How to Turn Morning Tinnitus In a Superpower

Most morning tinnitus suffers recover and return to everyday lives. But you don’t have to settle with ordinary life. Instead, you can use the gift of tinnitus as a superpower to unleash all of your true potentials. Here’s how to do it.

Handled the right way, morning tinnitus is the superpower you need to turn your dreams into reality. It will be your life coach, helping you keep your eyes on your daily goals. It will alert you when you are being unproductive. It will help you build the life you want, one morning at a time.

Your entire outlook on tinnitus is about to change. When it does, have some pity on those who wake up to quiet, peaceful mornings. They silenced their only motivation when they slapped their alarm clock’s snooze button.

A new view of morning tinnitus.

How much would you pay for a morning pill or beverage that was calorie-free, non-addictive, and instantly provided you with the fuel to create the perfect day? What would it cost to hire a personal life coach who lived and worked with you 24/7? And how much did that smartwatch you are wearing, the one that beeps and vibrates when you’ve been sitting too long, cost you?

Having all those things would change your life. Deep down inside, you’ve always known you just needed a little extra help to achieve all your goals. You always had the talent but lacked the willpower.

Until now, now you have had tinnitus. An irritating, often frightening sound in your head. When that noise started, your whole life felt damaged. You spend hours every day thinking about it. Fearing it will get worse, perhaps becoming too much for you to handle.

But that last thought, that it might get worse? That means you are already making progress on your road to recovery. It means you have slightly habituated, come to a small degree, to accept and deal with your tinnitus.

It means you are ready to try a different approach to dealing with your tinnitus. It means you are prepared to use it.

Turning morning tinnitus from an enemy into a friend.

It’s okay to feel sorry for those poor folks who don’t have tinnitus. They are doomed to wake up, grab a coffee, and immediately sit down in a comfy chair and stare blankly into a flickering, blue screen. They trade the best hours of their day for useless news about events they can’t control and people they will never meet. Technically, their brains won’t wake up for at least another hour or so.

And to think, you once yearned for a cure that would end your tinnitus and allow you to be just like them again. Maybe you still do? Do you want to be comfortable again? All day? Do you still hate your tinnitus?

Well, even if you loathe your tinnitus and would do anything to be free of it, that’s okay. You can work with that anger. Comfort, on the other hand, is useless to you. It is nothing more than a transient state between discomfort and the desire for even greater comfort.

The first step toward turning tinnitus from an enemy into a friend is finding common ground. Think about when your tinnitus bothers you the most and when it is nearly unnoticeable. What are you doing during those moments?

Then consider this, is it possible to use the knowledge you just learned to quieten your tinnitus using some good distractions? Could those distractions consist of the tasks required to achieve a goal?

Why tinnitus is great for your goals.

There’s a good reason you don’t plop down in a chair and watch the news in the morning. It’s because your tinnitus will start to howl the moment you become inert. So, you have already identified the moments when the ringing in your ears is the worst. And you’ve already taken steps to avoid some of those occasions.

That’s great for two reasons. First, you have already accepted that relieving your tinnitus symptoms doesn’t require an imaginary miracle cure. Second, you have already proven to yourself that you do have some control over your tinnitus.

Discovering you are not powerless to the harmful emotional reactions brought on by tinnitus is liberating. However, learning how to use tinnitus to keep you focused, motivated, and constantly working on your goals is life-changing.

Tinnitus does have power. Its power lies in its ability to roust you out of your comfort zone. It simply will not let you sit down and turn off your brain. It buzzes when you mindlessly watch tv. It hollers when you consume too much alcohol.

Hell, it acts like you’re a climber who just sat down 300 feet from the summit of Mount Everest. It knows it has to get you up and moving again; right now, before you become a frozen landmark, other climbers pass by on their way down from success.

Unfortunately, tinnitus is often too powerful for most of us. Tinnitus starts as an annoyance, but it can soon become a loud, threatening bully. Tinnitus can cause paralyzing fear.

But that fear is a false reality. Let’s quickly learn why.

The false fear of tinnitus.

Nearly everyone who experiences fear over tinnitus suffers it the most in two areas: Lack of sleep and fear of increasing volume. Here is where a little information can strip tinnitus of its boogeyman classification and more properly label it an irritant.

Sleeping with tinnitus.

There are three simple tricks to getting a decent night’s rest with tinnitus.

Set up your bedroom like a cave. Cool, dark, quiet, and safe.
Set and stick to a daily sleep routine. Stop eating, drinking, and smoking a few hours before bed. Dim the house lights, spend some time relaxing, and hit the sack at the same time every day.
Spend 15 minutes listening to just your tinnitus. I call this the 15 Minute Challenge. While it’s meant to help you habituate to your tinnitus faster, it makes an excellent, drug and device-free sleep aid.

Nope, your tinnitus probably won’t get worse.

Tinnitus is subjective, meaning how loudly you’re perceiving it may be based solely upon how you feel or what you are doing at any given time.

If tinnitus does have a track record, that record proves tinnitus symptoms decrease with time.

Act fast before your morning tinnitus starts to fade.

At the beginning of this article, it was noted that 97% of tinnitus patients adapt, accept, and eventually recover from their tinnitus symptoms. While there is no cure at this time, your condition will soon stop eliciting strong emotional reactions and become a nuisance.

While most sufferers are happy to find out they will see significant improvements in 6-18 months (the average tinnitus habituation period), you should be alarmed.

