Randy Siegel builds the people who build organizations.

Organizations hire Randy to transform high-potential employees into a new generation of leaders. Randy gives them the leadership and communications skills they need to rise through the organization.

CEOs hire Randy to help them become more charismatic leaders, spokespeople, and ambassadors for the organizations they serve.

Individuals retain Randy when they find themselves at a crossroads in their career or life. By connecting them with their power, passion, and purpose, Randy helps them rediscover their internal navigation system so that they know which path to take.

His work is based upon a proprietary process that facilitates self-discovery to clarify personal perspective, true purpose, and professional image.

For information on coaching: BuildYourInfluence.com
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Randy@BuildYourLeaders.com
Phone: 828.236.0045

I wasn’t sure I could do it. But I did. For twenty-four hours, I became a human being instead of a human doing.

I knew I needed time away; I needed time to be still and listen. But to give myself permission to take that time seemed almost impossible. There was always something to be done, or so it seemed.

Then, an advisor challenged me to get away and do nothing for twenty-four hours. Leave computers, books, magazines, and my journal behind, he said. My Type A, ESTJ, Enneagram Three self broke out in a cold sweat at the thought. What would I do with myself?

I traveled to a small mountaintop retreat center, an hour outside of Asheville. The views of the Toe River Valley took my breath away, once again reminding me why I choose to live in this area. With the exception of the few visitors who came to admire the property, I was alone. No TV, no reading material, and no journal.

I spread a blanket onto a lush carpet of green grass and listened to the wind gently blow through the leaves. I sat in the log and glass-walled chapel and gazed at the light dancing on the mountains, and I walked meditatively in circles in a clearing in the woods. My meals were simple; I took my food. And once my mind became still, time became unimportant.

Twenty-four hours later, I left my nest for home. I left with no brilliant insights or flashes of inspiration. Instead, I left grounded, knowing that I can return to this peaceful place at anytime, if only in my mind.

The Power of Silence

I am alone in a restaurant and there’s a party of twenty across from me who couldn’t be louder. Ironically, I am reading an article on silence in Ode Magazine. At first, I feel violated by the noise. Within minutes their voices fade; I am totally absorbed in the article.

The author, Tijn Toubler, a senior editor of Ode, makes four points on silence that resonate with me.

One: When people no longer use words to shield themselves, they shed their masks. They step out of roles, patterns, stories, and cries for attention and tap into that state where everything and everyone is connected. One of the most intimate times in my life was when I sat with my brother Chip in the hospital as he was dying. Sitting in silence, we never felt closer.

Two: Silence can make us anxious. The American-born Buddhist monk Lama Drimed wrote, “Silence is confrontational to the unstable mind. It won’t allow you to escape from all the voices in your head.” Of these voices, pain, despair, and depression are the scariest. When we speak in public, silence can feel like public enemy number one, yet there is power in pause. When a speaker has the courage to pause and sit with the silence for a few seconds, he or she commands complete attention from the audience.

Three: Silence brings direction. In his article, Toubler said a yogi friend once told him, “To hear the voice of God, you must be silent.” When Toubler asked why, his friend replied, “Because God whispers.”

Cistercian monk and priest Thomas Keating says, “Silence is the language God speaks and everything else is a bad translation,” and Conversations with God author Neale Donald Walsch writes, “The question is not to whom does God talk, but who listens.”

Four: The “eye” must be in balance with the “ear.” We live in a time when the eye dominates the ear. Penetrating, controlling, superior, and distant, the “eye” symbolizes male energy. When the “eye” is not kept in balance with the more feminine, reflective, and receptive “ear,” it becomes wild and destructive. Joachim E. Berendt, author of Nada Brahama, predicts, “The new human being will be a listening being, or he will not be at all.”

I’m beginning to see the wisdom in silence. I am finding that the more I tap into the power of silence, the more I tap into my own innate power.

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Copyright Randy Siegel 2008. All rights reserved.