Soulful Sunday: the voice inside your head.

The mind is a powerful yet sometimes misleading tool. A lot of us, infact, most of us still live in our minds. This constantly brings us untold suffering, suffering that we inflict on ourselves yet we dare to blame others for this one suffering. Think of incidents when your mind has told you one thing and then after successfully getting you infuriated, angry and maybe even pain, you then find out that your mind had lied to you and then you feel relieved. But then, you've already spend a reasonable portion of your life suffering in agony. That moment could have been channelled into something that could have made you happy. That's a waste.

When we have that feeling that we later find out was totally different from what it really is, we call it a misconception but it isn't really a misconception. You aren't the one who conceives, that voice in your head does.

Here's a scenario a lot of you can relate with:

You've been wanting to get a job for a vet long time and then one day your lucky star decided to shine upon you. You got a message from a company and at that, the one you so much wanted to work with! Now isn't that interesting? They sent you an email for the interview, which would hold by the 10th of March. You couldn't wait for the day to come! You read countless articles and books on how to "leave your interviewers Jaws dropping" and "how to leave them no option than to give you the job" just so that you're fully prepared and ready to give them your best.

Alas! On the day of the interview you woke up late! 1 hour late for the interview. Your heart stopped beating for a nanosecond as a result of shock! You hurriedly took a shower, brush your teeth, got some snacks while getting dressed at the same time. Your voice started telling you "hurry! You're getting late dawg!" another voice would say " relax dawg, you're already late". You get stuck and in the process of paying attention on these voices, you focus on getting ready for the interview reduces, making you even more late.

You get to the venue, luckily you find that from other potential interviewees that the interview has been delayed by two hours. You leaped in joy and then you hear a voice in your head say, "you should have taken your time to do things calmly. Now no interview and you're a mess!" The voice might even go as far as telling you to go back home and get something proper to it.

Wait a minute......

Isn't this the same voice that told you to hurry up sometime ago? Why then is it telling you this now? Is it really been serious right now.

Bear in mind that these voices aren't always saying negative things. They can say positive things to to make you feel good. Here's an example :

You bought a new red dress that you think would look good on you. You tried it on some friend's party and what you thought was so right: it did look good on you, or so you thought.. You strolled confidently to your friend's place and that voice keeps saying "go girl, you rock! You look like a damn angel all the way from heaven!". This boosts your confidence level to a 101%( positive emotions of happiness, confidence instilled). But that same voice might later tell you something negative about that dress if something happens say, someone made a bad comment about the dress being too short or been too showy, that voice could say "yes they're right!" and then you feel dejected.

From the above scenarios you might have noticed these things:

• The voice can take both sides of a conversation.

• It distracts you from the task that's at hand, thereby creating a kind of hindrance.

• It makes you overthink, in conflict with yourself and causes you some negative emotions :panick, fear, regret, unhappiness..

• It isn't necessary negative, but can also be positive.

• .... and much more.....

At this point, I bet the reader have thought up a lot of similar scenarios in your life. Infact, this happens all the time. There's not a single time when this voices aren't talking. They talk and talk and talk. Now that you've realised this, I would like you to take this little exercise:

Observe all your thoughts and when I say thought here, I mean that voice. I know this can be a bit hard because we end up getting absorbed in them sometimes but just do your best to observe them. Do not try to stop them when they arise, do not try to suppress them. Just observe them. You'll be shocked at what you'll find, they always talk without processing or thinking. You realise that all what have been causing you those negative emotions are the influence of these voices. They keep on talking and talking without giving your head a moment's respite. You see a guy who looks cute and then it goes, "wow what a cute guy,he's fair, and heavily bearded. I love the way he dresses and the phone he hold too, he must be loved by all." That voice doesn't need to talk in the first place. You already know all these then why does it decide to repeat it?

I will stop here for now and please, do the little exercise and tell me about your findings in any of my later articles..

To my subscribers, I am sorry for being absent throughout yesterday, my Lil sis fell ill and I went with her to the hospital. She was earlier diagnosed with ulcer and we're back home now. She will be alright God willing.

Thanks for reading and for your understanding.

Yours Layly,

❤❤❤❤