Finding Your True Inner Voice

A couple of years ago I wrote about the idea about talking to yourself rather than listening to yourself from The Carpenter by Jon Gordon (post). This idea of your inner voice, how we speak to ourselves is so vital to the level of joy in our life. No matter what is going on around us in our lives, how we are able to cope in the situations life throws at us is predicated on what our inner dialog is telling us. These excerpts say it better than I ever could.

From The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday: "Someone can't frustrate you, work can't overwhelm you - these are external objects, and they have no access to your mind. Those emotions you feel, as real as they are, come from the inside, not the outside."

From Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris: "The power broker in your life is the voice that no one ever hears. How well you revisit the tone and content of your private voice is what determines the quality of your life. It is the master storyteller, and the stories we tell ourselves are our reality. For instance, how do you speak to yourself when you make a mistake that upsets you? Would you speak that way to a dear friend when they've made a mistake? If not, you have work to do. Trust me, we all have work to do."

We spend more of our lives with our own thoughts than with any other person. Unfortunately we let what others say about us alter our inner voice. The judgement and criticism from others change what we tell ourselves. The world can be a cruel and lonely place, messages relentlessly pounding us down to conform to what the world thinks we should be. That voice is loud, but it isn't your inner voice. Your true inner voice, what is inside your heart and soul, untainted by the outside world, that is what you need to listen to.


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