74. A plethora of inner voices | with Bella

Tankespjärn with Helena Roth

I enjoy wise words, collect quotes or longer paragraphs from books I read, videos I watch (I’ve been tweeting single sentence words of wisdom from whatever I am currently watching. During the summer it was Downton Abbey, right now it’s Game of Thrones…), podcasts I listen to etc. I’ve got little words of wisdom saved in many places (…and you don’t need to tell me I should stick to one single system. I don’t. So there.), my kernel journal, my mind, in Evernote, in a spreadsheet with a tab/book, unless if it’s a book I own where I read with pen in hand, making marginalia and sometimes even dog-earing the page to be able to reference it at a later time.

Few actually get lodged in my mind, but now and again, I surprise myself:

“It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.” ~ Jocko Willink

When I read that quote it hit me hard. Somehow, it points to walking my talk from another angle. I can viscerally feel the slippery slope of how what I tolerate can lead me further and further away from my beliefs, from what I ‘preach’.

And when that happens, my inner should:ers have a field-day (which me and Luke also touched upon)!

‘The Saboteur berates you, tells you what is not good, and says ‘You should do better’. The Sage celebrates what is good and joyfully wonders how you could do even better.’ ~ Shirzad Chamine

I’m pretty sure you also have inner should:ers (or Saboteurs, the term used by Shirzad of Positive Intelligence), and I wonder if you’ve entered into conversation with them in any way? In therapy with Dominic he suggested that I…

“[…] enter into conversation with your should:ers. Maybe you can do dominant/nondominant hand-writing and ask ‘Hey, you Should:er, if you knew all of this, why didn't you tell me before?’

Usually when you do that, they get quite uncomfortable because they don't want to be caught out. If you do enter into a conversation with them, how can you make a deal that if they see something beforehand, why not tell you so that their foresight can be of service to you?

They're quite useful allies to have, the Should:ers.” ~ Helena

I deliberately say Should:ers, because I have many, not just one. Two of them seems to be present in Bella as well, as I can definitely relate to this:

“The [inner] one that shushes yourself up is risky because you lose yourself.

The [inner] one that speaks up is risky as sometimes you lose the other because of it.” ~ Bella

I venture a guess that there’s plenty more tankespjärn to be had, once you tag along for a listen.

Links:

Bella (and some more of her music)

Jocko Willink author of the book Extreme Ownership and host of the Jocko podcast

Helena on Twitter

Process-oriented therapy with Dominic Bosman Venter

Ask-culture vs guess-culture

64. Discernment is flexible and judgment is rigid | with Bella