HOW I FOUND MY INNER VOICE
est reading time according to chatgpt : 10 mins
Last week, I opened up the doors to the topic of learning to follow my inner voice, but I didn’t really go in too much depth about what this looked like and practical steps I took to get there. This has been one of the most valuable shifts I have made in my life in the past year and has led me to living a life that actually feels aligned for me.
We’ve likely all felt our intuition at one point or another. Something just doesn’t feel right but you can’t necessarily explain why.
Logic and reason, while of course helpful in a myriad of contexts, are overvalued and over emphasized in our modern world. When you are constantly rationalizing it separates you from your intuition.
My whole life I’ve been told to follow my intuition, but how do you even do that when you don’t know what it is? Or what it sounds like? Where do you even start? I am going to tell you the things I did that strengthened this skill over time.
I am not an expert on intuition nor am I spiritual guru, but I am an expert on me and my experiences, and if sharing my perspective could help one person improve their life then this is a success.
A dear friend of mine slid in my inbox this week (u can too btw) and asked a really valuable series of questions:
“Are the inner voice and intuition the same people? sometimes I feel like I have 8 of these voices in my head, but none feel like your God … Did you silence the guy in your head that says fucked up shit, or did you train your God to communicate that stuff differently?”
To address question number one, “are the inner voice and intuition the same people?” In short, yes. I view them as branches from the same tree. I experience my inner voice as my brain's way of processing or accompanying my intuitive urges, which are physical or energetic feelings in my body. Oftentimes, intuitive urges are felt in the body and don’t come with an explanation. I think of the inner voice as the mind’s way of clothing the body’s wisdom in language.
I think the most helpful thing I can do is tell you the same thing I told my friend. So here was my response:
“Your questions seem to be asking ‘how do I know what this voice sounds like I feel like I've strayed so far’ and I feel u so hard
If I were to go back in time and avoid needing a catalyst to wake up to this sound, I would tell myself to start small. When you don’t listen to that voice for so long it stops speaking so audibly. Why would it? You're not listening anyways. Plus, it's probably just causing internal friction by saying psst do this psst do that if you are living a life that is so far unaligned with it (not suggesting that you are)
For example, at the start of my relationship with (bleep), before I was in too deep to turn back, I kept getting these little intuitive nudges like hey… this doesn’t feel right….
Sometimes I would journal, and I would get oh so clear on how I was really feeling, how he really made me feel about myself, and how damaging I foresaw it being.
But the next day, despite how real all of that felt, I would push that voice away and say nooo silly shhhh we're fine see? This boy makes us feel good, he gives us compliments and makes us feel wanted!
Because I hadn’t developed that muscle of actively listening to it yet and DISCERNING what was my inner voice/intuition vs. what was just anxiety (takes time, trial, and error)
I proceeded to ignore it ignore it ignore it
Occasionally, it would poke me on the shoulder and say hey are you sure about this? something isn't right here
But I wasn’t ready to listen, I was stuck in a cycle of rationalizing everything with logic like a man instead of cultivating the gift that is a woman’s intuition
We are not taught how to listen, we are taught how to operate in a world that only values logic and reason. This is exacerbated by every element of the patriarchy, but luckily things are shifting.”
Honestly dropped so many bars in that email
Let me also clarify a common follow up question about intuition that I soft-launched in there: how do I know if it’s intuition vs. anxiety?
I will never sit here and tell you there is a 100% foolproof way to for sure know 100% of the time. Life isn’t black and white like that. Working with intuition or finding your inner-voice, especially at first, is messy. It requires patience and a willingness to play which is why I say it’s best to start small at first. You can’t expect to be a perfect listener. For me, the general rule of thumb I abide by is that intuition usually doesn't make any rational sense and anxiety can be rationalized forwards backwards sideways etc etc. Start by asking yourself if the message is coming from a loop of thoughts in your brain or if you can feel it in your body. If it’s something you are feeling in your body, that’s likely your intuition.
Here are three practical steps you can take to avoid your intuition waking you up with a bucket of cold water on your face, and instead be gently lured out of your slumber by the sweet sound of your own inner voice like the angel you are.
Stop asking people for advice
This is so important and also extremely hard to implement if you are used to constantly asking which picture you should post first, what you should order, or whether or not you should stop talking to the guy you’ve been seeing.
Of course, there are instances where it may be appropriate to ask for advice and wise to do so. If you’re learning a new skill, for example, it might make sense for you to ask for some guidance from someone who knows more in that area than you. It is imperative, however, that you are asking the right people for the right things. What you’re not going to do is ask the broke guy you’re talking to that week for financial advice when you go to invest your money in the stock market for the first time. I don’t care if he has Wolf of Wall Street confidence, it’s still the blind leading the blind.
