Quiet People Can Rule the World

I worship quiet people because I was a loud idiot before.

Keanu Reeves was the first person to make me believe in a quieter world. I was so busy running around for years making a giant noise, that I missed the simple act of being quiet.

Why is being quiet so important?

When you’re quiet, you hear and feel the world differently. You become the observer rather than the observed.

Being quiet is how you flip your position in society and go from part of the crowd, to the leader.

Let your actions do the talking.

When you’re quiet you let your actions do the talking.

I’ve worked for years in the corporate world where the loudest idiot got all the promotions and took home all the money. The world is shifting. The problems of 2020 and beyond need different solutions.

The solution will be action, not more talking to gain financial incentives that make the original problem bigger. Look at the loudest person in the room who gets biased incentives and I’ll show you the most important problem.

Talk is becoming cheap.

Actions are making a new kind of noise; noise we need.

Sitting in silence can cure the noise in your head.

Noise blocks you from seeing the heart of a problem.

I’ve found the cure is to sit in silence. To be quiet and hear the world as it is, not as you believe it is or should be.

It doesn’t have to be fancy meditation either, complimented by a gorgeous app full of peaceful landscapes and sound effects. You can just sit down and shut up. When you do, the noise decreases in volume.

You can sit in your bedroom with the door shut. You can sit on the couch by yourself when nobody is home. Or you can sit in your car with the doors locked. There are so many ways you can sit in silence.

More time spent in silence equals more time to be alone with yourself. You can slow down your perception of time when you sit and be quiet. Noise speeds up time. Being quiet is how you slow down time without magic powers.

Seek out quieter opinions.

It feels like we’re living in an echo chamber. You scream at the top of your lungs on social media and the algorithm delivers you people who agree with you, because they’re the people who you’ve ‘liked’ in the last 24 hours.

What about those brilliant people who never signed up for social media or quit Facebook two years ago? Where did their quieter opinions go? Are they not valid, or just harder to hear?

Social media can be a never-ending deafening noise. If you truly want to find the opinions of quiet people you’ve got to transcend the internet and go old school. Cafes, libraries, and parks are where quiet people who can change the world are found. Face to face conversation is how you awaken a quiet person whose face is buried in a book.

Loud opinions can create change but they can also inflate one’s ego. Quiet opinions often have a lot less ego attached to them. And with less ego there is more ‘solution’ and less ‘self.’

Listening will take you further than talking.

You can’t listen to someone when you’re thinking about what to say next. Notice the next time you have a conversation, how you’re thinking over the top of what someone is trying to tell you.

When you give up the need to talk in a conversation you stop thinking about what to say next. This means you can be fully present. You can learn and grow from a fellow human being rather than trying to make your point or feel a tiny sense of significance for having spoken. This way of having a conversation is revolutionary. Other than monks, I haven’t seen too many regular people try it. Try to enter a conversation and reframe from talking.

Discipline, when applied to listening, can help you see the world differently.

Quiet people will rule the world, one day.

Noisy politicians and social media influencers will take a backseat. This is because history shows us there is always a paradigm shift. What worked for the last few decades won’t work for the next few.

The human species has to evolve in order to survive. A loud world full of outrage will need to change if we are to solve the real issues in society. Democracy and the financial system that underpins it will have to change too.

I believe it is quiet people that will bring on this change. They won’t scream and yell to create change. What will they do?

Quiet people will create tiny ripple effects.

Ripple effects are incredible. It’s where the example of who you are, led by your actions, has the power to influence someone on the other side of the world. The brilliance of this process is you’re not aware you’re doing it and you will most likely never know the incredible power of what you’ve done.

The start of a ripple effect created by quiet people will be so small you won’t even notice. Just like at the end of 2019 when an animal somewhere entered a wet market with a virus inside of it and changed humanity forever, without even knowing the significance of that moment.

I intend to join the quiet movement.

I am going to be quieter in meetings. I am going to be less vocal about my opinions. I am going to strive for action rather than noisy devastation. You can choose to do the same.

Final Thought

I hope quiet people can rule the world. The constant noise of society isn’t progressing humanity forward. If anything, we’re going backwards.

There is a lot of hope. Public figures from Hollywood like Keanu Reeves are using quietness as a weapon of mass reconstruction. It took me a life of being too loud to see the power of quiet people.

You can be quiet and still powerful when you focus on action, not reaction.

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Disclaimer

The original version of this story was published on another platform.

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