Cognitive, Psychological, and Emotional Hushing
March 7, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Continuing along the path of hushing out the noise, take a look at how you can quiet the excess noise at many levels to live more Hartfully with less distraction from things that don’t add value to your days.
Consider some serious editing of old habits, patterns of behavior that no longer serve you, relationships or workplaces or the type of work that has become toxic to who you are becoming. Question why you do what you do and how you do what you do, what is it that directs the way you behave? Are you truly responding to the present moment, situation, or person, or it is just a habitual reflex and reaction vs. a thoughtful response? What kinds of behavior, people, things, situations and ways of being don’t feel comfortable anymore? Are you getting antsy about something or it just doesn’t fit the same as it did for you earlier in life? You may just be running on auto pilot and you may need to shake things up and ask the hard questions of yourself to hush some of that noise that’s in your head.
Cognitive hushing is editing out information, knowledge, news, opinions, movies/TV shows/radio shows/social media/other forms of media that steal your time and take up space in your brain for no good benefit. Doom scrolling with no real purpose is like junk food for your brain. If you feel the need to zone out in front of a screen, at least learn something from an expert on a topic of value that will benefit your life and move you in the direction of your goals in some way. Understanding we all need down time and some brain candy now and again, as long as it’s not a steady diet. You can’t solve all the world’s problems, so why are they taking up space in your head? Control what comes into your sub-conscious by purposefully choosing what you read, watch, listen to on a daily basis. A handy reminder is that other people’s opinions are none of your business – form your own opinions on things that actually matter to you.
Psychological and emotional hushing is getting rid of the noise, like a buzzing gnat in your mind of unfinished business, anxiety, worry, doubt, fear, and a host of other emotions that are completely controlled by what your mind thinks about them. It can all change with a decision and the moment a decision is made, things start to change. It takes making a decision time and time again before it becomes a habit and there will be some back-sliding, but it gives you inertia to keep going in the positive direction. Emotional noise can come from other people who are not good for you, maybe unsafe physically or emotionally, abusive people, negative thinkers, narcissists, bullies, those who ghost you or don’t respect your time or your boundaries, users, adversarial types, energy vampires who suck all the time/energy out of you, or those that live below the line.
I call it liberation from low vibration. You want to distance yourself from the low-functioning, low vibration people, places, things, thoughts, and habits that have been allowed to enter your life. More posts about low vibration and high vibration later. If you’ve got a constant scrolling of bad news, negative thoughts, upsetting anxiety running on a continuous loop, you may choose to seek professional help to walk away from those things that are holding you back from living Hartfully. If you feel stuck, sick much of the time, sick and tired of how things have been going for you or tired of the negativity, there is help available. Because there is a better way to be and show up and it’s up to you to decide how firm or porous your boundaries are going to be and what you allow into your brain and your life.
Choose to hush the noise, let go of the cognitive, psychological and emotional baggage that is weighing you down to lead a calmer life in congruence with your heart and fully alive. Journaling is a great first step. Do a brain dump of what’s on your mind to start your day with a fresh slate and clear mind.
I’ve also found that when I get ideas and noise creeps into my mind in the middle of the night, I just tell Alexa to give me a reminder of that later in the morning so I can release it from my brain knowing I’ll be reminded the next mornings where I can write it down or do something with it. That simple act allows me to go back to sleep feeling lighter from the release of that thought without having to wake up to write it down or awaken my eyeballs to type a reminder on a screen. I just tell Alexa what to do. I also keep all screens out of my bedroom for a more peaceful sleep.
More Than Decluttering & House Hushing – It’s Space & Mind Hushing
March 4, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Good ideas and styles stick around and are recycled by another name when the latest people to learn about it tack on another moniker and call it a new idea. That’s exactly what happened with getting rid of extra stuff and living more minimally and organically – something I covered in my first book Hit Any Key to Energize 30 years ago. Getting rid of stuff became decluttering, then Marie Kondo’ing if it didn’t spark joy out it went and now I’m seeing headlines that house hushing is all the rage with a bit of a different flavor. There really isn’t a need to move everything out of a room — who’s got time for that and who has the extra space.
