The next time you find yourself internally criticizing yourself, “I should be much further along in life by now,” “I should be much thinner,” and so on, stop for a minute and listen to that voice, that critical voice, the actual sound of it in your head. Whose voice is it?
Because if you listen carefully, you’ll notice that it’s not your own voice. I’m serious. Really listen to it. I noticed this years ago, when I was in one of my self-ravaging states of mind. Something made me stop and truly listen to the sound of those words I was hearing in my head, and I realized it wasn’t my own voice. I realized that I was listening to the combined sound of the voices of every person all through my life who’d been important to me, who maybe I had loved and trusted, and who had ended up harming me in some way. Someone who had belittled me, mocked me, or made me feel small and unworthy.
The voices of those demons stay with us —the tone, the inflections, the cadence— like a recording, and our reaction to that sound in our heads is the same as it was when we first heard them. We feel unloved, insignificant, and scared.
As soon as I’d figured this out, I learned to talk out loud to myself when I was having a day of doubts, so that my own true voice hit me with more force, stronger than that other voice. The more that voice taunts me, the louder I make my own voice.
Maybe you can try it, the next time you’re feeling bad about yourself. Talk out loud. Tell yourself, “I’m strong. I’m worthy. I can do this.” Go ahead. Tell that other voice to shut the hell up.
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