Listening to the Voice Within

There’s a constant conversation happening inside all of us.

Sometimes it’s practical, reminding us to pick up milk or replaying the directions to somewhere we’re going. Sometimes it looks further back, turning over something that happened yesterday or years ago. Sometimes it rehearses a difficult conversation before we’ve even had it.

And sometimes, it’s simply that quiet voice asking, Why did that bother me so much? Or Why do I keep doing this?

I’ve become increasingly interested in that voice because I didn’t always listen to mine.

For a long time, I was on autopilot. I did things because I had always done them. I said yes when I wanted to say no. I tried to fix things that weren’t mine to fix. And because these patterns were so familiar, I rarely stopped to ask myself why I was doing them.

It wasn’t until I started looking inward that I began to understand what was underneath them.

I discovered that I had tied a lot of my self-worth to what I could do for other people. Somewhere along the way, I had come to believe that if I wasn’t helping, I wasn’t particularly useful. And if I wasn’t useful, perhaps I wasn’t valuable.

That realization changed the way I understood my emotions.

Feeling drained or resentful wasn’t simply something to push past. Those feelings were telling me something. They were clues.

The same thing happens when our bodies tell us something isn’t right. Maybe it’s a racing heart, a knot in our stomach or that strange feeling we can’t quite explain. We can ignore it, but the feeling is still there, asking us to pay attention.

I’ve learned that our inner voice can be a little like that.

It isn’t always right. It isn’t always kind. And not every thought that passes through our minds deserves to be believed.

But I’ve also learned that I don’t need to silence those thoughts.

I can listen to them without letting them run the show.

For me, that has meant becoming curious about my own reactions.  Is this actually what I believe, or is it an old story? Am I responding to what’s happening now, or something that happened a long time ago?

Sometimes I need distance from a situation before I can see it clearly. Sometimes I simply need to sit with a feeling rather than immediately trying to change it.

None of this happens perfectly.

There are still times when I get caught up in my own thoughts. There are still moments when the inner critic gets louder than I’d like. And there are days when I realize, usually after the fact, that I’ve slipped back into an old pattern.

But awareness gives me a choice.

I don’t have to act on every thought. I don’t have to believe every story my mind creates. I can notice what’s happening inside me, get curious about it and decide what I want to do from there.

Maybe that’s what I’ve come to appreciate most about the inner voice.

It isn’t there to give us all the answers.

Sometimes, it’s simply there to help us ask better questions.

And the more I listen, the more I learn about what makes me, me.