When Life Feels Loud: Signal Vs Noise

Your life can feel “loud” even when nothing is technically wrong. If you’re carrying anxiousness, confusion, or a steady drip of self doubt, it may not be a motivation problem at all. It may be a signal problem. We sit down and break down signal versus noise, a simple framework that helps us understand why modern life can scramble our focus and leave us feeling off course.

We define noise as anything that’s misaligned with the truth of who you are, and signal as what tunes you back to your true essence, your values, and the work you’re here to do. Using a radio station metaphor, we talk about how being slightly “off frequency” creates distortion, how the attention economy competes for your energy, and why endless consumption turns into internal noise. We also share what sparked this conversation for us, including ideas from neuroscience specialist Stefanie Faye and her Neuro Wisdom program.

From there, we get practical: Ryan shares his experiment of dramatically reducing social media and what changed in his nervous system, decision making, and day to day clarity. Heidi talks about meditation as an intentional “tuning” practice, plus how changing your environment can open you to better signal. We close with an approach that feels realistic, not rigid: curate your inputs and your circle of influence, pay attention to how things make you feel, and aim for an 80/20 balance that supports growth while still leaving room to unwind.

If this resonates, subscribe so you don’t miss the next conversation, share it with a friend who feels overloaded, and leave a rating and review so more people can find the show. What’s the biggest source of noise in your world right now?

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Transcript

Heidi 0:00

We're back.

Ryan 0:01

Welcome. I'm glad to have you back in the seat next to me. It's exciting. We're going to talk about signal versus noise. Why is that important conversation? Why do we feel like this is something we want to talk about? And who is this conversation for, Heidi?

Heidi 0:15

Well,

Welcome And The Big Question

Heidi 0:16

this conversation is for everyone that lives in our modern world, where there is a ton of noise constantly when it comes to uh what we're taking in externally. Let's just start there. Social media, TV,

Modern Noise And Endless Shoulds

Heidi 0:31

uh all of the news and people's opinions and ideas about what it means to be successful and what your life should look like and all kinds of things.

Ryan 0:42

All the shoulds, yeah.

Heidi 0:43

Yeah. What you should look like, what your home should look like, what your life should look like, how you are successful or not.

Ryan 0:50

The the the why it and the who it's for uh for me is it it jumps off as people who experience uh for uh lack of confidence, anxiousness, confusion, lack of clarity, like all of that is an outcome of of too much noise and not tuning into signal.

Heidi 1:15

Yeah.

Ryan 1:16

So what is it? What is noise and signal?

Heidi 1:20

Well the noise is basically what I just defined there. It's anything that's misaligned with the truth of who you've come here to be. So you so the signal is getting in touch with the truth of

What Signal And Noise Mean

Heidi 1:32

who you've come here to be, your true essence, the work that you're here to do in the world, the impact that you're here to make. And the noise is anything that doesn't align with that.

Ryan 1:42

Yeah, that distracts you from that. Yeah. So I think let's I love this simple illustration. We'll start with this very simple illustration, and and and before we go into it, we're always sending, we're always receiving. When I say sending, it's like broadcasting. And sometimes what we broadcast,

The Radio Tuning Metaphor

Ryan 2:06

we even amplify louder, bigger, noisier, right? And to what level. Um, so we're always sending and receiving a signal. We actually have an antenna in our brain that sends and receives information. And let's think of it in terms of a radio, a radio station. Right? If, like you said, I am gaining clarity around who I am, who I've come here to be, the experience of life and the impact, like what is the meaning of life, all of those types of components, those are going to help me to make sure that I'm able to tune into signal and send to broadcast to amplify the proper signal. Right. So when you're in a radio, when you're in a car and you're listening to the radio, if anybody ever tunes into the actual radio, doesn't use like Spotify and those type of things anymore. If you actually tune in, you would know like you have to kind of search for a signal that is in the you know right proximity, you know, there's a radio station sending that signal somewhere for you to listen to classic rock or whatever that might be. And if and if you aren't on, you know, it's 99.9 or whatever it is on your radio station. If you're uh at 99.7, it has a little bit of a little distortion, and or it might even, like I've heard you say before, it might even kind of you might be picking up two radio stations at the same time.

Heidi 3:38

Yeah, picking up two different signals, and then now you you're really unclear on as to your direction or what you're listening to.

Ryan 3:47

So now the messages become distorted, right? Uh you don't know which one to follow. I mean, it's just we don't have to even it's like it's so obvious anymore how much stimulation and consumption there is out there in the world, how many, how many things out there that are that are like legitimately just trying to capture your attention, your energy and and and and pull you in different directions. Yeah.

