๐ง On my mind #1 โ Meta-thinking. And feeling a lot of feelings.
The structure of our thoughts, and our inner voice โ that sometimes can be toxic. And how to deal with feelings when you're a strategist.
tl:dr first
Feelings are a big part of creative work. โ How to deal with them as a strategist? By Mark Pollard.
Thinking about thinking, our inner voice and chatter. โ Dealing with toxic self talk, and the mechanisms I use to get into a better mental health state.
Dealing with feelings as a strategist
This is just a little something - but a powerful little something - that Mark Pollard shared some time ago. A reminder that we need to put the study of our own inner lives first, especially when our work is studying people.
And he lists a few tips on how to deal with all the feelings we feel as strategists.
Put words to our feelings
Write to, or use our inner voice to talk to ourselves
Manage our boundaries
Get into our body
Holding space for others but, also connect with how we feel about our work
Find an outlet, maybe art
Meta-thinking, inner voices and chatter
This is a long one. And kind of personal, too. But it's been on my mind for some time, and I wanted to share.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about thoughts. Like really getting into how I think and how the way I think affects how I live my life. How I get myself to move, and how my inner voice works.
Do you have an inner voice? Do you communicate with yourself using words? Or does your thoughts translate into something different inside your head? Maybe visuals? Or both, at different intervals?
Also referred to as โinternal dialogue,โ โthe voice inside your head,โ or an โinner voice,โ your internal monologue is the result of certain brain mechanisms that cause you to โhearโ yourself talk in your head without actually speaking and forming sounds.
I experience both. I talk to myself all the time. And I have the tendency to get distracted, daydream, and stay still, a lot. So usually my inner voice yells words of encouragement.
If I'm already on the go, it's easier for me to do other โon the goโ stuff. Which I recently noticed that lead me to get more work when I'm already doing a lot of work. On the other hand, I find myself unable to do a single thing if I have a lot of free time and nothing planned.
And as always, I've also been trying to get into the whyโs. Why do I think like this? Why don't I do the logic thing, likeโฆ well not accepting more work when I'm already overwhelmed, and using my free time to do the stuff I've been procrastinating on? All those intentions that sometimes I just can't turn into actions because ofโฆ IDK what.
I have no answer for that one (but I'm looking for it), but I'm reading and learning a lot about the structure of thoughts as a starting point. Like how not all people think the same way. There are people who think in words, like there are people who think in visuals. Or talk to themselves inside their head.
And there are people who are able to tune down the inner noise, like "stop thinkingโ, which is just fascinating to me because I can't seem to feel any silence inside. There's always a lot happening in here. Sometimes in words, sometimes in visuals, and sometimes in I don't even know what, but it's there. And I can't turn it off.
I talk to my future self. I recall what I have to do inside my head every day. And I talk to myself while making the decisions on my schedule when I'm filling my planner. Or when I'm working and doing all the connecting dots and analyzing whyโs and howโs that strategists need to do.
But one thing I don't experience is toxic self talk. Which made me kind of happy, because it wasn't always like this to me. This is especially easy to happen when you hear toxic talk from the outside and internalize what's being said to you, and start to reproduce these words to yourself as if they are true.
Anyway. I realized that something shifted inside me. If I'm struggling to do something, I don't call myself lazy. I question, โIs it really being lazy? Or am I just tired?โ. When I do something wrong, I don't call myself dumb, or useless, I ask โWhy does this feel so difficult to do? What can I do that would turn this into something easier?โ.
It's a hard shift to make. And I just realized how I'm doing it, actually. It wasn't deliberate, I just noticed after having started the process.
There's a video from Big Think in which Ethan Kross talks about inner voice and chatter, which he calls โthe dark side of our inner voiceโ.
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