Stop for a moment, I’m sure your mind is doing some talking!
Is this your wise inner voice? No!!! This is the mind. Useful, fundamental, only we humans have this ability, but it is only the mind.
Don’t waste time trying to be someone else, better to invest time in you and develop the best of who you really are no?
Knowing how to listen to our inner voice can be of great help in our journey towards authenticity.
Thinking is important, yes, but I don’t know if it happens to you to have a constant chatter
in your mind. A chatter made up of lists of things to do, of judgements about ourselves and others, of things said the day before that we might want to say in another way, of words heard that we didn’t like, that hurt…
I am sure your mind is doing some talking even now as you read this article. If we don’t train the mind’s ability to be silent, it will chatter.
The real problem is that we believe that chatter. We believe them to be true, we give them importance. They are only thoughts, but they condition us. Some of them are true and make us stronger and more secure, others are limiting, but we will talk about that later.
Back to the background chatter that prevents us from hearing our wisdom!
The reason why I always suggest a moment of body, creativity, sound, or even just a cup of tea at the beginning of the session is to let our mind know that it can take a break. It is important to communicate with kindness with our mind, otherwise it gets offended. The mind thinks it is the only voice, and being very ego friendly it finds it hard to step aside, but we try.
In those precious moments when the mind is quiet we can hear something else.
I use the word hear with caution, because we are not used to hearing ourselves, unfortunately we were not taught this at school… but we can train this skill now.
Did you listen to last week’s LISTEN! episode? Did you practice?
It’s about refining the ability to stay in touch with ourselves, being careful not to confuse the background chatter with something else.
I’ll tell you the truth, I was struggling to hear. I mainly listened to my mind, a very trained and creative mind, which always projected great films to me!
I was afraid to hear, and I was very conditioned by people who ‘heard’ transcendental things. So I understand if it’s weird for you to approach this word.
What is this other thing? What is it that we are supposed to feel?
Instead of explaining it to you I suggest an exercise.
Try telling your mind in a gentle way that for 1 minute you don’t need it, that it can rest. If you feel like playing, take your head and take it out of the room, symbolically.
For this minute listen to some music, and I invite you to move your body. I’m not asking you to dance if you don’t like it, but move your body, stamp your feet on the floor, jump, move! If you feel like doing it with me, here is the video of the PRESENT-ATION SKILLS course!
STOP!
Stop, there, where you are. Listen to your breathing, maybe it is accelerated. If you have moved a lot, maybe your heart is beating faster too, listen to it. Maybe you perceive some sensations, some spaces, some tensions… that’s the stuff we’re going to listen to, let’s try to pay attention.
It may seem silly to you, maybe a waste of time, but by learning to listen to the body and our sensations we can recover our intuition and our heart.
People who are complete, the ones who inspire us the most, the real ones, are made up of head, body and emotions.
Do you understand what I am talking about? The real people, the ones who inspire us, are complete, are in touch with their inner wisdom.
Inner wisdom is about you: it means that you know how to listen to yourself, you know how to understand what your body is telling you, you know how to treasure your feelings both towards yourself and towards others.
In the episode “Inner Wisdom” of our podcast you can listen to the story of Elisa, a very skilled designer who thought she was too shy to face meetings. From being too red and ashamed, to being able to speak clearly and effectively.
This story is just one example of how sometimes our mind makes up a dysfunctional story, and how only by getting to know ourselves better can we find the right way for us, the way that works!
Mind and thought are useful as well as gut and heart feelings. By heart I mean everything that has to do with emotions, the intimate, deep, true part of us.
Knowing how to listen to your inner voice is really useful and evolutionary. Are you curious to discover yours?
When silence is seemingly present, observe your thoughts, smile at that chatter. Ahhh the mind!!! Thank you, you are so helpful…you really did a lot for me today…now relax.
There are so many ways to give our minds a break, if you are short of ideas go to my instagram profile and you will find IGTV videos in the ME-TIME section.
When the mind is calm, inner wisdom finds space, and you can hear it.
See you next week with a little more authenticity!