Heidi 4:17

Attention is currency.

Ryan 4:19

Yeah. Yeah. So we this this this concept of signal versus noise came from an online course that we're taking right now from our um neuroscience specialist, Stephanie Fay. Her program, this online

Attention As Currency

Ryan 4:33

course is called Neuro Wisdom. So we start we started kind of dabbling with it, um, just listen watching bits and pieces of it sometime in like December. So I actually did a bit of an experiment. You know how I like to make myself an experiment. Um and and I've heard the idea of signal versus noise before, but I've never had it presented to me in a way that was quite as like you know robust and thorough as she had presented it. And you know, she speaks mainly to like life coaches, uh people who therapists, counselors, people who are teaching and facilitating, healers, those type of things. And so uh somewhere around the December time is when I watched that module about signal and noise. And so I made a commitment

Where This Idea Came From

Ryan 5:20

January 1 to grossly reduce the amount of noise in my life. So I eliminated, um just about eliminated uh social media for uh six weeks, maybe two months,

Ryan’s Social Media Cut Experiment

Ryan 5:35

and it felt weird at first. It felt like something was missing a little bit. Not that I was on social media a ton, but it was enough uh to where that felt like something had been stripped away a little bit. Eventually I decided to pick back up with uh YouTube uh just a little bit because I do find value in looking for videos that help to uh add a lay a layer of like teachability to my content when I might I might grab a little two or three minute video Kobe Bryant talking about process over outcome or whatever and send it to a and send it to a client or or play it for a team or or those type of things just to you know so it's not always just coming from me.

Heidi 6:21

Yeah.

Ryan 6:21

And so I began to kind of so I made myself an experiment starting the first of this year. And I'll tell you this, that the outcome for me by reducing noise has been way more clarity. Now clarity of like next steps, of what I want to create, of the experience I want to have, and recognizing, man, if I had to give a percentage on how much signal versus noise before January 1, I don't I don't know what it'd probably be something like 6040. If I I would probably maybe even 50-50, yeah, 6040 feels right, 60% where I was doing things, consuming things that were a signal and 40% noise on how you know how much I was just consuming. So the the outcome of really getting clear about that essence, that who you've come here to be, the experience you want to have, the impact you want to make, and making sure that we are properly tuning in to that radio station that we're consuming um at least 80% signal and 20% noise, because once in a while a little bit of noise is is kind of like it's nice to distract yourself. Um, but it has been a game changer for me when I sent when it comes to just I noticing it in my nervous system and and and creating is quite a bit more clarity in direction of next steps for for business, for life, for relationship, and all of those type of things. I feel like I'm coming more into alignment and integrity with that essence that you speak of.

Heidi 8:15

You've actually created space for for certain hobbies and things that you hadn't done for a while, too.

Ryan 8:21

So well, super small things. Like I've actually, you know, 10 years ago, I enjoyed working in the yard. I enjoyed yard projects, I enjoyed

Clarity Gains And Making Space

Ryan 8:31

mowing the lawn, and I had gotten so busy these last 10 years or so that I all I just I felt like it was a waste of time. I felt like it was a distraction in of itself. But interesting enough, I didn't make this correlation that you just brought up. Interesting enough, like even this last weekend from Memorial Day weekend, we intently hung around the house and did some projects and just only did a few things and then barbecued a little bit and just relaxed and really a lot of downtime. And uh, and I enjoyed thoroughly mowing the lawn. I enjoyed making these little planner boxes for the shed. I enjoyed things that normally I wouldn't enjoy. And so curious about like for you, how has because this has been whenever we come up with a topic like this, we usually typically discuss it on our own for weeks or months on our walks and stuff like that. Like, how has signal and noise shown up for you and how have you practiced that?

Heidi 9:35

I think the biggest thing that comes to mind is my meditation practice right now, taking the time to stop and tune in. I actually have it in my calendar is tuning the signal.

Ryan 9:48

That's awesome.

Heidi 9:50

So that's been big.

Heidi’s Meditation And Tuning Practice

Heidi 9:51

Um another thing that comes to mind too that I'm thinking just past experience, even getting out of our environment. You know, we love being home, we're homebodies, but getting out of your environment can actually open you up to be able to receive some different signal as well. So there's like the daily habits of scrolling or whatever it is, that's kind of information that you're consuming. I remember there was a time in my life where I would turn on the TV as soon as I got home from work and I had some sort of background noise going on. Um now that drives me crazy. So you can absolutely shift those habits. But um just getting out of your regular environment and or setting down some of those things, like you said, setting down the social media. Um, I've done periods of time of that as well, and just noticed how much more space, how much more mental space I felt like I had in that. But right now for me for sure, my meditation practice and intentionally tuning the signal because I feel like I come out of that with so much more clarity around the type of mom that I want to be, the type of partner that I want to be, um, the the coach I want to be for my clients and what needs to happen for me to have that level of energy that I want to bring.

