WE PAY A LOT OF ATTENTION TO WHAT WE SPEAK
We pay a lot of attention to what we speak, and how we speak, and very little to how we listen.
When we are in conversations with others we think that we and they are a blank slate that are simply ready to receive any communication from us fully…
Nothing is further from the truth! While a conversation is going on in the foreground, i.e., what is actually being said out loud between people, we are engaged in an on-going conversation with ourselves in the background. In the background, there is always speaking with and to ourselves.
The speaking is constant and, at times, very loud, commenting on everything.
This "conversation with ourselves" is automatic and unstoppable. We don't have it, "it has us".
THE GOOD NEWS...
If we start paying attention to our background conversations when we are on our own we will begin to discover an enormous amount of very useful stuff about ourselves. Stuff that we can build on, and stuff we can delete, just like we update our data files...yes, keep this, and scrap that...all so as to get more of what we want for ourselves out of life.
We will hear all the obvious stuff, by that I mean the stuff we already know about ourselves: our likes and dislikes, our opinions, our beliefs, our fears, our biases, and also what makes us happy, gives us joy, and gives us a sense of meaning.
WHAT WE WILL ALSO HEAR...
What we will also hear are a lot of conversations, and fragments of conversations, that are simply not true, and need to be corrected, or even eliminated.
Designing the life you really want starts with amplifying and editing our background conversations.
Many of the conversations we have with ourselves are simply not true. We told ourselves something, or more often, someone else told us something, which we believed and it is shaping us. Here are some typical examples:
- I'm not good enough...I am always falling short, screwing up, making mistakes
- I'll never get what I want, so what's the point of hoping and trying
- I am just not very good at...[fill in the blank]
DO AN INVENTORY OF YOUR BACKGROUND CONVERSATION
The deal then is is build on the conversations that serve you...they forward what you want to accomplish...your vision for yourself. And, eliminate the ones that don't serve you. The ones that don't make you happy, or even make you sad or depressed.
In subsequent posts we'll explore how to edit and rescript your background conversations. Your first job is to observe them and make notes...then we'll get to action editing, amplifying and re-scripting.