Alice, Brian, Charles and Diana were all sitting in the meeting room, waiting for their leader Eric to arrive for their weekly progress meeting.
Alice was thinking about her youngest son who went to school today coughing – “he should have stayed home.”
Brian was thinking about Eric’s usual lateness. “He’s slack.”
Charles was running negative statements about the waste of time this meeting would be. “I’m going to tell them we’re wasting time.”
Diana was thinking about making sure this time she’d speak up about her role being unclear and feeling under-utilised. “I’m not valued here.”
Eric entered the room thinking “Here we go again, getting excuses for why things haven’t happened”; “If Charles challenges me again in front of the crew, I’m going to bite his head off.”
Our stream of thoughts (the voice in our head), whatever they may be, directly influence our feelings, our actions and what and how we speak.
Most of the time, the voice in our head is making statements, accusations, judgements assumptions and observations about self, others and the situation.
We spend most of our time running a stream of internal chatter reinforcing existing beliefs, whether they are useful and accurate or not.
They hold us to the past.
They prevent us from moving forward.
After years of schooling and social conditioning, we’ve been brainwashed into telling, making statements, judgements, and assumptions, regardless of accuracy.
We are too often our own worst critic, which influences us to be critical of others.
In our workplace, we have a mass of people running individually unique internal chatter, yet we seek them to be aligned and focused on the common purpose.
We haven’t been trained to manage our internal chatter.
To instead ask effective open-ended respectful questions that stir us to seek better answers, take better action, instead of making assumptions or hasty judgement.
To ask those questions of ourselves as well as others.
By default, we ‘tell’ based on our internal chatter; our existing beliefs.
Do you have the self-awareness and self-regulation to manage your own internal chatter?
It’s a readily learnable skill.
It could change your life for the better.
It could change your workplace for the better.
Hands up if you’d like to acquire this skill.