Ryan 11:14

Well, you know, you're talking about how you used to, I remember that by the way, it used to drive me a little bit nuts that you the very first thing that you would do in the morning while you're getting ready for for work or whatever, would you turn on the news and like I'm like, whoa, that's a lot of noise.

External Noise Becomes Internal Noise

Ryan 11:30

And we call it that. Like there's noise.

Heidi 11:32

It's noise, yeah.

Ryan 11:33

It's noise, we call it noise, but we haven't ever made it the differentiate between the signal and noise, right? And everything's a pattern, right? And so if if we are getting so used to constantly digesting just information and noise, like we will actually get addicted to that distraction, to that buffering, to that just constant having noise in our lives. The problem is that it turns into internal noise because every single thing that you digest, every single lyric that you listen to, every single video that you watch, everything, it goes into your mind, it makes an impression, right? And then so people have very, very busy minds which creates what's create which creates a level of distortion internally or lack of clarity, and therefore, then with that confusion and or noise, the best way for them to drown out the noise is to turn on more noise, is to turn up the volume of the noise and the frequency of it, to listen to more music, to watch more shows, to to you know, how many times do you reach for your, you know, your phone and just to buffer to pass the time. You know, um, I mean, I remember when I used to do a little bit more social media. Once in a while I found myself reaching for my phone when I'm at a stoplight. I'm like, I'm for how much time? It's like you you can't you can't handle the 30 seconds or the 45 seconds of sitting at a red light. You have to have something to entertain yourself. Like that that piece is is what's scary to me based upon my experience as well, is that that the external noise creates internal noise, and then to quiet the internal noise, instead of learning to prune that away, instead of learning to quiet that down through you know all the practices of nervous system regulation, breath work, meditation, whatever it may be, just the that pruning concept, you just have to turn up the volume, you have to actually play louder music, you have to have you know noise on more often.

Heidi 13:46

I think that leads to a level of like for myself personally, I that's all I can really speak to my personal experience. It leads to this feeling of what is the point because you're not in alignment or in touch with any bigger goal or ideal for your life. It's just kind of like I'm managing all of this noise, and there's no clear signal. Like that's what I think that's really that's really what we're talking about.

Ryan 14:21

Yeah, managing noise versus clear signal. So we're we're constantly sending, we're constantly receiving. So we're either broadcasting or amplifying what we're sending or we're or we're tuning into what we're receiving, and without going down some you know, deep spiritual rabbit hole, which we could, but you know, the the first step is to for I think it's important for you to know like what does home frequency feel like? Here is you know, without like

Finding Your Home Frequency

Ryan 14:55

a simple example. Recently, when I was listening watching uh you know a couple of clips on on YouTube, I got distracted and started scrolling. And instantly, within three to four or five minutes, I get kind of lost in that scrolling because I wasn't being intentional about tuning into signal and looking for things that were going to benefit me on my path, things that lead to growth, that lead to uh you know, a deeper um insight or awareness, uh clarity, or going, yeah, that's what I want to create, whatever it may be. Like when I got when I got lost in that, I felt a dissonance within myself. I felt kind of icky and dirty. I felt kind of like you know, I felt that way. And so I think that's a first place to start. Like, you know, because here's the thing that we have to understand about signal versus noise is that nothing is inherently signal or noise, just like you know, from the mindset perspective, nothing is good nor bad. It's legitimately our context that determines signal versus noise. So it depends on what you're looking for. If I'm looking you know for something about mindset, and that's why I picked up my phone to look at YouTube, and then I get distracted by whatever else, you know, people you know acting goofy or you know what some what somebody said about somebody or you know, a bunch of a bunch of those pieces, right? Then that's the problem. The problem, yeah. So no, you know, knowing that you know what is that signal I'm looking for, what is that signal I want to receive, and what is that signal I want to broadcast, right? And finding as much alignment and attunement with that is going to create an internal uh domain, a visceral feeling of safety, of security, of clarity, of direction. And uh not to say that we have to be signal 100% of the time, but I think it's important for you to pay attention. Like that would be my first like little kind of like challenge of sorts would be to go, how does that make you feel?