Our environment we create represents the environment going on in our minds. It’s the outward expression of the clutter we have between our ears. If you’re working on quieting the noise on the inside and doing “the Work” with a capital W, then you need to take a look at your environment and what you’re surrounding yourself with. I’m guessing there’s more visual pollution than you’d like. A good place to start is to stop your unfettered consumerism, stop the ads coming into all of your mailboxes and dare I say it – stop scrolling to see what you absolutely must have, because odds are you can likely survive without it. Try creating the Scandinavian vibe of Hygge – cozy, comfortable, comforting, smells good, not too much stuff, streamlined to suit your needs without the tchotchkes to dust around.
Get ruthless in your pursuit of not buying stuff – ensure that whatever comes into your space has purpose (if not several purposes) and meaning. Dig deep into how you feel when you’re in your space. Is it supporting who you are now and who you are becoming or just who you were back in the day. Our space needs to change as we grow and change. I can’t tell you how many color phases I’ve been through during my lifetime and I cringe at some of them now. For me, at one point about 10 years ago, I had an enormous craving for bright colors in my wall hangings, so I combed through all of my travel photos and found ones that had more colors that made me very happy. Bonus is that they brought back such good memories that I now only have my travel photos and art on my walls to remind me of good times in over 100 counties.
When I moved to the California coast, I ditched my European antiques which worked so well overseas and in colonial Virginia but looked out of place at the beach. I ended up with very whimsical, artsy furnishings that were a perfect fit back then. Years later, the amount of many colors felt too brash, so I painted all of my furniture in a similar color and I painted all of my frames in a pewter wash to give my brain a rest from all of the color stimulus. I also have color-drenched some rooms so that the walls and ceiling are more soothing.
You see, I was working on intuition back then and what I now know is that it was my sensory processing sensitivity at work. My brain was on overload – overstimulated by too much color and variations of shapes and stuff and the lines of the furniture. My brain was working too hard to process all the shapes, colors, and stuff. Because us Highly Sensitive People are deep processors, our brains get tired if there is too much stimulation in our environment to process.
Even my books started to bug me. I tried arranging them by size, color, stacking them – nothing worked. What I found is that I need them behind a cabinet door – out of site so my brain gets a rest. This goes for sounds as well. I once lived in Florida on the water and the sound that carried across the water drove me nuts. I could hear every sound that came from the homes across the water and especially the mowers and blowers at all hours of the day every single day. It was like having jet engines revving up all day outside your window. Insanity for me. I now live where they do our lawns all at one time and I hear the mowers and blowers for about one hour 2-4 times per month in season and nothing but birds in the off-season.
Living in the Washington DC area was very toxic for me and my mental and physical health. Necessary for the work I was doing, but damaging my soul. The constant buzz of activity, helicopters, traffic, density of living, too many people crammed into small spaces, constant commotion and too much cement. Not to mention the toxic political stench that forever hangs in the air. Once Covid hit, I moved out to a smaller town to work remotely and retire/rewire in a bucolic, laid-back, slower-paced environment that is much more supportive of a stress-free daily lifestyle.
Listen to your body and get a gut feel for what bugs you in your space. Be militant about what you allow into your home and create a calming, quiet, supportive space that doesn’t hold bad memories from past lives. Yes, Marie Kondo did have a good idea about things sparing joy – but be honest with yourself about what ACTUALLY gives you joy. And for goodness sake, don’t spend money on a storage unit – just get rid of that extra stuff and stop worrying about it and paying for it. More is not necessarily what you need to be happy, healthy, peaceful, and calm. With all the hectic stuff going on in the world, your home needs to be your sanctuary – what can you do to make it so? Don’t forget pleasant music in the background to help soothe your mind. I haven’t listened to radio in over a decade. The noise of the announcers, traffic reports, and advertisements were assaulting on my ears. Choose your noise wisely so it doesn’t harsh your mellow as we used to say back in the day.
