Quieting the Voices

I’ve written before about the peanut gallery, the people in your life whose expectations you’re trying to fill, consciously or subconsciously. Perhaps you hear their voices when you do something differently than they would. Maybe you spend so much time trying to please them that you don’t have time to do what you want to do. Perhaps they tell you you’ll fail if you pursue your dream. My old counselor called them The Committee.

Why do these voices never have anything nice to say?

“Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily,” says Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird, a book “on writing and life.” “But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent.”

She describes an exercise a hypnotist taught her:

“Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like s**t because you won’t do what they want–won’t give them more money, won’t be more successful, won’t see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your s***y first draft.”

Lamott’s context is writing, her battle perfectionism, which so often impedes her writing because it won’t be perfect the first time she puts it down on paper.

Your context may be a career in a different field. It may be your efforts to lose weight and improve your health. Maybe it’s a new relationship. It may be you as a suddenly single mom, uncertain of the future. Maybe your spiritual journey is taking you in a different direction than that which your parents started you in.

Whatever your context, learn to quiet those voices. Call them what you will, just put them in a jar and do not let them feed your fears.

You are YOU, an individual, making the choices that are best for YOU. You’ll be scared sometimes, and uncomfortable, and you won’t always get what you want. You are capable, and you will be successful.

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