Quiet (More)
People that have children might know that at a certain age, when kids play, they start re-enacting conversations they’ve hard from adults’ conversations, books, or cartoons they watched, by “talking to themselves” aloud. That’s actually an introduction to a later development of an internal voice that most of us have. It’s something that most of us deem as a normal state of being - having a narrator that comments, projects, predicts and in the end, defines how we feel or think about something.
Is self-talk the natural state of being?
Our internal voices re-affirm the narratives created by habitual ways of thinking, and are the basis of our belief on who we are as individuals. Since we’re prone to react to negativity more, our internal companion is usually very judgmental and protective of its narratives. In reality, the internal voice is just a collage of actions that our brain knows have a strong probability to keep us engaged. The actions themselves are recycled and repurposed from interpretations of early events in our lives - for instance, the way our parents and peers talked to us and how we felt we were treated.
Self-talk takes away the experience out of life by uplifting the image and importance of “self”. Taking away its power, meaning and truth creates an unbelievable freedom to live more. When we listen less to our brain talk, we hear more.