photo credit: Via Flickr
You’re not crazy. Trust me.
We all have voices inside of us speaking their minds about our life - our projects, hopes, dreams, problems, and challenges. The good news is that having voices is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s through giving them a microphone front-and-center, one at a time, and hearing them fully that we succeed in life. Unfortunately, we often spend our time rushing through our days, ignoring them, and worse yet, letting one voice overshadow all other voices, giving us a very narrow perspective on life.
Ok, so you might have some doubts about all this, wondering just what a voice is. Think of a voice in the same way that you say things like, “A part of me feels/thinks this____, and a part of me feels/thinks that.” As an example, a part of you might want to get your financial debt under control, another part says it’s way to hard, and another part say to hell with it, live for today! Now, we haven’t quite got to the voices yet, only things the voices are saying.
Who or what is behind these statements?
Using the example again, a voice behind the first statement could be your Planner voice - the part of you that is always focused on long-term success and well-being, and with any issue in life, this Planner will take that side and present its case. Sometimes, you’ll value its perspective and other times you won’t, but if you don’t acknowledge it, there’s a good chance it will eat at you consciously or unconsciously. The important point here is to understand that we all have voices that take certain positions relative to any issue we’re dealing with.
So, what happens when you don’t listen to your voices?
Someone suggested this to me recently about a problem I was wrestling with, “It’s like you have a board room filled with people yelling at each other, and no one’s getting heard.” I thought this was a perfect metaphor for the experience of having lots of voices (parts of ourselves) speaking, but not hearing them out individually. Hard to run a company that way, and equally hard to be the CEO of our lives. As a result, one of two things (usually) happen when we don’t listen to our voices:
1. You remain frozen, indecisive, and unable to take action.
2. You take action, but are not fully committed, doubting yourself.
You can only make strong decisions in your life when you have fully heard yourself out, when you’re not fighting yourself, when you have expressed everything on your mind and have come to terms with it all. This doesn’t mean that, after listening to your voices, they just go away, only that you are not held back by them. You might still worry about your debt, but if you have gone through this process, and feel that you’ve thought it through, you feel much more at ease about it all.
In the end, the only way you’ll know what I’m talking about is to actually give it a try, so let’s go over the process.
Let the Voices be Heard!
The first step to listening to your voices and integrating their perspectives is to give them the time to speak. The first time you try this, set aside at least an hour. Make sure you won’t be disturbed. If quietness helps you to reflect, make sure you have it. If music gets your juices flowing, kick on some tunes that help you relax. Now, the actual process can be done in a more extroverted or introverted way, depending on your personal preference. One way involves, speaking out loud and using a couple of chairs that you’ll move back and forth from. The other method, my personal choice, simply involves paper and pen - in other words, bust out a journal. Either way, the essential process is the same, so go with what feels most comfortable.
The second step is to bring up a problem or challenge you’ve recently been struggling with. It could be an opportunity you’re considering taking, like a new job, or dealing with a thorny problem, like debt. It’s important that you have the issue clearly in your mind before you start. Once you have it, begin speaking or writing whatever comes to mind. After a few minutes, take a step back and ask yourself, what voices are speaking here? Often, it might be only one voice, having spoke it’s mind fully. Sometimes, it’ll be a whole bunch, but try to differentiate the different perspectives your voices are bringing to the table.
Next, once you have a few voices identified, you’ll want to have them “speak” alternately, one at a time. If you’re using the chair method, you should get up and move chairs for each voice, speaking from a distinct and different voice when you move to a new chair. Two chairs is fine, even if you have five voices, just make sure you clearly distinguish them, but the more chairs the better. If you’re journaling, write as though you’re composing a play, writing each character and their lines.
An important thing to remember is to fully embody each voice as a distinct and separate voice. It’s easy to start combining voices and get confused. Keep in mind that there is no “set list” of voices, so be creative and name as many voices as you have and feel the need to distinctively identify. Of course, there are certainly some common voices that everyone seems to have - the protector, the parent, the child… - but we also all have our own unique voices that emerge in our lives.
Each time you do this, it will start very naturally and organically. There is no rigid, predictable method. Over time you will be aware of all of your most common voices that could have something to say about the issue at hand, but you won’t be able to necessarily predict any or all of them.
Each time you do this process will be like picking up a bread crumb trail, or like a bloodhound catching a scent - at first you have to find the trail (identify the issue), then follow each crumb (listen to all your voices) and more bread crumbs you follow, the closer you get to a realization/understanding, much like a bloodhound hones in on its target. There is also no predictable time it takes for this. Sometimes the process might take five minutes, other times it might take a handful of hour long sessions. The goal with this is to arrive at a point when you feel that you have expressed all the sides of an issue you’re internally taking, and can take action with confidence and a clear conscience.