quiet please
spend more time with your thoughts
You are suffocating — barely finding a second to breathe.
You are immersed in the chaos of life — Hobbies, health, work, school, family and friends.
Your day is a soup of monotonous routine that blurs days into weeks and weeks into months.
You are trapped and it’s not your fault.
In 2025, people are competing for one thing — Your attention.
Take a second to think about where you focus your energy.
Work. Social media. Practice. Family. Friends.
Television. Video games. Music. Podcasts. Books.
All of your attention is focused outward.
You spend no time with your thoughts. You spend no time focusing your attention inward.
And the result? Anxiety and depression have skyrocketed. You can’t focus and you’re not creative.
You weren’t built to suppress your emotions yet cell phones, mass advertising, and endless notifications keep you plugged in 24/7.
We didn’t evolve from tadpoles to spend 16 hours a day drowning in a life outside of our own minds.
You need to face your demons. You need to sit with your challenges and the emotions you feel.
Learn to be alone with your brain and watch your anxiety fade, your mood lift, and your clarity sharpen.
Learn to focus your attention inward and watch your brain do what it was designed to do.
The Modern Trap
Here’s what my day looked liked before my revelation:
Wake up and get some exercise. Music ripping.
Listen to music while getting ready for work and watch YouTube while eating breakfast.
Commute to work with a podcast, music, or audiobook.
Work all day long, drowning in emails, meetings, news and spreadsheets. Probably more music.
Commute home from work again with a podcast, music, or audiobook.
Cook dinner listening to music. Eat dinner watching Netflix, YouTube, or doom-scrolling.
Hop on the computer again to play some games.
Wind down with some more entertainment.
Bed time.
Except now I can’t sleep.
Why?
It’s the first time in the day I’m alone with my thoughts. And they hit me all at once.
How It (Probably) Used To Be
I like to think about how this played out for our ancestors.
Two elite hunters set out on a 24 hour mission to feed the tribe.
One shoots and misses, the other lands the kill.
The one who missed walks 30 miles back to the village, replaying the moment in his head, alone with his thoughts.
How much it sucks.
How he can improve.
How he’s not good enough.
How he just worked his ass off, only for his buddy to succeed instead.
By the time he gets home, he’s processed it. He has a game plan.
He’s built a strategy to improve.
He’s grateful for his friend and for the meal he still gets to eat.
Now compare that to you:
You fuck up at work and 10 seconds later you’re numbing the feeling with the latest tariff news.
You never sit with it. You never process it.
Is that frustration gone? No.
You’ve just kicked it down the road for future you to deal with.
And if you do that 10 times a day…
300 times a month…
4000 times a year…
Good luck taking all those hits at once — when they finally catch up. It stresses me out just thinking about it.
No wonder the world is overwhelmed, anxious, and depressed — chasing SSRIs and blaming everything but themselves.
If you feel this way, it’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility.
Awareness is the first step.
The solution isn’t more distractions, it’s less.
The Power of Silence
Ever notice how a long shower clears your mind?
It’s not the warm water magically fixing your stress.
It’s the fact that, for once, it’s just you and your brain.
It’s a safe space to decompress and accept reality.
The solution to the problem is unbelievably simple: Spend more time with your thoughts.
How you go about it is up to you. Do it formally, or informally.
Set time to sit down and think.
Set time to write or journal.
Set time to breathe or meditate.
Or weave it into your day.
Spend a few minutes of your commute in silence.
Go for a run without music or go on walk in silence.
Spend the 10 minutes you take eating dinner to be present.
Raw dog the airplane. No phone, no music, no sleep. Just you and you.
The first few minutes will suck, but I promise after few minutes your brain just starts sorting things out.
And if you don’t believe me? Try it.
Your sleep will improve.
Your mood will improve.
Your focus will improve.
You’ll become more self-aware.
You’ll get stronger at creative work and problem solving.
You don’t have to do this 100% of the time. Just be conscious of where your attention goes.
Start small. Five minutes per day.
Your brain and body will thank you, I promise.
The world needs more silence, more contemplation, and greater focus inward, on the self.
Thank you for reading.
-Dante