SECTION 2 > Your Inner Voice

2.1.a. Your Inner Voice

Your inner voice is one of the three kinds of listening, and one you may not have heard about before.

Inner listening is our listening to the voice we hear inside ourselves, all the time.

Your inner voice (internal dialogue) creates, feeds, and informs your experience of life and all of its outcomes, all the time. That is, your listening to yourself creates your experience of life and all of your outcomes.

Your inner voice is not necessarily you. And there are different ways you can listen to it.

2.1.b. Reflective Exercise

Write down the three most common things you hear in your internal dialogue. What does that voice say to you most commonly? Are those three things helpful?

Firstly, my inner voice can be very critical of myself and the decisions I make. It often raises doubts about myself, the actions I take, and the outcomes I experience. It can put myself down, it can say I’m not good enough, it can often be really cruel to myself. It can have an “I told you so” attitude, combined with put downs such as “you’re so stupid.” By contrast, when I’m not depressed, my inner voice can provide encouragement. It can egg me on to get out of bed, and it can provide a loving reward of compliments when something goes right, such as getting a good grade in a course.

Secondly, my inner voice does have a dialogue about things I should do, and often these possible actions are tied to what I described in the first paragraph above. For example, if I’m feeling down while I’m grocery shopping, it encourages me to buy comfort food that isn’t necessarily the most healthy food I could buy, like sugary drinks and cheap chocolate bars or fried goods such as donuts or french fries. By contrast, it can also encourage me to eat better. Sometimes, when I do reach for junk it can say to me to choose fresh fruits or veggies as a snack instead of another Kit Kat bar.

Thirdly, my inner voice has an impact about things I do. It can feed my procrastination. If I’m feeling tired in the morning, it will tell me that it’s ok to sleep another hour instead of getting up and having an ice cold shower. By contrast, it can also help push me to get out of bed, by saying something like “OK, at the count of five you’re going to get out of bed and go shower. Five, four, three, two, one… GET UP!”

2.1.c. More on Your Inner Voice

Your inner voice… you are not the voice. You are the one who is listening.

Psychologists note how we have parts like our ego that speak to us. It can be our ego, habits, our unhelpful expectations, and other learned reactions. They come from a part of us but we are listening to it, and this realization gives us great power. We can relate to the inner voice like it’s a child.

Our inner voice is our monkey mind, as defined in Buddhism and mindfulness practices.

It helps to listen to our inner voice non-judgmentally, with compassion. It can come from a part of us that needs to be heard and addressed, and dealt with compassionately.

It also helps not to believe everything you hear. What’s said is a recycling of old stuff, which doesn’t make it helpful.

Finally, ask if what your inner voice is saying is helpful. “Is it helpful?” If not, you don’t have to listen or follow that course.

Artifact 01 - Video > Mindvalley. How to Listen to Your Inner Voice | Emily Fletcher. YouTube, 21 Aug 2016.

Artifact 02 - Video > Big Think. What to do if your inner voice is cruel | Ethan Kross. YouTube, 25 May 2022.

Artifact 03 - Video > Disconnect: Listening to your Inner Voice | Shveitta Sharma. YouTube, 12 Jun 2019.

SECTION 1 > Introduction & Listening Filters

This blog will be a place where I post notes and responses to written reflective exercises I did in the Udemy course on Conscious Listening by Julian Treasure.

1.1.a. Introduction…

Listening is not a natural skill. This course will examine how:

  • We all have listening filters that impact our reality;

  • There are three kinds of listening (inner, outer, and created);

  • There are five practices for conscious listening (try to practice this daily);

  • There are many threats to listening; and

  • There are also advanced listening techniques.

1.1.b. Listening Filters…

We select what we are going to listen to through filters which control what we pay attention to. The help to study website defines filters as a barrier to effective communication, as:

…something that might remove, distort, or generalize the Message we’re trying to communicate. In every conversation, filters are in place for both the sender and the receiver. When we don’t follow that procedure, it can appear as if we aren’t getting the message. It is often seen in many work settings that there are a number of levels in any organization. Messages travel from one level to another via intermediaries. This leads to alteration of the actual Message; this phenomenon is a filtering process.