Let me offer a prime example from my own life of when it makes sense to turn to someone else for guidance. I’m actively building a blog and a website, so while I’m not going to turn to my friend who runs a successful blog and say “should I write about this? Should I make a blog? What color should my logo be?” It makes sense for me to come with specific, pragmatic questions about branding, website design, marketing, etc. I would be stupid not to ask actually, as someone who has little to no prior experience in those realms.
But the key difference between this and what I used to do, is that my questions are specific and I am “asking up”. By which I mean, I am not asking Braxton who sat next to me in my PR class and cheated his way through college and got a marketing job through his dad, I am asking someone who has lived-in, valuable experience in the exact thing I am interested in learning more about.
I can remember in college when I tried to implement this I was like okay I’m gonna do this but I’m just gonna start small. I’m going to stop asking my best friend which picture to post or which shirt to wear. I’m going to use those opportunities to trust myself and my own opinion. But the need for approval and lack of willingness I had to actually trust myself ended up hijacking my attempts to change this aspect of me every time. That’s because I didn’t actively have a relationship with myself, so how could I expect to trust myself? It’s not wise to trust someone you don’t know, and your brain will clock that on a subconscious level before you do. This is why the next two points are vital for connecting to your inner voice and cultivating that trust within yourself.
2. Three pages a day keeps the therapist away
Journaling changed my lifeeeeeee
When I made this a non-negotiable and stopped saving it for only the times when I was in absolute shambles and basically had no choice but to turn to pen and paper, the clarity I received surrounding my life, my desires, and my overall internal landscape was insane. Literally night and day. I borrowed this habit from the book The Artist’s Way, although this was prior to me reading it and I admit I was inspired by a Tiktok.
I have always kept a journal but I was never consistent. I wouldn’t say I was accessing any unconscious parts of myself, rather, I was using it mostly to ruminate about situations after the fact or to give my future self surface-level life updates.
According to The Artist’s Way, the practice is, every morning, before you do anything else (especially before touching your phone), you write in your journal for three pages, non-stop stream of consciousness. It doesn’t have to be good writing, in fact it probably shouldn’t be. The most important thing is that you keep writing no matter what. If you don’t have any idea what to write, then write that.
When I first started this I had pretty low expectations. But everyday I would start writing, get halfway through page two and think to myself, lowkey this is a waste of time, and then somehow by the end of page three, I learned something so valuable about myself, my current situation, my desires, my past, etc., that literally completely altered my perspective. It shocked me every single time. This habit is as integral to me as brushing my teeth. Rarely do I ever miss a day and when I do I feel off.
An important point here: meet yourself where you’re at. If you already wake up at 6AM and it’s not feasible for you to get up any earlier to squeeze something else into your morning routine, that's okay. When I was originally seeing results from this, I was doing it on my hour long commutes in Madrid so there was definitely some looking at the phone prior. The best way is the way you can stick to. If this means in the evening for you, no problem. Don’t feel like just because you can’t do it the “right” way there’s no point. Everything in the world is made up. Make up your own rules
3. Pray + meditate
This could also read as “ask + listen”
I group these together because I think they work most powerfully together. There is a saying that goes: prayer is asking God, meditation is listening.
I know this can feel like a really intimidating undertaking if neither of these are a practice in your life right now. I flirted with meditation on and off for years before I took it seriously and began to reap the full benefits of a consistent practice.
If you grew up super religious and no longer swing that way, or maybe you just never swung that way to begin with, you may feel some resistance to the word pray. I know there was definitely a time in my life when I did. That’s why reframing it as “ask + listen” can be so helpful for getting your foot in the door. Don’t let your aversion to the nomenclature stop you from trying.
I’m not going to tell you how to pray or what that should look like for you. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphey completely reframed how I view prayer and how I engage in it now. It made it so much more powerful for me. I really recommend that book.
The meditation part is crucial. Journaling and meditation are neck and neck for who altered my life more in the past year. I feel like I don’t need to go over all of the benefits of having a mediation practice because if any part of you cares to know you’ve definitely heard by now. I really don’t know where I would be without it but I know I wouldn’t have a fraction of the self-awareness or access to my creativity as I do now.
I know meditation can feel like such a drag or maybe kind of scary if you’ve never really done it before but just like everything else, start s m a l l.
This one is seven minutes + perfect
Inner Body Meditation -- Eckhart Tolle Webcast
Before you implement any of these practices into your life, the most important thing is that you lay these habits on a foundation of honesty and avoid coming from an angle of trying to fix yourself or your life. If you want to enact, real, true, lasting change into your life, a few things have to be true for you.
