The Voice Inside My Head

Some people say it’s bad to hear voices in our head.  In fact many psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors have therapies and drugs to block these voices out.  But what about the good voices?  What about the voices that are guiding, encouraging, comforting, hopeful, and balanced? If the goal is to stop listening to all the Voices Inside Our Head, we block these good ones out too.  I don’t know about you but if the Voice Inside My Head stopped talking, I would be the loneliest person on earth.

Thoughts, ideas, patterns, images, and meaning are continuously moving through our minds.  Thoughts that we accept are true about ourselves and others are the ones we pay attention to.  They are the ones that judge us, judge others, judge our world (John 7:24).  The others just float in one ear and out the other.  Out of all of the thoughts (#VoicesInsideMyHead) that enter our mind, we decide which ones we will entertain and which ones we will NOT.  Just because they enter our mind does not mean they are our thoughts.  The ones we DECIDE are true are our thoughts.  If we’re unsure that a thought is good, we pay attention to our heart.  Our heart verifies what is good, true, beautiful, meaningful, and right.

So if we said all voices that came into our head were bad, what of Paul who heard a voice (which nobody else heard by the way) that told him to stop persecuting Jesus Christ (Acts 22.7-9)?  What about concepts that most of us believe are good such as inspiration, our conscience, and personal revelation?

D&C 8:2-5

 How to Obtain Revelation and Inspiration for Your Personal Life

I love the fact that I can communicate with God (#GeneralCause) and he actually answers me.  It has taken me some time to develop my listening skills.  I have had to slow down my prayers by writing them down in my journal.  When I started doing that, scriptures, songs, and stories I knew came into my mind as I wrote my questions down.  They answered my questions, gave me direction, and filled me with a Peace I had never known before  (My Peace I give unto you... John 14:27).  Over time my listening skills improved as my faith increased.  Answers would come into my mind before I even finished writing my questions.  This was evidence that the Voice Inside My Head was not just mine.  I had no idea how to answer my question before.  But I knew after I inquired (He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Mark 4:9).

When I was 16 the young women in our ward were invited to go on a bike trip with the varsity scouts.  We biked from San Jose, CA to Disneyland in Los Angeles.  This was a 500 mile trip broken up into 10 days.  Very fun!  But one day I lost my money.  I was stressed out because that was all I had to buy anything.  So I prayed for help:  "Please help me find it."  The next morning during that time between sleep and wakefulness, I had a dream.  I saw a pair of my shorts and me putting the money in the pocket. Later, when I got up, I checked that place and it was there!

Elder Richard G. Scott

So if we block all the Voices Inside Our Head, we will really be lonely and lacking the ability to receive guidance from God.  Should not the goal be to establish the ability to create deliberately chosen pathways and boundaries in our mind?  What voices will we listen to and what voices will we NOT (#MySheepHearMyVoice)?

How does this tie into our New Year’s Resolutions theme that we’ve (we meaning me and the Voice Inside My Head) been talking about?   I'll explain in the next blog post.