Filtering is a barrier to effective communication that occurs when the person receiving the communication selectively hears or sees certain parts of the Message depending on their own characteristics. In the workplace, filtering can be detrimental to communication, as it can distort the Message and limit its effectiveness. This happens when the person listening to the Message has a distorted idea of the subject matter or of the sender’s intention.

Treasure notes that filters are often unconscious. When someone says our name, this is a pattern recognition, that alerts us to listen right away. Other filters include:

  • CULTURAL FILTERS: The business terms website notes how: “The term “cultural values” refers to a set of beliefs or ideas that a community or society upholds as being important – this could be on the level of an entire hemisphere (East vs. West), an ethnic group (Black vs. White) or a specific sector/sub-culture of society, which can include corporate culture (i.e., the values of a particular industry or company).”

  • LANGUAGE FILTERS: Daniel Chua, in his article, “Understanding Language Filters,” notes how: “Language helps us express observations, thoughts, feelings, and needs. Language is relational and can be used to bring people together through a shared meaning. But a word can mean different things to different people. Try asking your spouse what “success” means to him or her. It is probably very different from what it means to you.” See…

  • VALUE FILTERS: the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. Specifically, the Ethics Sage website notes how: “Values are basic and fundamental beliefs that guide or motivate attitudes or actions. They help us to determine what is important to us. Values describe the personal qualities we choose to embody to guide our actions; the sort of person we want to be; the manner in which we treat ourselves and others, and our interaction with the world around us. They provide the general guidelines for conduct. Values in a narrow sense is that which is good, desirable, or worthwhile. Values are the motive behind purposeful action. They are the ends to which we act and come in many forms. Personal values are personal beliefs about right and wrong and may or may not be considered moral. Cultural values are values accepted by religions or societies and reflect what is important in each context.” See…

Artifact 01 - Video > TEDx Talks. Why Values Matter | Jan Stassen. YouTube, 17 Jan 2019.

  • ATTITUDE FILTERS: attitudes constitute learned tendencies - a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior. Attitudes are defined by Wikipedia as: “…a psychological construct, a mental and emotional entity that inheres in or characterizes a person, or their attitude is their approach to something, or their personal view on it. Attitude involves their mindset, outlook and feelings.[1] Attitudes are complex and are an acquired state through experience. Attitude is an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value and it is precipitated through a responsive expression towards oneself,[2] a person, place, thing, or event (the attitude object) which in turn influences the individual's thought and action. Most simply understood attitudes in psychology are the feelings individuals have about themselves and the world.”

Artifact 02 - Video > Khan Academy. Components of Attitudes. YouTube, 25 Feb 2014.

Artifact 03 - Video > ETSU Online. Social Psychology: Attitudes. YouTube, 9 Sep 2014.

Political and religious views are examples of value, belief, and attitude filters. Filters impact our perceived realities. Filters are unique to every individual and are as unique as our fingerprints. You can put ten different people in the same situation, and they would all listen in a unique way. What you hear isn’t necessarily reality itself. See…

Artifact 04 - Video > sixesfullofnines. McGurk Effects - Auditory Illusion - BBC Horizon Clip. YouTube, 16 Mar 2016.

Treasure also discusses “Crossmodal perception or cross-modal perception is perception that involves interactions between two or more different sensory modalities.[1] Examples include synesthesia, sensory substitution and the McGurk effect, in which vision and hearing interact in speech perception.”

Artifact 05 - Video > Communication Coach Alexander Lyon. How to Improve Listening Skills. YouTube, 24 Jul 2016.

Artifact 06 - Video > TEDx Talks. Conscious Listening | Julian Treasure. YouTube, 16 Apr 2011.

Artifact 07 - Video > WordToTheWise. How to Really Listen to People | Jordan Peterson. YouTube, 13 Aug 2019.