“If you want to speak with the voice of your soul, you have to quiet the voices in your head.” – Me
I was talking to some friends after the Sacramento Speakers Network meeting tonight (the greatest networking group ever!), and I heard the phrase above come out of my mouth. I was stunned. It was a big “A-ha!” moment for me. I’ve been trying to figure out how to succinctly describe what a Blog Whisperer does, and suddenly there it was: what I’ve learned to do, and what I’m enjoying helping other people to do, is to quiet the voices in their heads; when they learn to do that, they can start to find and speak with their true voices.
I know from my own experience how debilitating those voices can be. Have a look at some of the early posts on this blog; they sound like they were written by a robot, and, in some respects, they were. The stuff I wrote was aimed at…no one in particular. I was writing to appeal to as wide an audience as I could manage, and no one cared.
And yet, I was convinced it was the correct way to write. Don’t offend, don’t alienate, don’t polarize…those were my mantras. When I finally started to quiet my mind, though, I started to hear a different voice. The new voice was vaguely familiar, but it had been a long time since I’d heard it.
As I listened to the new voice, what I heard was the truth, my truth. When I took the next step and started to speak with that voice, something incredible happened: readers started to show up in larger numbers and, more importantly, they started to engage in conversations.
I don’t claim to have this all figured out; I’m still getting the hang of it. Just when I think I’ve got it figured out, the old voices start to clamor for attention. They can be hard to ignore, it’s true, but it gets easier every day.
So here’s the question: what are the voices in your head saying that keeps you from speaking with the voice of your soul?
The loudest voice in my head has always yelled who are you to blah blah blah? so I kept my mouth shut and figured the crowd must be right. Took me decades to realise that the crowd was actually a flock of sheep.
The voices still shout at me, but when I realise they’re shouting lies, they begin to fade. The lies I overturned earlies seem to have left me in peace, so I’m hopeful that the other voices will eventually fade as well.
Joel D Canfield recently posted..Vancouver Review- Dates & Duration
Yeah…I can only hope to wake up one day with a peaceful quiet between my ears. Won’t that be nice!
Boy don’t I know ALL about this voice!!! The one that says you have to be this or you shouldn’t be that. To me the best part of getting older is learning to ignore this voice! In the book Getting Unstuck, this voice is referred to as “the accuser”.
“The Accuser” is certainly an appropriate name for it! I think whether it gets quiet or not depends less on age and more on awareness. I do wonder, though, whether ignoring it will ultimately be the best route, though that’s exactly what I’m doing for now, too. I think at some point, though, we’re going to have to tune in again and try to figure out what it’s trying to protect us from…otherwise, it’ll probably never stop!
[...] not saying you need to be crass or crude; what I am saying is that you have to quiet the voice in your head so that you can hear that voice in your heart and let it speak. Only then will you be able to find your blog’s best [...]
it is better to hear the voice of our heart than our mind…
So true! Thanks for your comment!