Who is living in your head?

I am trying to go to sleep, I am thinking about all the work I need to do. I am thinking about my family and all the risk. I am thinking about the impact I may have. I am thinking about what I want to do. I am thinking about what I wanted to do. How did I get here? Thoughts go on and on.

“BUT WAIT THERES MORE, you too for the low low price of RENT FREE can park yourself into a spot right near number 1 me and number 2 me and annoy the hell out of me at no cost to you”!

(This is where we will land in a moment or about 3.5 minutes of reading later.)

Oh yes, there is the conversation that I am having with myself. I’d really like me to leave me alone but as Dave Mustaine says in the song “Sweating Bullets“

Hello me, it’s me again
You can subdue, but never tame me
It gives me a migraine headache, sinking down to your level
Yeah, just keep on thinking it’s my fault – I think Dave wrote it but credit to Dave and whomever was inside him.

Yes Dave, I too have my own voice inside my head. When I was a child, I realized it was there and couldn’t understand it. 

Thank goodness for Tom and Jerry! When Tom looked up and had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, it taught me or led me to believe this was normal.

Over the years, we have seen this same depiction rendered in many places, cartoons, and other stories. The voice inside your head has been written about by many people. Most recently, Mo Gawdat seeks to tackle this in a few of his books.  If you are unfamiliar with him, take a look at the video below. If you know about him.. just skip down to the next section!

In the field of science, they call this verbal hallucinations. Some studies show that if a person tries to actually reproduce what a voice would say in their heads, it does not physically manifest in the same way in the brain as if, the verbal hallucination manifested itself. This means, the voice inside your head is not the you that you think it is. It MAY not really be YOU. Why? Because you are observing and interacting with it. Mo speaks to it much better than I do but science supports this idea that you are a “decider” and an “observer” of you and other things of course. The voice in your head is something that is NOT the you who observes and decides but can obviously have an impact if you allow it.

So, what does this mean? https://hearingthevoice.org/ <– here is some science about it.

The Most Powerful Thing

It is Sunday morning, time to write, I write for me, I write for you and I write for the other me and the other you’s. Oiy, how many of us are there? The most powerful thing I read and heard in my own voice inside my head was “the voice inside my head is NOT me.” 

A few other points here and I am moving on to the next part. Yes, there are some ideas we can develop here and talk about when it comes to mental conditions, religion, science etc. I am fairly confident if you are reading this, your inner voice is telling you that Howie is boring the hell out of you and move on. :)

If the “most powerful thing” about your inner voice(s) are that it or they are not you, then you can start to feel relief about it and find ways to manage it. This does not directly address the space that others made in your head and are taking up “rent free.” Let us address this ..

Quick scenario, you are working with a real special person. You know, a complete and utter ASSHOLE that is doing everything they can to sabotage something you are working on. There are few basic things we can work out here.

1. That person has no idea they are impacting you in a negative way. Let us call them (the ant stomper)
2. That person has some idea but doesn’t care and since they have their own agenda, you are nothing to them but a flee / gnat. (gnatman) <– you like that? Also, they can be a she.. like Captain Marvel!
3. The person has a very good idea and does what they can to make things very difficult for you on purpose. (asshole) or as my friend Scott B likes to say (Douche Canoe) – if this offends you, it wasn’t me, it was the other me and I’ll have a conversation with him later about his language. 

It is challenging enough to manage your own voice situation and now you have these other folks taking up space there. Well, fear not! I think ..

The people who are motivated to do the thing(s) for themselves have their own inner voices. They have their stuff they are working out. Some of them are bad people. It is true. If there weren’t bad people in the world, we wouldn’t need locks on our doors. Bad people can be anywhere. Bad people may believe they are NOT bad. The villain is the hero of their own story.

If a person does a bad thing with good intention, does it make them a good person? For the sake of this conversation, the only person who can judge what is perceptually good or bad relative to you, is YOU. 

For the sake of brevity and to open the floor to questions and discussion, lets say that we focus on only on you.

If someone does something at home, in life, or at work that now has you “spinning,” they have created space in your head. They have given the voice some opportunity to throw shade in your direction. Think about the same thing over and again, may put you in a loop. The only way out of a loop is to make it STOP being a loop. What if it isn’t a loop? What if it is a constant barrage of new things that continue to add up?

Something to keep in mind here is that WE don’t have any idea of what is going on in someone else’s life. We don’t know what is troubling them or bothers them or holds them hostage mentally. Sometimes, when someone is putting you through a nightmare whether they know what they are doing or not, doesn’t matter because they themselves are going through shit. Think about it this way, it is like second hand smoke. They do what they want to do for themselves. You get annoyed and upset, they have the ability to do what they want and they take up space in your head while you try to figure out what the heck to do.

What if that doesn’t work?

Who is the bad guy? The developer or the person who wanted to be left alone and keep their property?

I wonder how many nights all the people involved in these situations thought about each other “rent free!!!!” :)

If you read books on leadership, you’ll see a lot of knowledge information about this in different formats. How can I persuade? Can I influence? How can I convince? How can I motivate? Do I need to be charismatic? Why that works, why it does NOT work. All that is good for YOU. 

This means, you figured something out in your head with your voice. It doesn’t mean the voices that are “you” representing other people know what you’ve learned. It doesn’t mean the people themselves know what you’ve learned. 

It is your perspective and your knowledge. 

The only person you can do something about is you. <–

Can you influence?

Can you be persuasive?

–>Yes, you can. However, it always starts in the same place. You. <–

OK, you already know this, so what is the moment of Ephinay?

Evict everyone that does not belong in your head. Tell them they are not welcome there and ask them to leave. If they don’t leave, call the internal head police and get them out. If they are “mind squatters” use the same techniques to manage them as you now are looking to manage your own inner voice. 

The thinking and manifestation of these other people is actually “you” trying to work them out through you. It has no material impact on them. 

They are going to do what they do regardless of what you and your inner voice think. 

Can you think through scenarios based on what you know about them? Sure. 

Does that mean it will go the way you think it will?

No. You literally have no idea what is going on in their world and in their heads.

The thing to do now is realize that the space they are taking up is your space, it is your place and they are not taking it up. You are filling it with an imaginery version of them. You are causing yourself pain and you are causing yourself issue. *aha*

Of course, you need to think things through and think about how others will feel. Empathy is a good thing. Understanding is a good thing, sympathy is a good thing but filling your head with your version of people who do bad things even if they have good intent, is destructive to you and they do not belong there. 

In fact, if you make decisions based on what you think about what a person thinks or feels, you may very well become the bad guy.

Summary:

• Your inner voice is not you as you are the observer. 
• The people taking up space in your head are really you making up the versions of them. Which is still you managing you.
• The people themselves are dealing with their own versions of themselves and some version(s) of you they made up.
• Bad and good are always relative to perspective (your perspective).

For me and my inner voice, learning and thinking about things this way is helping with anxiety, depression and anger. While I am angry and irritated at people when they are assholes, I am less likely to think about them after they are assholes and manifest new versions or scenarios of them being an asshole. 

Try it out! Maybe, it can work for you and you and you and you!

As always .. with love .. Howie and crew of Howie’s.