Dinner is served. Hunger and thirst are quenched. It is time to go bed.
Your Netflix subscription has expired. Your phone is dead. You have no company. Alone. Silence. Then as creepy as they get, in the deadness of the night, they are awakened. Those inner voices that had been masked. Drowned in the noise of living, and the firing task of filtering to present to the society what is expected of you.
The inner monologues beat your mental eardrums. The theatre in your head comes alive. Full with audio, soundtracks, and motion pictures. It is not just this night. It is every night. Unrestrained mental chatter and clutter so chaotic they leave you anxious, stressed, depressed, insomniated, with panic attacks, and all manner of emotional states that exhaust more than they exalt.
“Language is the hallmark of humanity—it allows us to form deep relationships and complex societies. But we also use it when we’re all alone; it shapes even our silent relationships with ourselves” ~The Atlantic
Before you dismiss inner speech as something that soon dissipates in the mist of time, allow me to remind you that when some of those dialogues continue unbridled, they begin to form the building blocks for how you perceive yourself, others, and your environment, even when such perception is based on the baseless and biased illusion of one’s own lack of belief in self, and feelings of inadequacy. Such conversations soon get embedded in the subconscious mind and become the invisible pilot of your journeys through life. TO DIRECT THE DIALOGUES IN YOUR HEAD, THEREFORE, IS TO BE AWAKENED.
It is time to take CHARGE OF THOSE INNER CONVERSATIONS.
We first learn to talk to others in social settings, and alongside that, we also learn how to speak to ourselves, sometimes loudly, but often in our heads. The differences between social speech and inner speech make inner speech even more intense since we don’t deploy the tongue, lips, or even the voice box. There is also no need for accurate grammar and complete sentences since we know what we mean. This way, inner speech has been estimated at 10 times faster than social speech, that is, 4000 words per minute. It is this intensity that should make you understand that; NO MATTER WHAT OTHERS TELL YOU ABOUT YOU, good or bad, IT IS the good or bad YOU TELL YOURSELF ABOUT YOU THAT REALLY MATTERS!
“Remember you have been criticising yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens” Louise Hay, Heal Yourself.
[bctt tweet="You spend most of your life inside your head. Make it a great place to be" username="QaziniKenya"]
Regrets from the past such as missed opportunities may show up in your silent moments, dressed in their scaring Halloween costumes, their coarsely and wicked pitched voices accusing you of all the beautiful things you screwed up in the past. Guilt presents her case, and every ounce of enthusiasm is drained out of you. To silence such negative voices, you reach for your headphones, revamp the volume, and let the music drawn them dead, but the voices remain, until the noise goes down. How about deliberately countering the voices in your head with more deliberate and directed self-talk?
For example, every time a voice in my head whispers to me about an incident where I screwed up, my answer is plain, simple, real; “SOMETIMES YOU GO TO BED THINKING YOU SCREWED UP, ONLY TO WAKE UP AND REALISE, YOU GREW UP!”
Talk to yourself like you talk to someone you love ~Brene Brown
I call you to pause, right now. Remember that crush, that first love? How do you talk to the person you love? How much judgement do you pass to people you really love? Remember how gracious, forgiving, understanding you are to the person you love? Yes, remember overlooking glaring weaknesses for love and not constantly calling your loved one out for not meeting every expectation? REMEMBER? What is going on in your head right now about you? What patterns seem repeated? Question the basis of such patterns. Is it past conditioning? Childhood experiences? Not so good relationship experiences? Are you scared of the future? And whether you can live up to the demands of your life? What narratives are true? Which ones are illusion-based fears? As you speak to yourself concerning the source of the narratives in your head, remember to award yourself what you award those you love, UTMOST POSITIVE REGARD!
Then, FROM THE DIAS OF SELF-LOVE, LET THE ENERGY OF YOUR SELF-TALK BEGIN TO SHIFT TO EXALT YOU, NOT TO EXHAUST YOU!
Also Read: You Are Enough! Exiting the Graveyard of Self-Doubt
