Chad Silverstein on why silence matters. He learned to stop filling conversational gaps, letting others sit with hard feelings instead. Silence, he argues, creates space for the kind of deep change that therapy alone can't reach.
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The concept of having this discipline of being able to sit in silence is hard. And it's something I've gotten, I've gotten much better at. I used to always have to make people comfortable and fill in the silence, to try to kind of keep the room flowing wherever the situation was, wherever we were. But I've learned, especially one on one and even small groups now, to kind of sit in silence and just embrace it. And as awkward as it can feel and be, there is something probably stirring in someone's core, either on that call or in that meeting, that I think it's important to kind of let it simmer and not interrupt that by making someone feel that they're being saved, to not feel whatever pain that they may feel and to maybe kind of put it on the table, something they've suppressed for a long time. I think, you know, there is, there is powerful transformation when people go through. Call it what you want, if it's drama, if it's, you know, self reflection. And people can go to therapy, people can do lots of different things to try to be mentally healthy. But there's no substitute for silence, solitude and time to think, reflect, and get clear whatever it is that you're thinking about and dealing with. So learn to embrace silence. Learn to not feel the silence. Know that it's okay, it doesn't have to be so awkward. And even if it does feel awkward, so what, you know, just let it be. And usually, sometimes, most of the time, magic comes as a follow up to that. So you don't want to interrupt the flow of that.
