Saturday, June 7, 2014

Self-Image Help: Build Awareness of Your Inner Voice

Have you noticed the dialogue that is constantly going on inside your mind? You’ll notice that it never shuts up. Is it you that is doing the talking? Who is doing the listening?
The most important thing to understand is you are not the voice that is talking in your mind even though you are the one who hears it. 
You can step back from your voice and listen to the conversation. The conversation you hear is like two roommates evaluating your life for you. The good news is you can separate yourself from your mind’s chatter at any time.
A great book named the Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer explains the various styles of conversation your roommates will carry on and how this senseless chatter limits your life.
First you must understand your voice will give you a play by play account of what your senses are taking in from the world around you. When you see, hear, smell, or touch something, your roommates verbalize it mentally for you; they judge it and label it so you have a direct experience from the outside world to your thoughts. 
Your mind will then catalog it and integrate the experience to become part of your “model self” – your identity, fears, insecurities, value system, beliefs and so forth. 
The important thing to understand is your roommates are giving you a personalized interpretation of the world based upon your “model self,” which you have built out of your thoughts since birth. 
Your roommates interpretation is filtered through your model, it is not reality; it is not an unfiltered experience of the real world. Your minds chatter does this to give you some control of the world around you; it makes you feel safe and comfortable.
The second role your roommates will play for you is – safety and protection. Since birth, you have re-created your own world inside yourself out of your thoughts; this is the world you live in. Your “model world” inside your mind has walls to protect you from your fears and insecurities. Everyone of us has insecurities that affect a part of our life, but some of us have more life altering insecurities than others. 
Whenever an uncomfortable event or another person’s upsetting  actions or words touches our outer walls, our roommates will start talking as a protection mechanism. You will use the chatter in your mind to protect yourself from your fears rather than living that part of your life. Your mind is talking to help you cope with your fears; it gives you a sense of comfort and control. But at the same time it is also stopping you from living life’s fullest experiences.
Third, notice all of the turbulence your roommates create inside your mind whenever an event or person disturb the outer walls of your “model self.”  Any life event or persons actions that disturb your personalized reality of how you think the world should run, sets of a round of negative chatter by your roommates. You may use this chatter to turn your mood negative, react with anger, or turn your self-talk against yourself- demeaning your own worth.
Once you can learn how to sit back and separate your “self” from the chatter in your mind, you will see that it has little to do with reality. You must be able to objectively watch how your inner chatter, feelings, and emotions react to a problem rather than getting lost inside of them; you can never solve a problem when you are expending negative energy on the inside. 
You cannot fix your problems by rearranging the outside world; you can only fix the problem when you come to understand that all of the chatter in your mind is the cause of your problems; it is not life and it is not you.  You will never be free until you are able to separate your “self” from the melodrama that is taking place in your mind.
Fourth, work at expanding your awareness; sit back and listen to your roommates chatter and observe the effect on your feelings and emotions. Would you really let another person talk to you the way your roommates talk to you? Listen to the neurotic, conflicting communications going on in your mind. 
Notice how combative they are, how disagreeable they are on so many subjects, how often they change their mind, how emotionally over reactive they tend to be. If your roommates were actual people you knew, would you ever listen to them for advice? So why do you listen to them when they cause so much trouble for you?
The good news is you can free yourself from the negative chatter in your mind at any time. You can walk through your walls of protection, overcome your fears, and live all of life’s experiences on the other side of your walls with joy. You can face disturbing events with positivity. 
You can build yourself up rather than tear yourself down. You are in control of your minds chatter. Your will is stronger than your habit of listening to your destructive roommates. You can change your life with positive, constructive self-talk. It is simply a choice to free yourself from yourself.
In Summary, start becoming more aware of about what your roommates are talking. Notice how the conversation in your mind is negatively affecting your emotions, feelings, mood, motivation, and thoughts about your own worth. 

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