The folk wisdom “silence is golden” is always relevant, but not everyone adheres to this opinion. With the advent of maturity, having gained life experience, awareness of these words comes and people begin to think about how to learn to remain silent and not say too much.
Communication is a complex process in establishing contacts between people or entire groups. Without communication, society will not exist. No area of life or activity can do without communication, regardless of whether a person prefers company or loneliness, whether he is an introvert or an extrovert. The ability to communicate correctly is a good quality, since both shyness and excessive sociability bring problems to a person.
Every person knows that in certain cases his words can cause pain to the interlocutor, cause aggression or a negative reaction in someone. Learning to remain silent and not say too much is quite difficult, for both women and men. It is required to think ahead and analyze all your thoughts and the consequences of publicizing any information.
People love to talk about all sorts of nonsense, everyday life, and exchange information about life situations. Having had a conversation and showing attention and sincere interest to your interlocutor, it is very difficult to resist saying unnecessary things.
In order not to say too much, you need to think through your words in advance, be one step ahead of the situation, and be able to instantly assess whether it is risky to say what you want to say to your interlocutor while in a specific situation. By learning to think ahead over time, the problem of learning to remain silent will be solved.
Can the vocal cords atrophy?
No, even if a person deliberately refuses to use the vocal cords for a very long period, this will not entail such drastic consequences.
Changes in the muscles intended for phonation, of course, will occur, but insignificant. The person will not become numb and complete atrophy of the vocal muscles will not occur. The most that awaits him is some difficulties with voice control when he tries to speak again. To get his old voice back, he will have to practice a little.
Conflict
It is noteworthy that these phrases act on some like a tub of ice water splashed onto a heated crown, and on others like a red rag on a bull in a bullfight. Of course, conflict is an extreme manifestation, but a very real reaction to overly talkative people who do not know how to listen to their interlocutor, with their uncontrollable chatter they blow their minds, irritate, strain and bring those around them to the boil. Today we will try to find effective practical tips on how to learn to remain silent, which will be the key to peace of mind and an excellent help in pleasant communication with loved ones and strangers.
That is, a person cannot forget how to speak?
Not certainly in that way. The vocal cords will indeed remain normal, but after several years of consciously refusing certain bodily functions, neurological changes in the brain will inevitably occur.
Simply put, if you stop talking for a long time, the number of active or potentially active neurons for this process will become smaller, because the neurons involved in the speech process will be used by the brain for other tasks.
An example is complete loss of vision. After a certain time, the neurons responsible for vision begin to contribute to other cognitive functions - this is one of the reasons why blind people often hear better.
Common mistakes women make
There are different circumstances in life. Sometimes a man stops communication without explanation. How to understand it? You can only guess why exactly you found yourself in such a situation. If you understand the motive for the action, then there is a chance to correct the situation by regaining his love.
If he tells you that the reason lies not in you, but in himself, then in most cases this is not entirely true. A man is unlikely to leave his ideal woman. After all, she completely suits him. But he is afraid of losing her and is ready to do anything to be with her. Therefore, we advise you to think about your mistakes if your chosen one suddenly disappeared from the horizon. Possible reasons:
- Forcing events. Take your time, you still have time to think about the names of the guests at the wedding and plan the number of children. After the first date, you should not discuss with a man issues related to a different level of intimacy. Believe me, he is not that serious yet, and your activity can scare him.
- Behavior that a man considers wrong. A man may be scared off by your ability to conduct a dialogue, using profane phrases and words, smoking or excessive gaiety fueled by alcohol. He won't want to change you. He'll just leave.
- Quick sex. An excessively rapid transition to intimate relationships can cool a man’s ardor. Haste can serve you badly. The partner will decide that a wife who is ready to go to bed with the first person he meets is not suitable for him.
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“A man doesn’t want to communicate: reasons, signs and solutions to the problem” Read more
Such mistakes are considered the main ones, and at the very beginning of a relationship a girl should try to avoid them so as not to lose a man.
What happens if you remain silent for 7 days?
The practice of ten days of silence is common in Eastern traditions and is used to cope with stress, calm nerves, better understand oneself, become kinder and simply feel better.
For example, there is one of the oldest meditation techniques that originated in India - vipassana, which means “seeing things as they really are.”
Hundreds of years later, it is still one of the most popular forms of meditation around the world. People voluntarily take a ten-day vow of silence, refuse communication with the outside world and remain alone with themselves (and often pay a lot of money for it).
Why is this necessary? Let's move on to the weekly silent bonuses.
You will appreciate words more
You will understand that words are not required half the time. You realize how much you say in a day. How many garbage phrases take away energy that can be directed inside yourself.
You will be freed from unwanted disputes that weaken your nervous system, as well as empty conversations with friends and relatives that take away valuable time.
Lack of speech led to isolation
What happens to those who truly cannot hear or cannot speak?
While I was silent, a question arose: how do people with disabilities (hearing, muteness) call an ambulance or a doctor if they feel bad? Google issued a certificate that an ambulance was called by sending messages. How communication with doctors occurs is unclear. It’s good if there is someone nearby who understands sign language and can become a translator. And if not? Loneliness can kill - it turns out this way.
