how many times have you found yourself in a situation that you thought you
needed to be in but where you just felt miserable this could be a relationship a
job or a city that just wasn't doing it for you enter intrapersonal
communications you know that little voice inside your head the one that
tells you to be this or that or tells you what to say and what not to say
you're nodding right now okay good well believe it or not that voice is trying
desperately to be heard and in today's world we we hear it less and less that's
a problem because it's our North Star our beacon of light pointing us in the
direction of our happiness health and well-being it's so worth training
yourself to listen to that voice today I'm sharing a helpful approach to help
you dial up that volume of that little voice and flex your interpersonal
communication skills
what's up Explearners Mary Daphne here of myexplearning.com where we believe
social skills are the key to the good life what's the good life it's where you
call the shots you have a crew you can count on and you're on a mission but you
actually care about so back to that little voice so many of us have just
shut it out sometimes we do this intentionally
other times we don't even realize we're doing it do you want to check if you can
hear that voice well here are two questions that you can ask yourself one
what makes you happy and two what do you dream of let's
unpack these with the first one if you have to think about what makes you happy
how would you answer would you say I don't know would you come up with a
response that's expected of you meaning what society contends should make you
happy you know white picket fence and all that jazz not like there's anything
wrong with the white picket fence I happen to love them but is it what makes
you happy and with the second question I want you to think about your dreams your
aspirations and your goals what keeps you motivated excited and hungry if your
answer is I have no idea that's okay but it could be indicative of something
bigger that we're gonna need to sift through use these two questions to see
how powerful your inner voice is it's a good benchmark to start with so if you
have absolutely no clue for either of these questions or if your responses
sound a bit cliche then guess what's gonna help you figure it all out
your inner voice this is where intrapersonal
communication comes in let's look at an approach you can use to foster your
intra personal communication skills one carve out time to introspect if you have
no time to just be with your thoughts then of course you won't know what makes
you happy or what dreams you have in our fast-paced modern world or in constant
motion there's very little alone time even when we're physically alone we're
not really I mean think about it if you're sitting at a table waiting for
your friend or waiting for the bus what are you doing
always you're a guest you're scrolling through email or the news or checking
out your favorite YouTube channel *wink wink*
and don't get me wrong I'm as guilty of this as the next person but it's
actually kind of nuts can you recall a time when you were truly alone with your
thoughts without your phone or any other screen or even a book or a magazine and
no sleeping doesn't count I'm talking about a time where you deliberately
chose to just sit and ponder if you can congratulations because you're in the
very small minority and if you can't give it a shot after this video just for
60 seconds you'll discover that it's surprisingly difficult the reason it's
hard is because in today's world our minds are trained for constant
stimulation so that internal voice muscle never gets used and it atrophies
the same way your leg or your arm loses strength when it's in a cast or when you
forget to go to the gym for a week or two or three this is why you have to
actively carve out time to listen to it the first step is to cut out any
distractions put your phone on airplane mode make sure that there are no TVs in
your line of vision or reading material within arm's reach you don't have to be
in a room by yourself though can be in a restaurant or on a train or
even in the office just make sure there's nothing that will interfere with
your concentration to keep it positive so now that you've sat yourself down and
disconnected from the outer world for just a little bit what happens you start
getting thoughts now these thoughts might be little ants ants our automatic
negative thoughts when we're anxious or future tripping worrying about the
future it's not uncommon to hear a nasty discouraging and unkind voice you're not
fizzing up for that enough bla bla bla bla bla bla bla don't listen to it
that's the negative self-talk that's trying to steal our happiness and our
inner peace transform that negative thought into a positive one keep the
self-talk as positive as you can and if it helps you can add yet to the end of
the sentence for example I'm not fluent in Italian yet but I'm getting there I
don't have a closed group of work friends yet but I'm working on it I
haven't gotten promoted yet but it's within my grasp so you see I'm not
telling you to suppress the ants I'm telling you to flip them and make them
positive this comes with practice so don't be hard on yourself and be patient
3 labeling the emotion the next thing you want to do is label the emotion this
will force you to concretize the sensation this is especially important
for the negative emotions it decreases the magnitude of the emotion and its
power over you are you feeling insecure worried scared jealous confused
tired hungry what is it that you're feeling or maybe you're feeling excited
energized motivated as soon as the thought enters your mind give it a label
and then let it pass through to make room for then
next one listen label let it go see how many you can do count your reps just
like doing push-ups or burpees the more you do the better at it you'll get and
that brings me to my last point asking why once you spend some time listening
to your thoughts you can take it one step further begin to ask why you're
having those thoughts go one by one explore it appreciate how it makes you
feel and seek out its origin asking why will help you understand in what context
the thought and the emotion is expressed once you figure out what situations
bring out certain thoughts in you you'll have much more control over what you can
do to mitigate the effects of the emotions they evoke for example let's
say you're feeling frustrated with your roommate begin your inquiry why are you
frustrated oh because they left their dishes in the sink why did that make you
angry because you have a big important presentation coming up and you don't
have time to clean up after them okay so maybe you're actually just stressed
about the upcoming presentation and now that you think about it
your roommate recently vacuumed your room for you which was super nice maybe
you'll just do the dishes and then your roommate can help you prepare for the
presentation this evening Wow okay well in just 30 seconds of
communicating with yourself you've gone from being super angry to developing a
strategy that strengthens your friendship and reduces your feelings of
stress it's amazing all that we learn about ourselves when we simply invest
the time if something is important to you you make the time and what could be
more important than your mental well-being it all starts with these four
steps to developing your intra personal communications
let's recap what carve out the time in your busy life to introspect and reflect
inwards to keep the self-talk positive talk yourself up not down you are enough
three label your thoughts and your emotions and for ask yourself why and
begin that important conversation with yourself again these can only happen
when you unplug for a little bit and just quiet the noise otherwise you're
gonna be stuck in that job that doesn't fulfill you or challenge you or that
relationship that doesn't make you happy and you might be thinking well if that
were the case I would no not necessarily not if you can't quiet the noise the
noise of our smartphones of social media of societal expectations the things
you're told you should be doing but don't want to and deep down you know you
don't need to be doing let me tell you it doesn't have to be that way so make
time to prioritize your happiness and mental wellness by taking the first
steps in allowing your inner voice to be listened to things like exercising
meditation saunas being in nature where it's just you and no YouTube social
media podcasts just that little bit of quiet time can really help you build
your intrapersonal communication muscles and guess what will happen when you do
you'll know what makes you happy you'll know what dreams you have and they'll be
yours you get to decide you get to live it so I hope that you will do yourself a
humongous favor and honor your inner voice that's all for me today exporters
be sure to check out the blog article over at myexplearning.com
to review the strategies that we discussed in this lesson today if you
enjoyed this lesson like comment and share it really helps support the
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I'll see you in the next one! Happy Explearning :)