I feel I need to be informed. But invariably what moves me, what I remember, what I share is all these little moments, nature’s art, nature’s grandeur. Thanks for all your shared thoughts, Susan Cain!