When I was a kid there was a saying that speaking to yourself is the first sign of madness. I actually thought it was a truth, and so I concluded that I must definitely be mad because I spoke to myself all the time. This wasn’t something I had discussed with anyone else. It was an agreement that I made with myself: “Yep, you’re pretty mad”.
As I grew a little older I made a remarkable discovery [remarkable for me, anyway]. The voice in my head – the one that talks to me all the time – is in everybody’s head. And it plays all day long, like a radio station that plays in the background as we go about our daily business.
The BIG question is, “Is the voice in your head a champion for who you are, or is it a constant reminder of how inadequate you are?” In other words, what radio station are YOU tuned into? Is it I ROCK 104.6 FM? Or is it I SUCK 94.2 AM? And that, I feel, is a rhetorical question, since I know of very few people who have a beautiful, affirming singing voice in their head.
Okay. So we get to listen to I SUCK 94.2 AM just about all day long. And the longer and more we listen to it, the more we begin to believe what we’re hearing. “I’m not talented enough”. “I’m not pretty enough”. “I’m not smart enough”. “I’m not thin enough”. “I’m not fun enough”. “I’m not good enough”.
Before long, this becomes who we are. We become our mind, and the agreements we make with ourselves. “I’m not good enough” is an agreement you have made with your self. It’s not a fact or a truth. It’s just a voice, in your head. And yet we identify ourselves with this voice – this person – and it constrains and contains our whole way of being.
Disclosure [an English electronic music duo] have a track called “Voices” that speaks perfectly to this human tragicomedy (click on the pic below to see the video – which I highly recommend):
There are voices in my head,
And my heart is trying hard to drown them out.
I keep hearing what they say,
They’ve enticed me into what they’re all about.
I love these lyrics. Because the way I see it, the way to drown out the voice in your head is to listen to your heart. And the thing is, not only have we forgotten to listen to our heart, we have forgotten how to listen to our heart. And that’s because rationalism, intellect, and reason dominate at school as well as in the workplace.
If the voice in your head is running and ruining your experience of life, let me just say this to you. You are not the voice in your head, and you know that. We all know that. You are the person in your heart. The person who feels. The person who cares. The person who cries. The person who loves and wants to be loved. A-fucking-men to that.
