Wise Decisions

Chapter 3The Voices in Our Head

When you speak from that deep, inner voice, you are really speaking from the unique tabernacle of your own presence. There is a voice within you that no one, not even you, has ever heard. Give yourself the opportunity of silence and begin to develop your listening in order to hear, deep within yourself, the music of your own spirit.

—Anam Cara, by John O’Donohue

There are some crucial points to understand. First, “voices in our head” are completely normal. We all have them. Second, getting through to your inner core, your central command center, means getting through to your inner voice, which represents the power broker in decision‐making. Inner speech is the brain's way of talking to itself. One's inner voice, which only that person can hear, is the brain's gatekeeper, chief storyteller, and, most importantly, master decision maker. One's inner voice is direct talk from the brain's command center. Man's remarkable capacity for complex language has equipped the brain with the ability to speak to itself through words.

The younger the brain, the more sensitive and malleable to inputs from the outside world. The child's brain is a super‐charged learning machine. Inputs to the infant brain come primarily from visual, auditory, and kinesthetic stimuli. Evidence suggests that auditory inputs and biological messages are transmitted even prenatally from the voices of parents, grandparents, siblings, and others, but most particularly the mother.