I’ve suggest making the sense of anticipation itself into an object of meditation. Try standing back and noticing the sensations in the body, the thoughts, and the emotions that are connected with anticipation. Notice it. Take a friendly interest in it. Notice how all those sensations change. And then notice what happens when the noise actually happens.

All the best,
Bodhipaksa

Yes, I think taking up meditation would help. Meditation helps not just with noise, but with anything we find unpleasant, which is why it’s effective in treating stress, depression, and pain. It takes time, but in meditation we learn to accept difficult sensations with equanimity, so that the mind doesn’t react.

I find that the thing is to turn toward what is unpleasant, rather than (as our first instinct often is) to turn away from it or to try to shut it out. By taking an interest in the noise, and by actively paying attention to it — making it the object of our meditation, in fact — we can learn not to react to it. We can get to the point where it’s an emotionally neutral stimulus, and at that point we can tune it out. I recently posted a bunch of meditations that I recorded on a retreat I was leading, and these lead toward the state of equanimity I’m describing. They’re available free, here. I’d recommend working through them, starting from Ease 1 (I’m afraid they’re not otherwise labelled). Ironically, there’s a fair bit of background noise on the recordings, because of fans, and the ambient sounds in and around the retreat center! I hope you can live with that.

This advice has really helped me just by reading it. There has been construction going on outside my window for almost 2 months now, and I have started waking up right before it starts, heart pounding and waiting for the noise to begin. Previous to the construction, I didn’t notice any noise in my apartment, but now I hear everything: people talking, music, etc.

How do I get to the point where I can just tune out the noise or simply incorporate into my sleeping ability?
I am a musician, so I am naturally very sensitive to sound.

I really appreciate your comments about not being angry about the noise, as I have become very stressed and bitter about the noise.

Any suggestions? Would taking up your method of meditation help?
Any comments would be appreciated! Thank you!

May I ask how you know that “talking to the neighbors would be useless”? It seems unreasonable to expect them to understand your situation if they’re not aware of what it is. Communication can help enormously with these kinds of conflicts, which are usually rife with assumptions.

I’d be very wary of that idea “can’t do meditation.” What you’re describing is pretty much everyone’s experience, especially early on — that we sit down to meditate and the mind is flooded with thoughts. The expectation of some kind of perfect meditation is the enemy of progress, and we need to simply keep bringing the mind back to the breath whenever we regain our mindfulness. That moment when you regain your mindfulness (or realize you’ve been distracted) is an important one, because it gives us an opportunity to practice acceptance and to develop kindness toward ourselves. You wouldn’t watch at a baby learning to walk and give it a hard time when it wobbled and fell, so why give yourself a hard time for getting distracted? Just as the important thing is the baby picking itself up again, and learning from its efforts, so with our meditation the important thing is making use of the moments of mindfulness that arise from time to time. Gradually, over time, it becomes easier to pay attention, and we’re less prone to get caught up in thinking (although it’s not something we ever totally overcome).

I’d also suggest you try what I call “broadband” meditation. It may be that you’re paying attention to too narrow a range of sensations, and so you’re leaving too much mental bandwidth available for thinking.

It may also be that you need to do more reflection outside of meditation — sitting down and thinking about your relationships, etc, in a creative way. Say you have recurring thoughts in meditation about a difficult you have with a particular person; you could make a mental note that you’re going to think about that later, and then sit down with a pad of paper and think more about that particular problem and how you might address is. And for “things you need to do” distractions, having a to-do list is very useful. Without a to-do list your mind will keep juggling information in the hopes that you won’t forget it.

I am beginning to feel better things today so I think I am on the right track.

James

This definitely sounds like a case for lovingkindness (metta) meditation. You could imagine the you that made the decision to move to this particular house, and cultivate lovingkindness toward him, for example. You could also locate the sense of pain that you have when you consider the noise (or the decision) and send lovingkindness to it as well — in effect practicing self-compassion.

It’s a common thing, by the way, to start noticing feeling critical of a new place after first being smitten by it. It’s an odd phenomenon. It’s probably also worth spending time appreciating all the great things you like about the house, so that there’s less mental “bandwidth” available for negative thinking.