Change your internal dialogue: what do you whisper to yourself?

“It’s not what you pay lip service to that determines your life, it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!” 🇧🇷Robert Kiyosaki)

Hello friends!

I never forget a professor of psychoanalysis who said in college: “you can’t take a vacation from yourself”. This phrase is fantastic because it makes us reflect on many, many questions. It doesn’t just mean that a stressed-out person who goes on vacation will most likely remain stressed. It also reminds us that wherever a person goes, they will be… which is obvious…but it means that you can change countries, or jobs, or boyfriends, your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, ideas will continue – unless you change it.

That’s why we so often see that changing jobs or businesses, moving to another city, ending a relationship and starting another one doesn’t make much difference in someone’s state of happiness in the long run.

I once read that if a guy wins the lottery or loses a leg in an accident, he will have six euphoric months (if it’s the lottery) or six terrible months (if it’s the accident). However, the tendency is that after six months the emotional level returns to the way it was before.

In today’s text, I would like to comment with you on a specific aspect of this interaction between us and ourselves, this curious fact that we cannot leave who we are… which is the constant and almost uninterrupted internal dialogue.

The incessant internal dialogue

It is very common to confuse thought with essence. That is, the way a person thinks, slowly and progressively, builds the way he sees himself, perceives himself, hears himself.

For example, imagine someone who thinks that Brazil is a third world country, backward, retrograde. Living in Brazil, the entire environment in which you live will also be felt as a delay in life. This is a thought that is directed towards what is outside (Brazil, the state, the city) and it is interesting to observe how a thought will determine the type of emotion and feeling.

But even more impactful is the way the person sees himself. And this mode of self-perception is also represented in the way this person treats himself, whether he treats himself poorly or whether he treats himself well. And one of the ways in which we can perceive this way is from the internal dialogue, a conversation that normally does not stop. Of course, we will not be able to hear this dialogue unless the person in question says what he is thinking.

With the knowledge of psychology, psychoanalysis and NLP we find certain patterns. And, in general, we divide it into negative and positive attitudes.

What have you been saying to yourself?

Do you have pleasant or unpleasant internal dialogue? What do you listen? What does the voice “in your head” sound like?

(It’s funny how hearing a voice inside yourself is considered normal, as long as you recognize it’s a thought, and hearing an external voice, thought projection, is described as a psychotic break, a hallucination).

For example, when starting to learn something new… what do you listen to? Is it something like “go on, you can do it” or “it’s no use trying, I’m too stupid, I won’t make it?”

Inner voice analysis

And you can go deeper into the analysis:

– Is the voice low or high?

– Is it severe or is it acute?

– Is it similar to the way you talk? Or is it similar to someone else’s voice?

– Is the voice critical? Or is it motivating?

– Does the voice make you feel good? Or does it bring you down?

– Is the voice, which is your inner thought, like someone else or is it you? I mean, does it sound like the voice of your conscience, or superior being – whatever name you want to call it – or is it you? In other words, when dealing with the inner voice, does it feel like a dialogue with a part of you, or does it feel more like a monologue?

Diálogo: “Am I going to have lunch early today?” (voice that appears) – “But why are you having lunch earlier?”

Monologue: “Today I’m going to pick up my daughter from school. Are we going to leave school and go to the bank quickly and then are we going to go back home (voice that appears) or should I leave it to go to the bank tomorrow?”

Conclusion

If we calmly analyze everything related to this internal voice, this internal dialogue, and taking into account that we cannot get out of ourselves even for a few hours, we will see that Robert Kiyosaki’s phrase is very correct:

“It’s not what you pay lip service to that determines your life, it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!”

And we might add: it’s not what you hear from other people or what you read that determines your life either. After all, you can listen to a very important message from a wiser person and just not care. And let it go. However, if you absorb the message and include it as a part of your thinking, the message lives on and continues to influence you (for the better, hopefully).

What Kiyosaki says makes sense because you can say it loud and clear:

“Today I will start my regimen”.

And, internally, in the famous internal dialogue, the voice that arises says: “maybe tomorrow. Not today”. There is an annulment of what has been stated aloud, therefore.

If we stop to think, we will see that a good part of psychotherapy consists of putting these thoughts, these dialogues and monologues that are inside us outside, so that we can observe them and modify them, instead of confusing the thought itself with who it is. if it is.

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