A Moment of Silence

I had a second of silence this week. Lately my ears ring constantly, but for an instant, the roar of tinnitus blinked. 

It’s only happened twice in the last 358 days. But it wasn’t guaranteed to happen at all. 

The doctors don’t know why I’m suddenly super sensitive to sound, or what caused my ears to start ringing continuously. But it’s been almost a year since my sense of hearing was “normal.”

If you’ve ever had your ears ring after leaving a concert or riding in a loud carpool, you know what tinnitus sounds like. I’ve had it after being in loud music venues over the years, but never imagined it would become permanent. 

For me the two seconds of silence I’ve found hard to get lately is literal. My brain itself is being noisy. But tinnitus is probably the most organized form of mental noise there is. What feels like a wall of screaming sound is disturbing, but it’s ambient. 

Spiteful Chatter + Self Talk

For most of us, the chatter in our heads has teeth. We replay hurtful words, or rehearse dreaded outcomes, or escape into daydreams to fill the airspace of our loneliness. 

Silence is always hard to come by. And we almost never appreciate it until it’s gone. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about the ways we can use our bodies to calm our minds…particularly when we’re feeling anxious. I even pulled a live coaching on the topic from our video archive to add to our tiny YouTube channel. 

But I wanted to send you a personal message this week, to give some solidarity to the fact that silence is hard to get, and so necessary. A million things can crop up to make it chemically challenging to focus, habitually hard to be quiet, and seemingly impossible to make space to settle down. 

But we need it. 

For some reason, I think a lot of us are living like silence and inner peace is a luxury… something we can earn by accomplishing enough, achieving some goal or exhausting ourselves enough that we don’t have any other option. 

But catching up on sleep when we’re sick is not the same as resting. And collapsing after a brutal professional sprint isn’t recharging. 

We need 2 seconds of silence on a daily basis, a homecoming to our own hearts and minds, to stop the running and the working and the worry. We all have things that calm and center us. Maybe taking a walk outside, sitting with a warm beverage and a journal, slipping into a cozy spot to breathe. 

If your energy is riding high, maybe your moments of silence is waiting in the shower after your killer workout, or will find you on the cool down stretch after the run you desperately need. 

Today I feel like I should tell you GO GET YOUR SILENCE. As the holiday season hits full swing, you’ll have no shortage of noise. So what can you do to unhook from the mayhem and be quiet? To prepare for some Wild + Brave Reflection?

May you receive peaceful quiet into your soul this week, even if by accident. And may a rhythm of quiet grow in your life, to support all that important thinking and doing and communicating you need to do. 

All my best,

Coach Morgan