BEST PRACTICEElite AgentMindset and Personal Development

Rik Rushton: Is it ok to talk back to the โ€˜little voice in my headโ€™?

No sound on the planet has more power over you than the little voice inside your head!

Whether it be to remind you of what you need to be doing at any point in time, or as cartoonists have depicted it over the decades, internal civil war.

Weโ€™ve all seen the portrayal of the challenge between good and evil – whether to โ€˜eat the chocolate or the piece of fruitโ€™; โ€˜tell the truthโ€™ vs โ€˜whatโ€™s the harm in telling a little white lie?โ€™

It plays out like a Shakespearean tragedy inside the theatre of our minds.

Some people I work with doubt the existence of the โ€˜little voiceโ€™.

If youโ€™re not sure yourself, read this sentence out loud then read it in your head. Do they sound familiar?

So now we all know we have that voice. What we may not know is that we have the ability to program it!

Russian psychologistย Lev Vygotsky suggested way back in the 1930s that our internal monologue was tied to our ability to speak out loud.

And Vygotsky proved that when inner speech is occurring, your larynx is actually making tiny muscular movements.

In so doing, Vygotsky inferred that inner speech was caused by the internalisation of external speech.

He put forth the idea that inner speech goes through the same process as external speech up until the words are actually spoken aloud.

Do you have a little voice in your head that keeps undermining you?

Well, as we have known since the 1930โ€™s,ย your internal โ€˜self-talkโ€™ determines how you approach the outside world.

And it is not a broadcasting frequency set by the circumstances in your life as much as it is a result set by your thinking and your ultimate choice to make positive or negative self-talk your default channel.

โ€œYou are the programmer of your internal self-talkโ€.

Starting with your โ€˜internal dialogueโ€™ and culminating in your exchanges with others, 100 per cent of your success comes from your ability to communicate.

So it is vital to get your internal dialogue right to ensure that the most important relationship youโ€™ll ever have, (your connection with you) is as strong as possible!

The way you define yourself with the little voice inside your head thousands of times a day, determines how you relate to, and act in, the outside world with others.

The quality of your life is connected to the quality of your relationships.

Success, in every realm of your life, is not a solo performance; it comes from engaging with other people, and itโ€™s no surprise that those with superior communication skills achieve higher levels of success both professionally and personally.

And it all starts with your positive self-talk.

Not only is it ok to talk back to your little voice inside your head, but it is imperative if you want to control your daily outcomes.

The strategies on how to โ€˜program your self-talkโ€™ are covered in greater detail in my book, The Power of Connection: How to become a master communicator in your workplace, in your headspace and at your place.

Show More

Rik Rushton

Rik Rushton has been a peak performance coach, platform speaker, conference emcee and trusted advisor to many of the leading brands, organisations and professional sports teams throughout Australasia since 1995.