Voices in My Head

Full disclosure:  I am notorious for speaking to myself all the time…as I cook, drive, do the dishes or my favourite pastime : cleaning bathrooms. I speak out loud…I plan, try out various ideas for workshops, craft various openings for my key notes, argue with myself, criticise my hair, .…I also have a special word for when people go HUH every time I mutter and murmur aloud…TTM…talking to myself. And yes, before you tell me, I am completely aware how this looks…in fact my kids call this my crazy lady avatar.

But hey we all talk to ourselves, all the time…unconsciously....it’s just that I am doing it, mostly consciously & loudly! Don’t we all do it? Check right now. Aren’t there some thoughts circling in your head,  aren’t you talking to yourself, too?

And for those of you who said, “what nonsense! I don’t talk to myself”– well there you are…I rest my case!

If you observe this mental talk, you will realise that it never shuts up. Left on its                                                                                                                                          own it will talk about everything and anything.  And especially when you have to interact with other people, that’s when this voice becomes really active…have you noticed as speakers even when you are speaking...there is a voice which  starts up…”Do they like me? What if they don’t laugh? I wish I hadn’t said that…Are they laughing at me? Am I boring? Should I have charged more? Did I charge too much? Do I deserve it? I wish I had said that….”

Its exhausting….You can’t shut away those voices, you can’t yell at it…it’s an automatic loop that plays by itself.  And like Michael Singer says in his book, The Untethered soul,  it plays for the same reason that a tea kettle whistles…when the water boils, there’s a buildup of pressure and the whistling starts  …fear anxiety desires…they all have a build up of energies ……and then the voice becomes really active.

And yes, the rock and roll of self-talk is I am  not enough – not talented enough, not good looking enough, not creative enough, not tall enough, not rich enough or young enough…you name it and you got it….how many of you can relate to this? Most of the time, this loop is playing in the background and we are not even aware of it.

And it all starts in child hood. ( Yup, I going right back there !!) Now,  in our own little world of toys and candies, we liked ourself…we kissed our reflection in the mirror, we sang to ourselves. But then we entered the “real world” of opinions, people, and comparisons, we began to feel “not good enough”. The seeds of negative self-talk are planted right there.  And every time we think about it, we water it. Soon enough, that seeds sprout and feelings of not being good enough is just a part of who we are. Just imagine,  it’s like carrying a huge backpack with boulders. We choose to carry the stones we collected in childhood. I call it OPV and OPO - other people’s voices and other people’s opinions. This is the baggage we carry , from childhood, right in to adulthood and left unchecked, right up to our graves

Yes… it’s like having a never-leave-your-side shadow…this inner critic. It will troll you, abuse you, ridicule you, put you down. If you are like me, then probably we grew up with the belief that we should never talk highly of ourselves (it’s vain), we should  put ourselves down (to appear humble).  May be our parents spoke to us only to scold us, criticise us or correct us. And we do the same. Our inner instinct is to criticise and judge ourselves (and others).

You do realise that the best things we talk about our loved ones is often at their funeral, right?

And if you go around telling yourself that you are probably not that smart or not that loveable, chances are the experiences in your life will confirm that belief. After all life is a mirror. What you see outside is only a reflection of what you feel inside.

I love this concept, it’s so simple and yet so profound.

Life is a mirror. What you see outside is only a reflection of what you feel inside.

I have an obsession to listening to people talk…in fact my book I Complete Me, is a love child of my obsession and observation…and I have realised that most of us are not even aware of the words we use daily, nor do we realise what are the words and phrases that keep running around in our minds.

“I am,” as they say, is one of the most powerful phrases in English language and what you tag onto after that creates your reality. So, what are the words you use? Now as people facing people & change makers that we are, we do need a sense of confidence and self-esteem and that is determined by our own inner voices.

Your self-talk -  positive or negative,  it didn’t happen overnight. We need to hear a message multiple times before we accept it. We will have been telling ourselves the same negative messages, over and over again, until we got to a point where we accepted them as true. That is the power of consistency (and you thought you lacked perseverance, huh?)

The first step to awareness is change.

Simply start to notice what you’re saying to yourself. You may shocked by what these voices in your head say…how often you’re saying unkind things to yourself. The rule here is simple: Only observe the voices. And notice WHOS talking? Is it your mom, your dad, is it your teacher’s voice…who’s talking). Just notice.

When you notice that you’re in this unkind space, ask yourself, “If this were a friend coming to me with these thoughts, my thoughts, what would I say to them?”

This question will wake you up and radically change your self-talk. I mean just imagine, if your colleague suddenly had a case of nerves and said  “Oh my god, I’m not ready for this presentation …I’m sure I will bomb… I just can’t remember anything “,  what would you say? “ You are absolutely right, you loser, I always thought your stuff was a load of bs” or  will you say, “C’mon, you are  fantastic, I’m sure you will be on fire”.

Get what I mean. We would never ever speak to any other human being like we speak to ourselves.

And to raise your game, you need to notice and practice talking kindly to yourself.

Like with everything in our life, only that we love and nurture will stay and flourish…whether it is our plants, our pets, our children or our lovers….everything else is phased out. You are a gentle plant, too; nurture yourself.

Commit to this inner work like your life depended on it…and in a way it does.

Because, first of all…You do deserve this level of kindness. . Second of all, you don’t have to let go of anything. When you stop believing an untrue thought, it lets go of you. And that, my friend, is freedom. Take back your life from your inner roommate.

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