Do you have a voice in your head telling you stuff?
Is the stuff it tells you always helpful?
If you answered yes to the first question and no to the second question then read on.
This phenomenon has one or two descriptions, the voice in your head, your inner critic, as my colleague Debbie calls it, ‘The Crow’, The Gremlin (and others). This last description is used by Rick Carson in his book Taming Your Gremlin.
Rick talks about, that we are not our beliefs, we are not our thoughts.
Actually as this picture implies, perhaps our thoughts are not facts, just maybe, they are not actual facts.
How can that be?
Because they are internal representations of ‘facts’, that we each create and build, from what we perceive of reality, through our ‘lenses’, our(beliefs).
Yet we treat them and sometimes defend them as if they are!
This all means of course when we hear that voice, that Gremlin, telling us stuff, we believe her/him/it! Then we act upon what is said, quite often to our own or other’s detriment.
What to do?
Have a look at Rick’s video
Rick talks about the life force within you and how the ‘Gremlin’ interferes with your experience.
I like these:-
- You do not live life, life lives you.
- Life is the dancer, you are the dance, what kind of dance are you?
Let’s use a technique here to get at who’s in charge:-
Think of a ‘recent conversation’ with your Gremlin, have it run in your head, you don’t need to say anything out loud. As you run it, do these things:-
- Locate the voice, where specifically is it? At the back of your head? To one side? Above? Etc?
- Who’s voice is it? Your mother’s? Your father’s? Your brother’s / sister’s? Yours? A voice from a scary movie? Someone else’s, No idea?
- Repeat the conversation once more, as it normally runs.
- Now run again, this time make the voice very, very quiet, a tiny whisper
- Again, this time,turn the volume way up, it is screaming very, very, loud, Rock Concert Amp LOUD!
- This time, normal volume, but it is speaking very slowly, veeerryy slloowwlly.
- Now, same conversation, speed it up, very, very, fast, Mickey Mouse fast,
- Then answer this question. Who is in charge, You or the voice?
From my Twitter tag line:- If you permit your thoughts to have control, guess what? You lost control!. Ask, what are my thoughts about this? Observe them, don’t be carried away by them.
- What have you learned about yourself in reading this BLOG entry?
- How will you now begin to be, in relationship to that inner Gremlin?
- How will you now be learning to deal with the dialogues?