Ding ding ding….. Beep beep beep.. ding..Beep Bong bong Ding Beep Bong.. And it goes on and on.

If any one has spent some time in the hospital at the nursing station these sounds are constantly going off. Alarms of all kinds add to the noise pollution, lending little to healing in a hospital. I have been frequenting the hospitals for decades and nothing has changed wherever I go. The noise is blaring with alarms from the telemetry monitors, alarms revealing various rhythm disturbances, or patient’s bells being pressed, or alerts of all different types resonate in the air.

I look around and the staff seem to be unperturbed and though it seems like a flow that the work continues, I am usually on edge with the sounds, while the alarms appear to be ignored. This does not mean to say that the staff does not respond to the issues at hand, they do. Yet constantly listening to these varied cacophony of alarms leads to a numbing mood. It is actually scientifically dubbed as “alarm fatigue” . In the health care field we hear them so often that we numb ourselves to the noise.

I wonder where else do we numb ourselves out in life. How may more alarms do we ignore on a daily basis. Our body does not feel quite right with some aches and pains yet we push through without giving it attention. Or perhaps the kid who constantly is whining about something or the other and we are ignoring them as parents sometimes do, but they really just want a little more attention to tell us they are scared. Our nagging partner who requires just a moment to be truly heard that will save the relationship down the line, or the medical lab report that revealed some abnormal findings that need attention and not be shoved away in a drawer that may prevent a long term problem.

We are constantly being bombarded by signals and alerts or alarms that are competing for our attention, yet most of the time we choose to ignore them and numb ourselves out with other forms of distractions, sometimes burying our heads in the little or big screen in front of us, or listen to the loudest of music just to block out the world. Each person functions differently. Each person responds differently to the alarms of the body, the mind, the heart and the world. A new parent may respond differently to the newcomers cry than the experienced parent who chooses to selectively respond to the child’s years later.

How does one choose to pick which alarm to react to? How does one choose to ignore certain alarms and why? My opinion, is that when we are constantly in flux of our mindsets and create new judgments against these alarms we may miss many important ones. The more attention we pay to our minds and stay present, the more likely we are able to respond from a space of centered wholeness rather than a hyper vigilant anxious state or from a place of fatigue or exhaustion. Alarms are nothing more than alerts, which we may get plenty even through our smart phones informing us of social media notifications or email arrivals or calendar responses or fitness alert to get up, slow down, breathe, drink water etc.

Trusting our mind body in a centered state that holds all the wisdom to keep us in tune is key. It all begins now.

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I love you