Who's line is it anyway?

Did I just say that out loud?

Have you ever had to ask this question of someone you were talking to? Most people have had this experience at least once in their lives. Previously I have written about the representations we use in our minds that are the summation of our experiences and memories. But just as important as these representations is how we talk to our selves inside our minds that is called internal dialog. Our internal dialog is simply the thoughts that naturally occur in ones mind from moment to moment. For example, do you feel smart, or ignorant on a consistent basis? Is what you’re wearing comfortable? Or fashionable? Any answers you may have heard in your mind are a part of your internal dialog. Internal dialog is very large part of our life, it is I believe best descried as “an ongoing conversation with our selves.”

It wasn’t all too long ago when admitting that you had internal dialog would have gotten you diagnosed with a disorder and possibly help for “psychiatric assistance.” To me it is rather ironic that one of the primary questions that are asked in any psychiatric evaluation questionnaire to this day is: “Do you hear voices when no one else is present?” The true answer anytime this is asked is yes, because we all hear the voice of our internal dialog stating our opinions, giving commentary about a situation, making jokes, voicing our assessments of people, and situations we face constantly. It is also an amazing fact that our ability to speak is lost when our internal dialog is speechless and silent, and this is true100% of the time. If you think about a time in the past when you experience a moment of total silence inside your mind, you would also find that you were unable to voice any thought or opinion.

The quality of the statements and questions we pose to ourselves can have a very profound and dramatic effect on out attitudes and feelings in any situation. Most times our internal dialog is unwittingly very negative in its messages and meanings. Phrases like “I doubt it, that’s unlikely, yeah right, I don’t think so, Why did I say that? It’s because…, I bet they won’t like me, What if I am embarrassed? How could I ever? Why can’t I…, etc…” These are just a few of the negative things that we can say to our selves internally, continuously worrying about our future or indulging in memories of our past.

Often times it is also believed that this voice is our conscience. The conscience is a part of our unconscious mind, and yes it does communicate in the things that we say to ourselves internally. But it is better to say that your conscience is located in a much deeper part of your mind and at times its voice does surface with chatter that your conscious mind generates.

The important thing to remember about your internal dialog is that is does have a profound effect on the way you feel about yourself, your self image, and how you relate to others at any given time. But if you learn how to direct and change the voice that resonates through your mind so often, you will then be able to harness the benefits of all of its positive abilities to make changes in your life on a constant day to day basis.

Conventional cognitive approaches state that you can only make most positive changes to your internal workings by working purely with the content of your memories. For example one might say “every time I think about drinking a Coke I tell myself how bad they are for me.” And a Therapist would ask “How does this make you feel? When did you first start hearing this?  Why do you think it says that? Etc…” This is commonly called the insight approach. The thing about the insight approach is that by exploring deeply into the history of why we say these things to ourselves leads us into a potentially never ending pit of personal history that seldom if at all brings any real conclusion to the problems we experience. The basic idea is that gaining insight and understanding of the origin of the problem will change the problem and often it doesn’t. In NLP we assume that at the time you had any problem you were dealing with it with the very best resources you had at the time, but now you may have acquired new skills and or tools based on your experiences that will aid you better in resolving these unresolved conflicts.

As I stated in a previous posting the quality of our experiences can be increased by simply changing the nature of the representations we use internally as the construct for our ongoing experiences. In the following I would like to teach you a few ways that you can work with your own internal dialog so that you can increase the positive messages you give to yourself.  The structure of our internal dialog is very simple to change, however to make the processes you will learn in the following, an automatic process in your mind will need to practice these skills beyond just one simple test that I invite you to enjoy now. But once you have practiced these skills a few times, you will find that you can quickly and easily apply them to many different situations in your life every day.

Changing Critical Voices Quickly and Easily

The following technique will assist you in enabling yourself to quickly and easily change your internal dialog. If you have never practiced anything like this previously, please set aside 15 minutes to allow yourself to learn and see how easily you can use this wonderful tool, and once you practice this a few times you will be able to apply the techniques quickly and easily when ever and where ever you want.

Mickey Mouse Technique

1. Remember a moment in time where you were internally talking to yourself in a less than positive way. Maybe you forgot to do something? Maybe you did something wrong? Maybe you were trying to do something positive and it blew up in your face? What ever it was just remember that voice now inside your mind.

2. Next take a moment and become more aware of this voice, where in relation to your body do you spatially hear the voice coming from? Is it coming from behind you, in front of you, from the right, left, diagonally? As you are becoming increasingly aware of the direction the voice is coming from in your mind, what direction would you say best describes its current location?

3. Now as best as you can define for yourself the qualities of this voice, is it speaking loudly or softly? How fast do you hear this voice speaking to you is it fast or slow? Is the voice speaking towards you or away from you? What kind of tone is it speaking in, is it gentle, harsh, critical, cynical, etc…?  

4. What I would like you to do now is to use your imagination just a bit, I’m sure you will find this very easy to do with just a bit of your already well developed imagination. What I would like you to do is to make so that you move this voice from wherever it is now and move it to your little finger you feel would be the right one to choose.

5. Then I would like you to have this voice say everything it has been saying to you exactly the same way it was speaking previously with one exception, I would like it for you to change the tone of the voice to sound exactly like that of Mickey Mouse.

6. Have it repeat the things it has been saying a few times, or if you like you can pick one of your favorite cartoon character voices.

7. Notice how it sounds, notice the difference in how you feel about it. Is there any way you could hear this voice nagging at you and find anything less than its own ridiculousness in its words?

8. Now imagine a time in the future when this voice would normally nag you again, and then repeat the steps 2 thru 7. Once you have done that successfully Find another point in the future it would have nagged you and repeat steps 2-7, and repeat it only as many times as you feel is necessary so that anytime you might have been nagged by this voice, you will only find it pleasantly amusing.

Voice Recording / Rewind Technique

1. Identify another one of those less than helpful voices for one last time.

2. Become aware of its qualities, tones, volume, pitch, timber, etc…

3. Now hear it as if you were playing it backwards on an old cassette tape.

4. Hear it both fast and slow in playback, and then hear it backwards, rewinding very fast in less than ½ a second. Now repeat this no less than 3 times.

5. Now replace that backwards voice with a new positive message and give it to yourself in the sexiest voice tone you have ever heard.

Slow – It - Way – Down Technique

1. Become aware of those inner voices that you would like to be rid of.

2. Notice its qualities, tone, volume, pitch, timber, etc…

3. Hear it from the beginning, only this only this time slow it down, and put pauses in between or the words.

*Note: It can be fun to hear the voice in a Regional accent as well.

4. Now hear it again from the beginning and slow it down even more, be sure to even stretch out the sounds of each syllable of every word.

5. Repeat slowing down and stretching out the words until you can REALY HEAR IT SSSSLLLLOOOOWWWWEEEEEDDDDD DOOOOOOWWWNNNNN.

(*Note: This technique can be especially helpful in falling asleep for some who have problems sleeping. Insomnia has been reported often due to chattering away to your self in a fast paced voice, so this technique can really help.

The more you apply these techniques, the more optimized your internal dialog will become!

With the techniques I’ve listed here you can easily and quickly change those bothersome internal voices. By becoming more aware of your internal dialog, and a little practice, you will be able to apply one of the techniques listed here when ever one of your “critical” voices arises in the future. This will not only assist in helping you get things done when you need or assist in allowing you to feel more at ease when you should, thus allowing you more time and space to think clearly.

You can gain all the benefits of having a positive internal dialog today! Yes, it is that easy!