Your Internal Monologue: How to Take Control

Your internal monologue is critical. The worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust.

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David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your internal monologue. What’s going on in there, Jay?

Jay: Hey, David. I’m not sure what’s rattling around up here, but I think this is an important topic. I think that often we are a result of what we allow to rattle around in our brains.

And if we’re not aware of it, if we’re not conscious of it, then that can kind of define who we are and what we do each day.

David: Yeah, it really does. And I’ve read a lot about this topic over the years. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts on the topic. Of course, we all live this on a day to day basis. I remember reading in one of Michael Singer’s books, he wrote a book called The Untethered Soul and he was talking about your internal roommate and how basically you’ve got all these thoughts going on in your head and half the time you don’t know where they’re coming from and what they’re saying to you.

And a lot of times we tend to interpret what’s going on in our heads as us. We think that’s us dictating that stuff. And he says, no, it’s basically, our brain generating thoughts, but it’s not really. necessarily us.

So when something goes through our minds and we’re like, what on earth made me think that? It’s just your brain. Don’t take it personally.

Jay: Yeah, it is random, right? I mean, your mind’s gonna just be all over the place. And until you kind of do an inventory of what you’re thinking, And I don’t know that we’re necessarily talking about affirmations.

I think that some people are like, look in the mirror and say these things to yourself.

I don’t know if we need to go that far, but certainly be aware of what you’re thinking and take control of it. Because you are what you think.

David: Yeah, and taking control of it starts with just being aware of it. Recognizing the different things that go flashing through your brain on any given day and how that then impacts our actions.

Because in business, if we’re not aware of that, if we just sort of go along, thinking we’re on autopilot and just doing things as they come up and not paying attention to what’s going on in there, we can find ourselves either distracted, or maybe doing the wrong things, or taking the wrong actions, or responding inappropriately.

Lots of different things can go wrong if we’re not aware of what’s going on in our own brains.

Jay: Yeah, for me it’s a matter of demotivating myself. My brain is very good at identifying the reasons not to do something. I don’t know why that is, But I think that I’m not alone, right? So, I have something that I want to do today or that I’ve scheduled today, and my mind will just tick off the reasons why I can’t do it, why I shouldn’t do it, why I should be doing something else, why I should be doom scrolling on TikTok instead.

And I don’t know why that is, but I feel like my brain always defaults to the here’s why you shouldn’t do it mode.

David: Yeah, and it’s good you’re recognizing that. I remember I was listening to a podcast, the Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo, and she was talking about the fact that our brain generates sentence fragments.

So it might just be a few words that go by in your brain and you internalize it. It might be that you’re looking at a project and you know that you need to be working on it. And you might get a sentence fragment like, “I don’t feel like it,” or “I don’t feel like doing that.”

And if you have the kind of job where you can determine what you do and what you don’t do, that can significantly impact your actions.

But when you recognize these little sentence fragments going through your brain and you identify it, you can then choose how to sort of reprogram.

So if you catch yourself saying, “I don’t feel like it,” you can then say, “yeah, well do it anyway” and start on it. Right? Take some initial action toward that.

And at that point, you’re very likely to continue because once you get yourself engaged, you’re a lot more likely to move forward.

Jay: Yeah. I love that you brought up for those that are responsible for their own schedules. You know, for years, I had a job where I had to be there at a certain time, and I was there at that time.

I mean, I didn’t have a choice. And now, I’m in complete control, and I’m only accountable to myself. And this is where those thoughts are just completely magnified.

David: Yeah. That’s why I think when we pay attention to what’s going on in there, and try not to take it too personally, because again, going back to the original thought where that’s not really, necessarily you.

I mean, it’s your brain. Sure. It’s our brains generating that stuff. But it doesn’t mean that’s who you are. It just means that your brain’s job is to generate ideas to come up with different things that you can then decide whether or not to take action on.

So when it comes up with things that are counterproductive or unhelpful, and you’re able to recognize that, then you’re able to take far more control of your life than you will any other way

Jay: Yeah, one thing I learned from my parents is the “and then what” game, right?

So instead of telling myself what’s gonna happen? I ask myself, because, you know, I still have fear and anxiety and those kind of things, and I don’t like rejection, and I don’t like failure, and so a lot of times it feels easier not to try. But if I ask myself about that fear and say, okay, let’s say you do it, and something negative happens, and then what?

And you kind of play that game, and you just keep asking yourself, and then what? And you get to the end, and you realize, the reality is nothing is going to happen, right? Something positive can happen, but the fact that something negative is going to happen is not very realistic.

David: That’s true. I think sometimes taking notes for ourselves is also helpful, particularly when you’re in a place where your brain is trying to take you in different directions than you actually want to go. To be able to just sit down, jot down some notes about either why the thing that you need to work on is more important, or just writing down the thoughts that are in your head, writing down those little scraps of dialogue that are derailing you, and then coming up with alternatives to those, so that when you notice them appearing, you can then proactively create your own responses to that, to get you to take the actions that you want to take.

