atch how you are talked to because you are listening.”
(My variation of the quote, “Be careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening” by Lucy Hayes)

At one of my workshops, I said, “You are not the author of your thoughts.” Thankfully, one guy in the back raised his hand and asked, “What do you mean by that? If we’re not the authors of our thoughts, then who is?”

Great question!

In a flash, I realized that my assertion was not 100% true. I realized that we could indeed be the author of our thoughts. In fact, we NEED to author our thoughts. However, it requires us to be conscious, creative and present. Something we have not been trained to do.

We have been conditioned to be the opposite: Unconscious.

On autopilot, with the random junk thoughts we have at any particular moment, we are not the authors of our thoughts. We are tossed about by a seemingly random barrage of criticism, opinions, beliefs, assumptions, projections and outright nonsense masquerading as us!

“If you are the master, the mind follows you like a shadow. If you are not a master, you have to follow the mind like a shadow.”
—Osho

A woman in my online retreat, Heart-to-Heart: Compassionate Self-Mentoring, once observed just how mean those inner voices are. She posted in the comments, “To tame the voices in the past, I’ve often said that I would never say such things to anyone I cared about, so why am I saying them to myself? I like the idea of thinking that the voices are separate from me — that it’s not me speaking to myself. I’ve not thought of it that way. Yesterday, my first thought upon waking was ‘It has been a long time since you had your last job interview…’. It set the tone for how I felt the rest of the day. I’m tired of their meanness and persistence, especially at a time when I really need love and support.”

She nailed it.

“It has been a long time since you had your last job interview…”

Notice how her first thought upon waking was a voice that was talking to her. It called her “you.” (Something outside of you talking to you uses the word “you,” which is a clue that it isn’t you!)

It’s not a stretch to assume that the voice said something critical about her following that statement. Something that likely supported the tone for how she felt the rest of the day: Bad. Perhaps something like, “When are you going to get your act together? Money is running out. You’re not trying hard enough.”

I’m on a mission to reveal the truth. I want to free good people from believing that these awful voices belong to them or are generated by them. We are the recipients of their cruelty. Not the authors of them. The first responsibility we have in this arrangement is to stop believing them.

The second is to self-mentor ourselves so we can author our thoughts. I want to show people that love and support are, in fact, available in every moment. We must learn how to be that. We must learn to be the compassionate presence in our lives who can create the love and support we need.

It’s a practice. And it’s possible.

And it’s my daily joy and privilege to show people how to access that.