The Devil Inside
Recall that Will Smith x Chris Rock incident?
An undeniable voice grew louder inside and Smith couldn’t ignore it now, could he? Often this inner voice is reflected in your neural pathways that tell your brain how to think, feel, and react. Sometimes it leads to over-ruminating, doubt, or resentment. In a heartbeat, the voices can sabotage your relationship with yourself and others.
While your inner judge will never fully disappear there are ways to become adept at controlling (or even banishing) these narratives inside. But how do you break the thought loop and short-circuit any further negative self-talk? The short answer is thinking about thinking.
Inner Dialogue
There’s a neurological purpose for our inner dialogue.
It helps us use language to silently reflect on our daily experiences. It affords us a verbal working memory system. It gives us the ability to dream and plan. It spurs us on when we can't quite find the motivation. And ultimately, it lets us be the author of our lives as meaning-making beings.
Metacognition — your ability to regulate your thinking — can be stretched and developed. When you’re in a mental loop, what’s going on is that your prefrontal cortex is inhibited. It’s blocking you from stopping your negative thinking, curbing your emotions, and taking a more flexible viewpoint.
To short-circuit unproductive thinking and see things with a wider-angled lens it’s helpful to take a step back (metaphorically not literally) and get some distance. Close your eyes and imagine you’ve stepped outside of your body. Now look at yourself from an aerial view way up in the sky.
From this vantage point, you can try the following:
Tune
Become hyper-aware of your inner devil. Your job is to shine a light on negative self-talk as this is the first strategy in managing it. Take the Sabateour test below to discern what tone your inner judge prefers and what self-defeating tendencies you have. From here you can build your own user manual — where you can manage your chatter.
Track
Next is to monitor your automatic patterns when these voices are present. Do you dwell? Distract yourself? Self-soothe? Emotionally react? Simply recognizing the context and circumstances when they arise means that you can befriend your inner voice and harness it to your advantage. Treat this as a fun research project and just notice what’s going on when these voices are competing for real estate in your brain.
Test
Ask yourself this simple question: How do I want to be? It’s here that your ultimate freedom resides. As a byproduct of this inquiry, ‘The Pause’ can help you rewire your behavior and actions.
Time
When you distance yourself from yourself (sounds a bit like Austin Powers I know), it can make a world of difference in gaining perspective.
Temporal distancing means telling yourself a different story even if it’s not yet true. Talk to yourself in the first person — by name if it’s not too cringe for you. How are you going to feel a week from now? A month from now? If it serves you to look further into the horizon in years go for it, or perhaps even when you’re six feet under.
By no means are these steps meant to be prescriptive nor do they necessarily occur linearly — they’re merely an invitation of where to begin. Repatterning your thinking and creating new tracks in your mind is an ever-evolving practice.
I’m sure if we asked Will he would surely say the same.
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(In) Practice
The setup: Alan is a loving husband, father of two little girls, a corporate leader, and finishing his MBA part-time. And boy does he love structure! Every minute of every day is accounted for with absolute precision. His biggest saboteur is the People Pleaser with two 2 x capital Ps. This once unconscious mode of being — could be traced back to a young age when he cared for his grandma. Now in his early forties, it’s the first time he’s contemplating putting himself first.
The turnaround: Becoming attuned to the orchestra being conducted in his head, Alan could see how to change his ways. And more to the point, he was ready to make this shift. It took time and perseverance but one night he was truly tested. His wife was out of town and it was bedtime for the girls. They were being uncooperative — starting to hit each other with pillows. Alan knew that getting them riled up would not only make it difficult for them to sleep but would throw his mechanical routine all out of whack. And this would be irresponsible of him. Yet it was in this moment, where he chose differently — tending to what he wanted.
Peering into his girl’s wide eyes, he grabbed the biggest pillow and Whack! He officially commenced the most epic pillow fight of his life. Eventually, everyone got to sleep and the next morning Alan awoke with a wide smile spread across his face.
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Go Deeper
Assessment: Discover your Saboteurs
Substack: The Ministry of Presence