You have to be ready
And the cold, hard truth is, you might not be ready right now, and that is so okay. I used to be in this tox relationship and I knew in my heart it was bad for me, I knew it was going to end badly, I knew on some level that it was severing me from my creativity and confidence, but I wasn’t ready to give it up. Every warning I received from my inner guidance or external sources alike, fell on deaf ears.
Every time I tried to end it, it was a half-assed effort and eventually the relentless tide of validation-seeking thrust me back into his arms, over and over again, until eventually enough was enough. Sometimes that’s just where you are. I needed to reap the full consequences of suppressing my inner voice, of living in total opposition to it, in order to end that habit of silencing it once and for all.
2. You have to want it for you
Back in the dark ages when I used to be sooooo severely addicted to vaping, this really upset my mom. Obviously. I know personally if I see my kid vaping in 2090 I’m gonna lock them away in a tower.
In an effort to motivate me to finally quit for good, she offered to make a deal with me.
One thing to note about me is that I am a very openly paradoxical person, haters will say it’s hypocritical but it’s all about perspective imo. Anyways, I’ve always been the type of person who loves all things health and wellness. I would worry if I didn’t buy organic non-GMO blueberries that I would die from cancer yet I would be the first to try the mystery jungle juice at the party. I would wake up at 6AM every morning and make celery juice, use strictly all natural cleaning products, but there I was, vaping like there's no tomorrow. Ingesting God-knows-what from an over-priced, knockoff Elf bar. So that being said, I used to always give my mom shit for drinking diet soda, “the chemicals are going to give you cancer,” I repeatedly shouted to her from my high horse. My mom, being the cunning woman she is, saw this as an opportunity to give me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“I’ll stop drinking soda if you stop vaping.”
Woah
This was huge for 20 year old Tori.
I thought about her offer for a few days, and eventually we struck a deal. But here's the thing, as badly as I wanted to want it for myself, I didn’t. I can’t remember how long it was before I folded. I know I stopped for a while, maybe a month or two, but when an opportunity inevitably arose for me to indulge in my habit again, I wasn’t intrinsically motivated enough to stand firm against my urges. I let my mom down for a couple more years before I finally came around.
Moral of the story, it has to be for you and only you. Other people can reap benefits as a side effect, but they can’t be the principal motivator behind your change.
3. You have to do it from a place of love
In other words, you can’t hate yourself into becoming a person you love. This one was so hard for me to grasp. There might be a part of you that rolls your eyes at this, or there may be a part of you that feels tempted to skim through this section as quickly as you can because you don’t think it’s that important but I promise you, it is. Let me show you a few mindset shifts I made in my life that led me from yo-yoing back and forth from one extreme to the other, wondering why I couldn’t change, to making deep-ingrained lifestyle shifts.
Ugh I hate the way I look I need to go to the gym → I love myself and I deserve to be the best version of me
I’m so weak for not being able to quit xxx. I’m never gonna change → I am stronger than I think and I am capable of doing difficult things, even if it takes some trial and error along the way
I’m so bad at meditating and I literally have no attention span → I am willing to be patient with myself as I attempt to become a person I’ve never been before
Do you see how this is so much more supportive? You deserve love and support. The same way a baby is born and doesn’t have to do anything or become anything to be worthy of love, you too are innately deserving of love. When I grasped that concept it really made things click for me. You are worthy and deserving of living a good life just because you are you. You do not have to change something about yourself to be deserving of love. If you keep telling yourself that you do, you are going to continue this cycle of hating yourself, trying to change, expecting it to make you worthy of x, wonder why it doesn’t, give up, and hate yourself even more.
Relax. Open your mind to the possibility that you can have things about yourself that you want to improve but that doesn’t mean that some part of you is inherently wrong or missing.
If you feel so disconnected from yourself that all of this feels overwhelming and your brain is panicking wondering how tf you’re going to squeeze all of these habits into your already-lengthy morning routine, take a deep breath. Pick one thing, and start with a 30-day commitment. The slow way is the fast way. If progress or change feels slow, feel grateful. That means you are taking the time to actually let it settle and process into your psyche and it will be wayyy more likely to stick. This is coming from someone who has spent way too much of my life swinging from extreme to extreme wondering why I couldn’t change myself on a fundamental level.
Remember, ultimately the essence of what you are doing is unlearning. Peeling back the layers of programming you’ve picked up throughout your life and silencing the voices that you’ve been carrying around for far too long to reveal the one within you that has been silenced. Implementing habits like the ones mentioned above are wonderful tools to lead you there.
