X4 Books to Mute the Noise & Find Your Calm
We all know the feeling when the noise of social media and the busyness of life gets too much and there are times when we feel we need to retreat and step away to quieten the commotion and to unpick the chatter within our own minds.
For me, I always do this with books, I intentionally seek out books that speak to my soul and that take me on my own inner journey and that help me to digest the muddle that sits inside my head and to work it through so I can find my way back to the path, my path and to rediscover my next steps.
It’s not just about business books and power reads, they are fantastic and I do read many of those and plenty of articles and newspaper columns around such topics but it’s also sometimes about the other voices that channel themselves into the void that call out to us and feed our need to be at peace and to seek calm and collected moments of little expectation other than to ‘just be’.
It’s when listening and reading to the likes of; Fearne Cotton (Happy Place), Emma Gannon (Ctrl, Alt, Delete), Elizabeth Day (How to Fail) and Steven Bartlett (Diary of a CEO) that have given me moments of ‘ah ha’ and epiphany, light bulb, golden ablaze with connective and raw content moments, when guests courageously open up and discuss their lives, trauma’s, biggest wins but also their lowest of lows -- that we see the human behind the name, the reality of a brand and the destruction of our lives when work becomes all and consuming.
I’ve listed x4 books (and X2 bonus reads) that have helped me behind the business day to day, to work through and to see the whole picture of a person and what it takes to realise we are more than our title, our job and our business and that the beauty of life surrounds us and waits for us to recognise that the answers very often lie within in us and within nature that gently stands waiting to envelop us with its trusted healing strength.
When we take note and stock it’s as if we truly see for the first time. Here are the books that have opened my eyes:
1) Silence: Erling Kagge
Seeking silence and showing us how we can discover it even through the chaos of perpetual busy, that through his own travels as a Norwegian pacing Antarctica solo with a broken radio, demonstrates that we can, ‘open the light’ as if we were still curious children in awe of every new thing that we discovered.
Erling sees silence as a comfort and friend, reassuring, reaffirming and full of untold riches of wisdom which when we take a moment to pause (which is ever more potent in a world where pausing can feel like a guilt-driven dirty word) can bring new ways of thinking and unlock the inner workings of our own minds when we give time to seeing what sits in the quiet, unassuming and knowing parts of our untapped thoughts.
2) The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Raynor and her husband Moth set to travel the 630 miles of the West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset via Devon and Cornwall after losing their forever home to a legal battle of a deal gone bad and after her husband and love of her life discovers he has an incurable condition called, corticobasal degeneration.
The Salt Path speaks of nature, love, grief and challenges the status quo that reveals a story mixed full of joy, hope, laughter, sadness, unhappiness and discovering the warmth of humanity and kindness in the most unlikely of places and people.
3) Bigger than Us by Fearne Cotton
I started backwards with Fearne’s books and I’m not sure why I hadn’t read her books before but these became ritualistic and so intuitive to my inner thoughts and equilibrium that I couldn’t get enough of the flowing words that Fearne so eloquently describes.
Fearne talks of seeking connection to quieten anxiety and to seek calm but also to take comfort in the universal truths and where happiness can be found in purpose to aid our forward motioned path in a way that brings us together, reassures our fears and knows beyond our energy that strength lies in working through confusion and a sense of feeling lost in life with wisdom from a collection of top, positive voices that show us that we can reflect back and make sense of our own inner words to inspire, build hope and to pave our own path through our own challenges.
4) Strong Female Character by Fearne Brady
Diagnosed in adulthood as autistic, this memoir intertwines her painful childhood with the knowledge of gained understanding whence the diagnosis was given of learning to challenge meltdown’s and environmental stressors as well as finding a career in comedy and how shows such as Taskmaster couldn’t be any better for her traits that she would usually try to hide or avoid talking about altogether.
To me this read deals with some emotive times, topics and how she overcame life through a series of setbacks and traumatic events but it also uplifts and shines a light on what life can be like as an autistic. As a parent of an autistic son this book is not only empowering but equally gives a voice to many other neurodivergents that may feel that they can’t show who they truly are, that they don’t fit and that the world discriminates against them because they don’t understand them.
Since our son’s diagnosis of autism back in 2022 along with ADD and a previous diagnosis of dyslexia, as a family we know first-hand the overwhelming and devastating impact this can have on a young person’s mental health but also how the world can appear unfair, set against you and where no or long wait times can plague you but also why it’s so important to talk about and to continue the conversation because we can only be the change we wish to see and can only make waves if we speak up and raise awareness for what daily life can be like when people think or say things such as; ‘you don’t look autistic,’ and ‘how autistic are you.’?
X2 Bonus Read Choices: Books on my list that I’ve heard take you through your own journey and learn about the beauty of nature and how we go through our own seasons are:
Bonus Read 1) Wintering: Katherine May
Again, I heard this author on The Happy Place Podcast with Fearne Cotton and also an autistic creative diagnosed well into adulthood, Katherine May discusses what wintering means metaphorically as well as seasonal when we travel through it and she talks on the podcast of how she prepares for conversations and working with others whom haven’t been around any neurodivergents and how she never places blame on others not knowing or understanding what they haven’t experienced through family members or friends.
Bonus Read 2) The Wild Silence: Raynor Winn
The same author as featured in my list above has 2 additional penned reads, The Wild Silence published in 2020 and Landlines which was released in 2022. Raynor writes around nature, homelessness and wild camping with such vivid language that seamlessly draws you in and captivates the mind and soul as well as your heart and makes you question how we think -- how nothing in life can be taken for granted, to treasure every memory because tomorrow is never promised and where materials and social media has its place, they can equally be a distraction away from the people we truly treasure in our lives.
Find the Books That Speak to You
If you, like me find reading as a way to step into your mind or to even make sense of what may be happening in your life, find the books that speak to you, seek out the podcasts that relate to how you’re feeling and sense when you may need to step back and gain perspective because how we are in life is also how we feel and see in business and is paramount to our health as individuals, within our relationships, with our family and friends and how we show up at work, within our roles, titles, meetings and with our connections.
Even though we may feel as if it is, it’s not the world that should define us with a set of seemingly unattainable standards decided by who knows who and whom dictates who we need to be and when -- it’s us, and listening intuitively to our own bodies and our own voice which in a sea of noise when the age you live in is a cacophony of sounds, visuals and words is in finding your own metaphorical Wild Silence, Strong Character, Wintering & Salt Path to seek your own kind of solace, calm and way to be.
What’s on your reading list – Do you have your own top 4 books and how do you discover your own inner peace?
Share your thoughts, ideas and pearls with me in the comments below and if you like this post then feel free to share and upgrade to a paid option to support further reads and waves of wordy notes that look to highlight, identify and gently traipse a lightly trodden pebble path through topics, niches and genre’s that brings to the forefront what we’re thinking, what’s new, what’s going on in business, what’s impacting us all, what we find funny and sometimes what lightens the mood on a dark day as well as carefully curated copy and content that hopefully adds to the useful thinking of thoughts and furthers our understanding of the impact words can have on us and those around us.
NB: All Artistic Credit goes to my creative, autistic son as work experience (and because he likes it) from his college Creative Media course.
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