You ever notice that your brain doesn’t really shut up?
Did I lock the front door?
I paid that already, right?
Do these jeans make me look fat?
Author Michael A. Singer in his book The Untethered Soul calls this voice your “Inner Roomate”. This voice is more than an annoying roomate, it’s more like a bad marriage that you can’t divorce out of.
You can’t take it out with a Smith and Wesson either. It just hangs out with you like herpes.
We’re kind of used to having an over protective, nagging, mom-like voice in our heads. We understand maybe you shouldn’t eat that pizza before you swim or stare directly into the sun. But there’s a more nefarious version of this voice too.
Mine told me…
I wasn’t good enough to be an artist.
I could never date a girl that pretty.
Opportunities like that don’t exist for black people.
Blah, blah, blah. I listened to that nonsense for way too long. One of the first things that helped me get past that was understanding that the brain has one job and it’s not helping you ‘follow your dreams’. It’s job is to keep you safe.
“Your brain is biologically wired to protect you from harm. So when you’re about to switch jobs, move to a new place, or try something new, it tries to stop you.”
-Mel Robbins
Not only does this voice never go away but it changes its colors like a chameleon and manifests into other things like procrastination and perfectionism. It’ll make your ADD kick in more relentlessly than ads on YouTube.
That’s why to quiet this voice, you want to focus on what Dan Sullivan calls, ENERGY. Energy is…
Everything you permanently love.
Everything that produces growth.
Everything that grows confidence.
When you develop the daily habits of doing what you love and combine that with your personal development routine, your confidence grows and ignoring your Inner Roomate gets easier and easier.
And don’t forget about your environment too. That can be just as important. Great white sharks are badasses but if you throw one in a Manhattan apartment, it’s not going to thrive. It will suffocate and die.
Focus on your energy and creating an environment that is an incubator for your success. But also… stop doing what drains your energy too.
Adam