Manila, 2 November 2022 — Three internal voices and what you can do with them.

Story

It happened last week. A student went to see her teacher and asked a personal development question. The teacher replied: “Who is asking the question?” Silence followed. The teacher’s response was an example of using ‘skillful means’ that are frequently found in Asian wisdom traditions to help students make progress in their growth.

In such situations, the question asked by the teacher isn’t always meant to be answered on the spot. In this case, the question was asked to jolt the student out of a habitual, conditioned way of thinking and make her contemplate the issue from a fresh perspective. That needed some time and focus.

For leaders, helping others with perspective-taking is a core skill to acquire and master. Inevitably, that starts with the ability to manage our own perspective-taking practice, which can be a challenge with all the situations and emotions that we are navigating on a daily and weekly basis. To sort this out, it can help to ask ourselves “Who is talking?”

Challenges

When you contemplate the perspectives you often take in any particular situation, you will discover that they are often tied up with emotional content, with what you feel. From my own experiences and from coaching others, I like to highlight what I call three internal voices. First, there is our Champion Voice, which is focused on effort and achievement. Second, our Curious Voice, which is interested in openness, learning, and making new connections. Third, our Critical Voice, which is holding us back with caution, sabotaging our progress with doubts and fears.

Each of these three internal voices carries emotions. The Champion Voice and the Critical Voice, in particular, have strong emotional content, which makes it much more challenging for us to take a new perspective. The Curious Voice, on the other hand, offers a peaceful middle ground, a beginner’s mind, from which it is easier to take a new perspective. 

How, then, do we transition from our strongly felt emotions to that peaceful middle ground of the beginner’s mind? That is an existential, million-dollar question, isn’t it? When we discover the answer to that question through our own practice, it will transform the way we live and work. 

Question

“Who is talking” is my question for you to reflect on this week. Which of the three internal voices is doing most of your talking as you go through situations in your life and work this week? The three internal voices are a part of the human condition that we encounter all the time. To help others effectively with perspective-taking, we need to help ourselves first, and that includes tempering our emotions. To make that a little easier, I invite you to think of the Buddhist tradition.

Around the world, Buddhists are known for embracing the radical idea that we have no self, and that our emotions are, therefore, the products of our ever-active mind. Working with that notion of no-self, I found that it becomes easier to detach from the emotions that we can feel about ourselves, the people around us, and the situations and challenges that we find ourselves in. With practice, we can learn to accept that our emotions, and our three internal voices, are in the mind. And we can learn to observe that thoughts and emotions simply come and go, without there being any pressing need for us to create and hold on to a strong attachment to them.

Learning how to take perspectives while managing our attachment to emotions is not easy to do by yourself. Hence the value of the time-honored traditions of working with a teacher, or nowadays a coach, who will ask you questions to keep you on a productive growth journey. Oftentimes, the coach will ask you questions that open up an important discussion. Sometimes, however, you will also hear a question that jolts you into contemplating a new perspective, with the benefit of silence. If you would like to discover what coaching can do for your leadership growth, book a free strategy call so that we can explore that together.