Your best ideas don't come from scrolling through feeds or sitting in meetings. They emerge in the shower, on walks, during that quiet moment before sleep.
When your mind isn't consuming someone else's thoughts, what does it create?
Most of us rarely experience true mental silence these days. We fill every gap with podcasts, music, TV, notifications, and background noise. We mistake being busy for being productive, consuming for creating.
But mimesis – copying what others do, often without realising, and often to curry favour – happens automatically when we're constantly exposed to other people's ideas. The shower breaks this cycle. No screens, no voices, just you and your wandering thoughts.
That's where your authentic voice lives. Not in the echo chamber of social media where the noisy minority shout loudest or the groupthink of brainstorming sessions where the extraverts reign, but in those unguarded moments when your mind is free to make unexpected connections.
It's about creating space for your thoughts to breathe. It's about trusting that your mind, when left alone, will find something worth pursuing. And it will if you let it.
For me, this is true meditation. People think meditation should be about NOT thinking, but you can't not think. You can shut the noisy left brain up a bit, and allow the right brain more free rein. It's about allowing my full mind to wander, accessing feelings, emotions and images from the right brain, weighing and challenging them with critical ideas from the left.
What emerges when you stop filling the silence?
NB: I wrote this last post week, but I noticed yesterday that the brilliant Gurwinder included it in his 26 Useful Concepts for 2026 - do check them out.