Here's a metaphor: The 1980's boombox as your brain. Picture it- the days of the sage green carpet in my bedroom in 6th grade, the Mariah Carey tape ended on side one, so I have to take it out and flip it over and put the cassette back into the player. There is a right speaker and a left speaker, and if you had a really cool set up you could detach each one and set them in different spots in your room and have “surround sound.” So let’s pretend that this boom box is your brain. It’s playing music and you can’t quite differentiate between the left speaker’s sound and the right speaker’s sound because it all blends together when you’re laying on your floral bedspread.

The analogy is this. As your thoughts are playing automatically in your mind and you are sorting out something complex, like your game plan for your next move in life, career, relationships, etc. You begin to notice that there are certain lines repeating that weren’t necessarily your own voice. The left speaker, then is the voice of other people. Whether it’s negative or positive feedback, you are hearing their praise, their criticisms and that sound is just mixed in with the right speaker. The right side is your own voice of wisdom. It says “I don’t want to be a tattoo artist. Even if everyone says I’d be so good at it, I don’t like needles! Or people!” The right speaker knows who you are better than the left speaker. Now, don’t get me wrong, the right speaker has all kinds of feedback too. When you’re looking in the mirror and your love handles are hanging over your jeans, be sure that it’s your own critical voice going “Wow, looks like it’s time to lay off the Oreo’s, girl.” There are good and bad thoughts coming from both speakers. But, at least we can conquer our own negative thoughts and tell ourself it’s not true.

The reason I illustrate this is that in order for us to grow, often what we need to do is turn the balance upside down. We need to start to quiet the left speaker (or other people’s opinions) and turn up the volume on the right side. We need to honor our own internal balance of treble and bass before we take into consideration those scripts we’ve heard somewhere else. Wayne Dyer says “Other peoples’ opinions of you are none of your business,” and I like this phrase so much because it reminds us that we can’t be kept awake at night worrying about the people who don’t like you or think you’re too much. We can’t strive for their approval, if we want to honor our own energy and time. We have agency to define for ourselves who we are, what we’re gonna do with our money and what our goals should be. Even if we are in a loving partnership where the opinion of your spouse (or even your parents) is truly honorable. Sometimes, still, their evaluation of how you ought to do things is not helpful. It hinders our growth.