You probably won’t have the gift of tinnitus to rely on for much more than eighteen months, and that only if you are lucky. So if you want to take advantage of your tinnitus, you’ll need to act now.

Many experts agree it takes about three months to establish a new lifelong habit. So if you want to change your life, stop complaining about your tinnitus and get to work.

Putting your tinnitus in the morning to work.

The best use of morning tinnitus is to turn your first hour of the day into a routine that silences your tinnitus. To do that you’ll need a breakfast of distraction and satisfaction. One that improves your health, reduces your stress, and sets a tempo of constant goal achievement for the whole day.

If you want to take advantage of tinnitus in the morning, however, you will need to have a plan worked out ahead of time.

Introducing the 62 Minute Hour.

For now, you can safely use my morning routine, but feel free to alter it to fit your needs. It’s a part of my tinnitus book, The 15 Minute Challenge.

I call my first hour of the day the 62 minute hour. You may need to readjust your sleep schedule to make room for this routine. Other than that, there’s only one more thing you need to do each night; set a 16-ounce glass of plain water near your alarm clock.

The first two minutes.

Immediately upon waking, spend the next two minutes drinking the glass of water. I’ll warn you, if you fail anything during this hour, it will be this simple task. Some mornings it takes Herculean effort just to reach down and pick up the damn cup. But you must forbid yourself to do anything more until that cup is empty.

Of course, rehydrating immediately upon awakening is excellent for your health. But that is not why you are gulping water first thing in the morning. You see, the task is surprisingly difficult. You will often have to force yourself to finish it within the two minutes allowed.

And most mornings, that 16 ounces of water drowns your tinnitus. Why? Instead of lying still after your alarm has sounded, you have to jump to your feet and get to work. The water drinking (contest?) and time limit serve as a distraction.

Author’s note: Even after years of drinking this water, I still find it hard to finish than a 1,000 piece puzzle. At times, it is an almost unbearable task. Some nights, I stare at that full glass and almost fear having to wake up to it. But, the good news is that my morning tinnitus meets a water grave nearly every dawn.

20 minutes of exercise.

After you finish waterboarding your tinnitus, it is time for some light exercise. Here, the goal is to inflict some light, beneficial discomfort upon your body. Again, the aim is minor pain, but not actual strain. Perhaps yoga is the best example. When you practice even beginner yoga, your mind is forced to concentrate on specific muscles.

Bending yourself into strange positions, holding your body in stressful poses, and being careful not to overstretch or pull a muscle—all require great focus. Fortunately, the slight pain, physical effort, and single-minded dedication leave absolutely no room for other thoughts. As a result, your poor tinnitus never gets a minute of your attention.

20 minutes of self-assessment.

This segment of your 62 minute hour is for taking stock of your physical condition. At this time, collect your Fitbit stats (sleep score and resting heart rate), body weight, and tinnitus perception level data. Click here to learn how to measure your tinnitus. Then, record all this information in a daily journal.

Remember: What gets measured gets done. If you have health goals, you need daily measurements. In a month or two, you’ll be able to note your progress simply by consulting your journal.

If you have any spare time, feel free to use it to plan the rest of your day.

20 minutes of self-improvement.

The last segment of your 62 minute hour is for intellectual self-improvement. Begin by selecting a topic or skill you want to expand your knowledge or abilities. Then create a set of learning objectives that you can progress through. Finally, spend your last 20-minute segment studying, reading, or listening to a podcast or audiobook on your chosen topic.

Here, your choices are endless. You can learn anything if you practice or study it for 20 minutes every day. One of my favorites is listening to an audiobook at 1.5 times the regular speed. The faster pace requires I pay strict attention, further suppresses my tinnitus, and seems to increase my recall of the subject matter.

The power of 62 minutes without morning tinnitus.

You should feel awesome after each session. You’ve hydrated yourself, warmed up your body, conducted a quick self-examination, and sharpened your mind. All while escaping the ringing in your ears.

And to be honest, all because you were trying to escape your morning tinnitus.

Now, use distraction and satisfaction for the rest of your day.

At the very least, a busy morning routine will effectively end your emotional reaction to the ringing in your ear. At best, you may not even notice it until you jump in your vehicle and start your commute.

If there is a potential drawback to the 62 minute hour, it’s mission creep. You can get a lot done in that time. The feeling of personal satisfaction can be astounding. So, you start getting up an hour earlier. Before you know it, you’ve set some new goals—bigger ones. You create plans that require months to a year to achieve—if you stick to just getting up one hour early. Then, you start thinking about getting up two hours earlier and maybe sacrificing some sleep to do it.

One day you realize you are trading lots of sleep for, admittedly, lots of productivity. Now you are getting up 2-3 hours early and making fantastic progress. Chores are getting done, and goals are getting checked off, but can you possibly do even more?

A word of advice. Instead of trading sleep, trade the dead hours in the middle of your day. Unplug the tv. Disconnect from social media. By now, these are the times when you still notice your tinnitus. So why not chase it away with your version of the 62 minute hour?

Morning tinnitus is not a curse; it’s a blessing.

Now you know how to escape the darn noise in your ears. And the methods you use are making you happier, healthier, and more productive. You’ve come to realize tinnitus is your superpower.

But somewhere over your head is a countdown clock. Tinnitus habituation is coming.

Please make the most of your tinnitus before it becomes an unnoticed background sound.

Life with tinnitus