What voice do you listen to?

We all have voices in our head...

Not all of them are pathological, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It's normal; ever since human beings developed consciousness, we've had a stream of thoughts that flow through our minds. Those narratives are the 'voices' I'm talking about. 

Some of them are encouraging. Some of them aren't. Some of them aren't even our own. Some of them are beliefs/ideas that we've taken from our parents/family/society and internalised (read: transformed) to sound like our own voice, so we think that the idea is our own (and that it's true). 

What's important is to differentiate between which voice is yours and which voice has come from these internalisations. 

(Now, you can make the argument that technically none of those voices are really your own, because we learn and formulate beliefs from the external environment. That's a fun argument, but it's also an attempt to deflect focus away from what really matters and what is useful to your personal growth) 

For example, when confronted with a challenge, do you think "I can do that" or "I can't do that because I'm not good enough"? As children, we don't really have the 'can't' voice. You'll have seen babies fall more times than you can count - and they keep getting up. It's only over the course of our life, as we internalise experiences and 'voices' from significant relationships, that we learn our limitations. Sometimes those limitations are valuable (e.g. you cannot fly without the aid of manufactured wings, no matter how hard you try!), but they can also hold you back from believing in yourself. 

When the internalised voices come from negative experiences, they are based on fear and insecurity; fear that you're a failure, that you won't meet expectations, that you're undesirable as a friend/partner/employee...The list is endless... Because we hear these voices as our own, we attribute a certain amount of truth to them (and trust their assessment as objective fact). 

Evolutionary psychology research has suggested that "bad is stronger than good", i.e., our brains learned to pay more attention to negativity than positivity because that's what has kept us alive, and that wiring has passed down the generations. So, it's more likely that you'll focus your attention on these negative internalisations than 'your' voice, AND that you'll believe them to be true because they sound like you.

(Yep, there are exceptions, but those exceptions aren't useful for you... and neither is an attempt to deviate from the topic in the hopes that you won't have to confront those beliefs)

Be mindful and listen. Differentiate your voice from the internalised narrative. Once you figure out which is which, look closely at how that internalised narrative developed over the course of your life. Ask questions like, "Is it really about me?" or "Is it more about them?" or "is this the narrative I really believe is true?"

If you believe there is a basis for the judgement, thats really scary because who wants to admit there's something bad about themselves? (not me!). The beauty of this recognition, however, is that now you have a choice; rather than avoiding the issue altogether, you can choose to be different. You aren't at the mercy of your internal narrative (well, you're not at the mercy of an internal conflict that is trying to prove your narrative wrong). Accepting it doesn't mean it has to stay that way. More on this later...

Sophie Gray

sophie.gray@thinkgray.com

www.thinkgray.com