I think one of the things that’s most interesting about this is, very often, it’s our best selves, our plans. Well, today I’m going to work on this, this, this, this, and this, right? Those are our best laid plans versus the impulsive part of our brain, which just wants to run off in all kinds of different directions, and to be able to stay focused on the things that are most important to us.

One of the other things that’s helped me a lot is going back to the why. Why do I want to do this? Why was this important to me at the beginning of the day and seems less important now? And when you’re able to reconnect with the why of why you’re doing it, you’re going to be a lot more likely to stay on course.

Jay: Yeah. You mentioned the word reprogramming. I think that you can eventually get to a point where it’s automatic. That when you hear these thoughts, you’ve got something there to replace them with. And that can be just as subconscious as these negative thoughts coming up, right? Your brain can start to recognize what’s happening and you’ve reprogrammed yourself to replace that negativity or whatever it is with something positive.

David: Yeah, it reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons where Homer’s in a meeting and somebody mentions the word chocolate and all of a sudden you’re inside Homer’s head. He’s going, chocolate, right? And he has these fantasies about chocolate going on in his head, and it really demonstrates how things can go very wrong, very quickly, if you don’t notice what’s going on in there and take positive actions to change it.

And once again, as business people who have some flexibility sometimes with our schedules, it becomes so much more important to us than people who may have less flexibility, whose jobs are more dictated. “You must get this done in this amount of time,” because even if you have a thought like that, you’ve got to figure out a way to get it done.

And particularly when you’re talking about small business owners, or you’re talking about salespeople who do have some flexibilities with their schedules very often, this can come into play a lot.

And as you mentioned, if you’ve got alternatives to that, or if you’re, first of all, able to recognize it and notice that you’re not happy with the way that it’s going, you’re going to be a lot more likely to be able to fix it.

Jay: Yeah, I also think in today’s world that controlling your thoughts. might be a little bit more difficult because we have so many distractions readily available. And I tell myself I’m an incredible multitasker.

And so I have, Dave, I have like eight screens in front of me because I don’t want to miss an email. I don’t want to miss a text. I’ve got the news going. I’ve got all these things. And I do find myself in a place where I’m kind of the chocolate thing, right? Or the squirrel thing, right?

I’m like, “squirrel!” And so I’m starting to implement these focus modes, these do not disturb modes, because there are very few emails that I have to answer right away. There are very few texts, and how are you going to control that inner monologue If you can’t even control where your attention is going.

David: Yeah, and when you talk about something like that, which essentially is input versus output, and you recognize that you’ve got all these distractions set up, and in many cases, it’s just an organizing system for other people’s priorities that you’re seeing. Your inbox, right, is what other people want of you, what other people want you to do.

I want you to read this, and it could be anything. It could be spam and what they want you to do is see the subject line, be enticed by it, open it up, read the email, click on whatever it says, whatever it is they want you to do.

Now, you’re no longer even in your own head. Now you’re getting somebody else’s internal monologue forced into your brain and accepting it.

And that’s about the worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust.

Jay: Yeah, yeah. And for me, it’s like, I have a fear of missing that thing, right? A FOMO, like, maybe if I don’t respond now, that’s going to fall off of my to do list, and then I’ll have some accountability there or something.

And so, you do want to have a good system. I think that’s another part of what we’re talking about, having a good way. Remembering things, offloading them from your brain, but they’re still tracked so that you can, still focus and those kinds of things.

Again, in today’s world, this is not the easiest thing to do.

David: No, it’s definitely not. Sometimes I think it’s good for us, when we’re getting a lot of input, to maybe put the phone in airplane mode to disconnect from the web, so that if we have to focus on writing something that is not web connected, we can just do that without those distractions.

Because it’s like a casino. You’ve got the dings coming in on the phone. You’ve got things coming through on your computer. And every time that stuff happens, if we’re not aware of it, and if we’re not proactively focusing on our own thoughts and what we want to do and what we want to take action on, then the likelihood that we’re going to stick with what we originally intended is pretty much slim to none.

Jay: Yeah. Or you’re going to be, you know, pushing a rock uphill, right? Making it hard on yourself. David, how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself and my team. Actually when you go to that page, even before you schedule a call, there’s a video there that you can watch.

You can get an idea of what we do and how we do it. You may watch that video and say, “I don’t want to schedule a call.” That’s perfectly fine. Or you may watch it and you may say, “Oh, now I really do want to schedule a call.” Go there, watch the video, see what you think. If it makes sense for you, let’s have a conversation.

We’ll basically take a look at where you are now versus where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits. We’ll take a look at the markets that you’re looking to go after. Who you’re looking to sell to, those types of things. Regardless of whether or not we ever work together, the conversation will be very helpful in allowing you to put together a proactive vision of what you want your business to be.

So if it makes sense for you, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right, David, thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.