For Leaders, Your Inner Voice is a Superpower...until it isn't. Here are four ways to shift it.
As a leader, it's natural to think of strategies to tackle current issues or prepare for future ones - that’s the job. But if you find yourself constantly thinking about your company’s challenges, if your thoughts spiral out of control (or inwards), work can take over your life and have a negative impact on your relationships, your health and eventually, your company.
How you manage your inner talk is as important as how you manage your leadership team or how you recruit investors, advisors and board members.
There is no silver bullet, but there are simple tools you can apply on your own and ways to seek out the right kind of help to get you moving.
Who sits on your inner board of directors?
The idea of having a host of voices in your head isn’t particularly flattering. It can conjure images of a Hollywood-type of schizophrenia. Yet, it’s a fact: each of us has a crowd between our ears. Some of the voices in our heads cheer us on; others put us down. Some whisper to us as we try to fall asleep.
It’s easy to overlook our internal conversation in the bustle of life’s duties. Our culture’s outward focus can keep us from taking time to look inward, and it’s a shame since our inner conversation is the foundation for all of the other conversations we engage in. And shifting our inner chatter can deliver a tremendous ROI. (that's why I included a whole chapter about inner speech in my book Good Talk, about how to design conversations that matter)
What Inner Speech can help with
Being able to reflect silently, to talk to and with ourselves can help us:
++ Make sense of experiences (like when we journal)
++ Remember things, like repeating your grocery list as you walk through the supermarket (don't forget the eggs!)
++ Visualize, simulate and plan for the future (like when we daydream or strategize)
++ Control yourself (like saying "Don't go there!" to yourself as you walk into a conflict)
When we take time to listen to and engage with the voices in our heads, we can begin to identify patterns and themes. We can become aware of how our inner dialogue either supports or undermines our success. We can start to distinguish the helpful from the unhelpful and make changes accordingly.
We can learn how to talk back to ourselves more kindly, offering ourselves words of encouragement and perspective when life gets tough. We can also recognize when certain thought patterns are leading us down a destructive path, and choose different paths instead.
By becoming conscious of our inner conversation, we gain a powerful tool for self-improvement and self-empowerment. It's like gaining a superpower! In fact, inner speech is much, much faster than outer speech, or writing. We can write at 40 words per minute, speak outwardly at 150 words per minute, but some research has clocked inner speech at 4000 words per minute!
Harnessing that power is incredible.
But sometimes this superpower can turn on itself. Dr. Ethan Koss, in his book Chatter, points out that inner speech can become chatter: a circular, repeating, enervating inner grind.
When Inner Speech runs off the rails
When our inner speech gets out of control, Dr. Koss suggests that:
++ It can make it hard to perform in the moment, because we're stuck anxiously ruminating on the past or projecting into the future.
++ We can burn out our friends and partners by continuously sharing the same challenges with them over and over again.
++ We can burn ourselves out. Overactive inner speech can affect our sleep, which is essential to a healthy life. Extended stress is similarly toxic.
Four approaches to Managing Inner Chatter On your own
In order to combat hyper-active chatter, Dr. Koss suggests three key types of approaches: Those you can do with yourself, those you can apply with others, and things you can do in your physical space. Here are four approaches you use on your own, either in your head or in your space.
Talk to yourself by your first Name
Use Temporal Distancing
Change your Space
Slow down and Get into your body
1. Talk to yourself by Name
Use your name when you talk to yourself. It can make your inner voice kinder and more friendly, instantly. It automatically shifts your perspective into a "coaching" mode...we're great at solving challenges for others, so, when we talk to ourselves in the second person, we leverage this linguistic machinery for our own benefit.
2. Use Temporal Distancing
Inner speech, when it gets stuck, is usually stuck in the past or in the near future. Shifting your temporal frame gets you unstuck.
Ask yourself: "How will you feel about this in six months or a year? How do you want to feel about this in five years?"
3. Change your Space
The easiest way to change conversations is to change the space or place the conversation happens in...that's why the "interface" for a conversation is at the center of my Conversation OS Canvas. You can change the space or interface of your conversations by journalling, recording yourself talking out loud in your house or more powerfully…while going for a walk.
Dr. Koss also suggests that you can "order your surroundings to order your mind"...ie, tidy up your desk or your house when you're caught in anxious chatter!
4. Slow down and Get into your body
We all have voices in our heads. But it’s important to remember that they are just that: voices. In our heads.
Powerful action comes from our whole selves - our heads, our hearts and our guts. So, listen to the voices in your head, but also take time to slow down and listen to your heart and your body. These parts of you have real voices, too. And a Real Voice can change your life, and help you make sense of the world.
But we can’t hear these other voices until we can get quiet and take a step back. We need space to tune in and listen to our whole selves, our whole voices. Being in silence, mindfully connecting to your whole self, is always time well spent.
The best way to shift your thinking: Talk to someone who expands your thinking frame
When you’re stuck in an inner chatter rut, it can be hard to break out of it, even with the tools above. Your inner speech becomes a monologue. That’s when you need to find a trusted conversation partner to turn your monologue into a dialogue.
It can be tempting to go to someone who will let you unburden yourself and hear you out. It can be tempting to choose people in your life to talk with who will just listen. And you should! Finding someone who will deeply listen is incredibly impactful.
Whether you seek out a friend, family member, therapist, coach or advisor, it’s essential to have deeper dialogues with people who will challenge you and expand your frame of thinking.
To get out of your rut, pick someone who can leverage the mindsets of coaching, mentoring and advising - not just listening to you, but pushing back on your thinking. They should ask you deeper and deeper questions that pull you into thinking differently. When you start to look at the challenge in a new way, you will start to break out of your inner chatter and start to create something new. If a coach sounds like the right approach for you, you can learn more about my coaching philosophy here.
Note: If your inner speech is particularly dark or repetitive and the four approaches you can try on your own, above, are having no impact at all, talking to friends and family isn’t making a difference, and a coach isn’t making a dent in the situation, you might need a therapist or medication.
An inner speech checklist
Recognize when your inner speech is turning into chatter.
Take a break and do something else. Take a walk, tidy up...shift your space!
Learn how to practice mindfulness and meditation in order to be present in the moment and not ruminate on the past or worry about the future. Get into your body and out of your head
Develop healthier thought patterns by challenging negative thoughts with positive ones. Consider the worst case AND the best case scenarios!
Work on developing self-compassion and self-forgiveness for when you slip up or make mistakes. This is a “Sporting” mindset: you win some, you lose some, and you keep playing.
If the chatter persists, talk to someone who can help you find perspective or look at the situation in an alternate light.
Engage in activities that bring you joy and help you relax so that your inner speech can take a break from ruminating on stressful topics.
Take the next step
Which of these strategies resonated the most with you? Which are you going to try out?!
Let me know!
Did I miss a strategy that you find works really well for you?
Let me know!