Upgrade: Your Inner Voice Matters

This morning, I was listening to Dr. Jim Loehr on a podcast talk about a few ideas I thought were just too good not to share. There are actually two ideas I'll pluck from it, so I'll share those first:

1. You have an inner voice you use when talking to yourself about you, and you have an outer voice or the one you say around other people. We all obviously pretty up our outer voice. Dr. Loehr's idea was simple: what if you spoke to yourself in ways that you would be okay for others to hear? How would that change the way you criticize yourself?
2. One very powerful way we can use journaling for growth is to write down and iterate on our self-reflecting story of our big intentions and goals and life direction. Meaning, if you write down what you see yourself as and what you intend to accomplish, and write it frequently and often, those revisions and reinforcements give you extra strength.

I see these as powerful upgrades, especially when you think about how you usually speak to yourself when you make a mistake or catch yourself not living up to your vision of yourself. We're downright mean to ourselves all the time, aren't we? We wouldn't accept someone in our lives that talk to us the way we talk to ourselves, would we?

I think Jim Loehr's method for dealing with that (acting as if we're going to broadcast our inner voice onto a billboard for others to see) is a great way of checking that behavior and maybe taking it a bit easy on ourselves.

Journaling is a Multi-Tool - Add This Capability

You can set up your journal however you want. Mine's a mix of things. Sometimes, it's what I did on a given day, including when my kids and I spend time or when I have a realization, or when I travel somewhere else. Other times, it's about gratitude (I do not have a daily gratitude process, but when I think about it, I'll jot down five). Still other times, I use journaling as a decision conversation: "I've got to talk to this person about their performance, but they've got some big fish to fry - maybe I can hold off til they get through this really tough spot."

If you think of your journal as a tool system, it works better for you. You don't have to be so rigid. You can just pick the tool you need. It's like a buffet: the goal of the buffet is not to eat one of everything. It's to eat the things you most want.

Let Me Show You My Own Example

So the upgrade is this: add a paragraph to your journaling practice wherein which you explain who you are and where you're headed. I'll share something you might find in my paper journal from time to time, slightly tweaked after absorbing this advice:

My great joy comes from showing others how self-expression leads to reflection that improves our own learning experience. I love to show people how my various ways of creating guide me towards insights and processing so that I can be clear and conscious of my path to the success I want for myself and for those who matter most in my life.

It sounds fluffy, but there are elements I want to call out:

• We work best when we operate around our joy. Think about how time drags when you work on crappy stuff and how it flies when you work on things you love.
• Self-expression leads to reflection: this is why I do photography and videos and writing (like this letter I'm writing to you). I use this as a tool for myself, and I model this because I think some of you might benefit from it as well.
• I'm not the easiest learner. I mostly learn by trying/failing/reflecting/trying. If I didn't have that "reflecting" part of the cycle, it would take me even longer to learn.
• I call out why I'm doing this: for myself and for the people who matter most in my life. That's my purpose. I don't want future generations to thrive from my efforts. I just want to navigate my time on this planet such that it also helps others. I want to carry more than my own weight.

A DNA-Like Transfer of Information

Want to hear something potentially chilling? The words you say to your kids externally are the words they'll drag to their own consciousness internally as they grow up. Meaning, it's possible that the negative inner voices in our heads all come from what our parents and those who raised us told us.

Dr. Loehr said that once he learn about this possible truth, it changed everything. You might tell your kids "You'll never amount to anything if you keep playing video games all day long," and guess which part sticks hardest in their heads forever after? Instead, maybe you say, "I know you have a lot of goals for yourself. I worry that the time you're devoting to gaming takes away from the time you might want to devote to those things you've said mean the most to you." (Or some such.)

My parents were the best in the world. They were loving and caring and filled me with positive reinforcements. I'm pretty sure they never said something as harsh as "you'll never amount to anything if ___," but are there parts of their voices they used when they were most worried about me that probably stuck somewhere in my head? Sure.

Are there things my TEACHERS said to me that stuck in my head? Oh helllllllll yes. You too, right? The least appropriately paid professional with some of the most impact on our upbringing and our inner voices. Yikes!

Our Most Heard Voice

Think about it: our inner voice is our most heard voice. Whatever someone tells us is what we hear at that moment, but think about how many hours a day you spend talking to yourself in your head. Uh oh.

Related to this, Dr Loehr had another piece of advice: once you get a really decent paragraph of a positive version of what you want to say to yourself to remind you of your goals and intentions, open up the voice recorder on your phone and record that paragraph in your own voice. Then, play it back frequently.

Make yourself the coach. No external voice. You. And trust your own words.

The effect is that at least when you set out that very specific intention in that audio recording, that most-heard-inner-voice is saying something positive and worthwhile to you.

I have one thing to add from me, something I've been doing with my inner voice. In the old days, if I got all the way downstairs to my car and forgot my car keys in my other jacket, I'd say things like "You big stupid idiot" to myself. (Don't flinch. You say the same and worse.)

Now, I've replaced that. I just say "Chris Brogan!" I say it with varying degrees of intensity. If I'm really mad, I might even shake my head. But the result is hilarious: I laugh at myself. It's like I turned my own name into a cuss word, but for comedic intent.

"Oh, Chris Brogan, you're smart and capable!" But I say it in a somewhat angry voice.

I stole the "somewhat angry voice" part from John Cena's reverse trash talking.

Steal that, at least.

Chris...