An acquaintance who works in a notary’s office said that they received an official order: “Ensure priority for hearing-impaired people when making pre-registrations by telephone.” I can’t even imagine how a mute or hard of hearing person tries to arrange an appointment with a notary over the phone.
You notice little things right away. For example, in many stores not all goods are within easy reach. Freezing in front of the cosmetics counter at the Na Nemiga trading house, I realized that I couldn’t take out a notebook and ask the seller to show me “that mascara and that gloss.” Perhaps my timidity is due to the novelty of perceiving the silent status. “If you want to live, know how to spin,” but I suddenly clearly felt that this world, to be honest, was created for people without physical defects.
In the 21st century, it is certainly easier - there is the Internet and smartphones. Communication can be found online, friends can be sent messages from their phone rather than writing telegrams. But isolation, alas, still cannot be avoided. Only those who have encountered such a problem know sign language. And contacting using a notepad, believe me, is terribly tedious. And you haven't yet tried to communicate using written printed words with a person who can barely read.
While I was silent, I waited for some enlightenment and understanding of the mission of the Tibetan monks to come. On the third day, I accidentally let it slip out loud. I was alone, and the habit of speaking my thoughts suddenly jumped out of me, and I even got scared. I relaxed, stopped clenching my jaw like an evil grandmother. I was upset that I failed the task, and then I realized that this was precisely the essence of the experiment. If there were no difficulties, if there weren’t these actions imprinted into the consciousness, there would be no understanding of why to shut up at all.
The fact is that while you are silent, the dialogue continues inside. You are like a radio, only in yourself. Everyday little things, mood, impressions of what you see are broadcast by your inner voice and, by God, you don’t notice it, because before you put the whole flow into words. Now it has become obvious that it is not enough not to have a voice - it is also important to cleanse the consciousness, which reacts to every little thing, digests it and spits it out in the form of an assessment . At that moment I wanted to stop the experiment, complaining about the mistake, but the conclusions drawn convinced me to go to the end. With the key knowledge that now we need to work not only externally, but also internally.
Even in the first two days of my silence, the most difficult thing was communicating with my family. Now everything was difficult: family evenings and solitude. After all, voice is power. When someone aggressive “attacks”, you can respond (if only you had the character). I even remember an incident from my youth when, while hanging out with my friends in a “foreign” area, we encountered rather ill-mannered girls. They spat in our direction, swore and waved their fists. They had to answer – loudly and in a language they understood. Having a low voice, I sounded extremely convincing - the girls ran away. You could, of course, show wisdom and leave silently, but this looks like an escape, not a victory.
What do those who tried it say?
To find out how those who practiced long periods of silence felt, we turned to the popular portal TheQuestion.
Anna Tkachenko, student, architect, photographer
“Once, while still at school, I conducted such an experiment. I liked it very much, now I want to repeat it, but for a month. I knew that my friends and parents would not understand this, so I explained in writing that I had a cold in my throat and had lost my voice. They began to jerk me less, sometimes it seemed that people did not even remember that you were nearby. The hardest thing was to restrain myself and not start talking when I wanted to express my opinion on any issue. So within a week I realized that no one is interested in your opinion, whether you express it or not. It was interesting to turn into an outside observer for a week; you learn a lot about yourself, your place in society and the attitude of others towards you. You become calmer, more restrained, more patient.”
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Mikhail Kozyrev, music journalist
“I was forced to remain silent for three weeks for medical reasons. I made two conclusions. First: most of the words and phrases we use are not needed at all. This truly surprised me. You always catch yourself on the impulse to say something, but if you can’t do it, but have to take a pencil and specifically write it on a piece of paper, during this time the need for words disappears.
And the second conclusion was this: you cannot raise children without a voice. The hardest moment was when I and my girls - I have twins Lisa and Sonya - went into the forest. Error! Actually a mistake! At some point, being unable to shout: “Sonya, where did you go, come back!”, I took a stick and began to heart-rendingly beat the tree trunks with it. And only to this they began to react. So you can survive everything, but you can’t raise children without a voice.”
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Vadim Tsybin, coordinator of “Vipassana.
By the way, we recently told you what will happen if you don’t sleep: amazing and dangerous transformations of the body.
- Author: Larisa Stebeneva
Silence needs to be learned
They say it is good to remain silent. We all know about Tibetan monks who lead a silent lifestyle. The world is fussy, and understanding the highest meaning is possible only in silence. It sounds beautiful - it seems that it is not so difficult to comprehend Zen without uttering a word. The difference is that it is easy to remain silent among equally taciturn interlocutors, surrounded by mountains and beautiful nature. But try to remain silent when, firstly, you are a woman, and secondly, you live in the middle of a noisy city and you have a child who requires a bedtime story and answers to difficult questions.
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Having learned about the experiment, the child was upset, and the husband began to offer a version of the signs: blink once - this is “yes”, twice - this is “no”. Then he tried to convince me not to mock myself, because remaining silent for five days is too cruel for a woman. But after I confronted him about a minor everyday issue, he asked: “When do you stop talking?”
