As motorcycle riders, we're well familiar with the constant hum of our world. That sound of the engine, the rush of the wind passing through our helmets, even the high-pitched ringing that some of us hear after a long ride, or in my case, a lot of years riding without good enough ear protection. Yeah, that's me. But what if we take a moment to listen more carefully to those noises? Today, we're talking about the noise, both physical and mental, that we can't always control, but how quieting the noise as best we can, both from the seat of a motorcycle and in our everyday lives, quieting the chaos, can help us see the road, physical and emotional, much more clearly. And maybe we can even manage those distractions. Maybe we can manage the stresses in our lives in a whole new way. Let's talk about it. Thank you for joining me today. Are you ready? Let's go! As I sit here today with my headphones on, in front of a microphone, in a relatively quiet room, I hear noises. Or I hear a noise. When it's extra quiet, I hear that noise. Yeah, that's strange. And some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. From what I understand, it's tinnitus. It's this constant ringing in your ears. Sometimes I notice it more than others, but especially when it's quiet. Yeah, in my younger days, uh, I went to a few concerts and they were quite loud. The loudest, as I recall, was probably Michael Jackson when my wife and I were still dating. Uh, we saw him in Dallas. It was a fantastic concert, of course. And but I remember we walked away from the arena with our other friends and we couldn't hear a thing, other than probably the last note that Michael and his band played. So do I regret going to concerts like that? Not at all. I'm so glad I got to see Michael Jackson. And it was so wonderful to be with a Swedish blonde who I eventually married. So all went well. But I'm fairly certain it wasn't those loud concerts that have left me with this ringing in my ears. No, it's the hundreds of literally hundreds of thousands of miles I've put on motorcycles in my lifetime. Now, granted, I've seldom had any bikes that were very loud. I had a probably the loudest one was a two-stroke CR250 Honda uh motocross bike. It's fairly loud, but I didn't ride that a whole lot. It was no, it was most likely the other bikes that I had that I and still have that I put so many miles on, and I just didn't wear earplugs for the longest time. But now I do on a regular basis. And what I found wearing these good quality earplugs on my motorcycle rides is I'm experiencing like a whole new level of awareness. I'm so much more observant, it's weird. I've always paid attention for safety's sake, and I've always been watching for other drivers and animals and rocks in the road and you know everything else. But now with good quality earplugs, I'm seeing things in a whole different way. And I can't explain why. But for example, I'm finding myself even less tired too. How is it that less sound makes me less tired? It's so strange, but I'm loving it. So I just wonder, what would our lives be like today if there were other noises that we could take out of our lives? Noises like the 24-hour news cycle, noises like work stress, real or imagined, some noises being easy to eliminate and others are more difficult. But would the world look different? Would it feel more beautiful if we had less noise in our ears and less noise in our mind? What if we could use virtual earplugs, shut out the noise, and just experience quiet? We live in a world that just constantly bombards us with information. Much of it negative. Have you ever heard of doom scrolling? Apparently, it's the effect of the chemicals of both stress and adrenaline that kick in in our brains when we see or hear something that's shocking. Whether it's good news or it's often bad news, it's that chemical reaction that kicks in where our body wants to experience oftentimes more and more and more. Yeah, doom scrolling. That makes sense. The 24-hour news cycle, social media feeds brimming with outrage and comparison, the endless notifications, the pinging from every device that we own. Maybe it's like riding without earplugs, without a helmet, without any wind deflection at all, down the highway at 70 miles per hour, a constant, deafening roar that leaves us feeling exhausted, anxious, and disconnected from what really matters. Just as we use earplugs to have a more quiet, more focused writing experience, I think we need to intentionally create buffers against the daily deluge of negativity. Well, let's start with the news. Now, I'm not saying that we should bury our heads in the sand, of course not, but being informed about some things is important, and about other things it's really not. There's a huge difference between being informed and being inundated. I don't think emotionally that we're built for that. I'm not built for that. Do we really need to consume every breaking story, every dire prediction, every conflict, every single hour of the day? So just this week I was working in Dallas, flew home the other night. My Uber driver slowed on the way to the airport to drive past what was several news station vans that were parked on the side of the road. And I asked the driver what was going on, and he said, Oh, those are news reporters. It was there at that building where someone with a gun attacked the ice facility that was there. Maybe you've heard about it this past week. Wow. News reporters waiting to put on the air the next shocking development, which of course was important, but it would hit the news like within seconds, if not live. More bad news. So, what can we do about it? We can control what disturbing information goes into our ears and through our eyes, can't we? Surely we can. It's like choosing your route on your next motorcycle ride. You wouldn't intentionally ride into a perpetual traffic jam if there was a scenic, quieter back road available, would you? Yet, many of us, metaphorically, ride directly into the worst of the news cycle. Then we wonder why we feel so drained, so exhausted. Well, here's a solution, something that you can try. Do we forget that we've got a motorcycle in the garage? Our freedom machine, something that takes us out of our real world and maybe into a more real world, out into Mother Nature, just sitting on a machine, enjoying the wind, enjoying the destination, no matter where it's taking us. Just a time when all feels right in the world, and we find that all elusive peace of mind. It happens naturally. We begin to ignore the endless chatter of the world and focus just on the road ahead and everything that's around us. The feel of the bike, the beauty of the landscape, the smells. We learn to listen to the subtle cues of our machine and our body. That's mindfulness in motion. And I think it's a tremendous gift that we are given as motorcycle riders. Applying this to our lives, wow. What are we making space for when we turn down the volume of this external noise? Well, as for me, I'm learning to turn down the noise in my life because it frees me and my time to do what I really love to do. I love to ride my motorcycle. It's probably never the case that I'm going out for a ride hoping to come back discouraged, distracted, or depressed. No, I'm going because that time on my bike is my time. It's my space. And it's for nothing else but to be enjoyed. So this week, that's my hope for you. I want to challenge you. Spend more time this week out on your motorcycle. Going somewhere or going nowhere. Just go. Find both your real and your metaphoric earplugs. Identify one source of noise in your life. Maybe it's the news, maybe it's social media, maybe it's something else entirely. But consciously limit that exposure or just get rid of it for a while if you can. Experiment with that and see what happens when you create a little bit of extra space of silence and joy just riding your motorcycle. So what do you hear now? Are you having some new thoughts? Some new feelings arise that you didn't know were there before? Well, my guess is that you'll start to hear a little bit more about your true self. Your kind and gentle self who happens to ride a motorcycle. So, my friends, thank you so much for listening, as always, and I wish you peace, and I wish you love.