Heidi 17:04

Yeah, checking in. I mean, that's one of those things that we do when we're trying to eat healthier, right? We we eat a certain food and some people have sensitivities to different things, and you and you try it on and you go, I don't feel great when I eat yogurt or whatever it is, right? Okay, that's good information. I feel really good when I have blueberries. Cool. I'm gonna be doing more of that.

Ryan 17:28

Yeah, yeah.

Heidi 17:29

So you have to have that introspective experience.

Ryan 17:33

So you have to be clear about what internal, like home, safe, harbor, green, clarity, all those types of pieces that feels like. So when you when you if that's what you're looking for, and then you get distracted by something, like you recognize like, oh, this ain't it.

Heidi 17:55

This ain't this ain't I'm on the wrong station. I'm off course.

Ryan 17:58

Yeah, I'm off course, yeah. Yeah, I need to turn I need to tune, I need to fine-tune my radio station a little bit, and you get more clear about what it is I do want, what I want to project, and therefore what I want to receive, right? And then I think the other piece is then we have to really be intentional about curating the information that we allow in. So be social media, news, whatever that might be, right?

Curate Inputs And Your People

Ryan 18:24

Uh just making sure that at least 80% of that information is the signal that you're looking for that you want to create.

Heidi 18:30

And your circle of influence. That's just that was my next thing I was gonna say. If you're around people and they're and their signal is all about negativity and pessimism and what's wrong with the world, and notice how that makes you feel. And is that the is that the signal you want to pick up on and broadcast back out? And if it's not, then you've got to adjust your your tuning. You've got to adjust your tuning and either find new people to be around or start just broadcasting yourself a new signal, which will then in turn attract people who are in alignment with that.

unknown 19:08

Yeah.

Ryan 19:08

I mean, yeah, so being clear about what home feels like to you, that clarity feeling, that feeling of safe harbor, being be making sure that that authenticity then is being broadcasted in a way where you're you feel safe to be that authentic version of you within your environment, within your circle of influence. If you look at it in terms of like systems and processes as a business owner or as an athlete or coach, parent, right? I think that the a very realistic ratio is the 80-20 rule, which 80-20 shows up in so many things, whether you're talking about nutrition or whatever. I think the idea of being 100% signal would make somebody rigid, right? I think a little bit of occasional noise is is fine, right? I use, you know, uh a show at the end of a day sometimes to unwind to just to detach, uh, watch an office or an old Seinfeld episode or whatever. So, and that's definitely not signal of what I'm trying to create and who I'm trying to become. I'm definitely not trying to be, you know, uh like like Michael Scott on the office. All right, but it's funny.

Heidi 20:17

If you were studying to be a comedian or or a writer of a show, then then it would be probably in alignment with that.

Ryan 20:23

Yeah, so so yeah, knowing those pieces, right? And then and then just curating, curating that piece because you know, it all comes back

The 80 20 Balance Rule

Ryan 20:33

around. Everything eventually comes back around to your internal domain. This is why it always comes back around to being a heart-first conversation, right? Because everything external, whether it be your environment, whether it be the your what you're digesting, uh the information you're consuming, it all is going to turn into your internal dialogue, right? And then so then eventually then it's about like how do you how do you tune into your internal sense of wisdom, your internal, you know, uh sense of self, confidence, right? Your inner voice, what what aspect of yourself are you truly listening to? Right. I mean, and and this is where we could do probably just do a whole podcast on the internal world.

Heidi 21:18

Yeah, I think we'll do that.

Ryan 21:20

Yeah. Um, but that'll be our next conversation. I I want to just like lay a little bit, like maybe people will be more likely to hit it uh to watch to watch the next ep or listen to the next episode. Years ago, I came to a realization that I was no longer going to listen to the voice in my head. Right? Like there was just so much noise in there that I just decided like I'm done

Next Up Head Versus Heart

Ryan 21:50

listening. I'm done listening to my head. Right. So in our next episode, let's talk about head.

Heidi 22:00

Versus heart and kind of the I mean on the most simplistic level it's gonna be fear wolf courage wolf right and also talk about being able to be detached and observe things from a higher vantage point to be able to because it's this it's this interplay between being able to work with your insides to be able to tune into signal and also to curate your external world circle of influence social media all those type of things anything final final thoughts on this piece for today uh look I'm excited for the next conversation I think there's there's so much that we can unpack here but if you're listening and you have some comments questions or even a request of something that you'd like to hear here on the show just go to the link in the show notes you can text us or send us a voice message we'd love to hear from you leave us a rating and review is also great and we just appreciate you spending your time here and uh

Listener Messages And Closing

Heidi 23:00

tuning into our signal so we will see you next time.

Ryan 23:03

Awesome. Thank you for your time