How to make the four disparate voices in your head an ally

After a few recommendations from friends, I recently attended the world’s most difficult psychological boot camp in the middle of nowhere, Connecticut. It’s called Hoffman, and if you Google it, you will see headlines like, “Justin Bieber leaves Hoffman after two days, saying it’s too difficult,” or “Seven days to change a lifetime,” and “I paid $5,000 to share my feelings, and I loved it.” 

As I walked out the door to leave for seven days, my daughter looked at me and said, “Be better than the Biebs, Dad.”

A large part of the doctrine has to do with our inner voice and how we don’t realize that our internal narrator is actually four different people.

Body, intellect, spiritual self, and emotional child

To better explain this internal narrator, take me, for example. My intellect is constantly pushing my ambition, responsibility, with questions like, “Am I doing enough?” Meanwhile, my emotional child wants to play, enjoy life, and even stay out late occasionally, which angers my body since it’s trying to keep me upright from all the work. My spiritual self, the best version of me, acts as a divine babysitter to all three—and is constantly disapproving of how they all fall short of my potential. Sound familiar? 

The key for all of us to find that potential in business and in life: making these four voices sing in harmony. Our voices, through conflict, insecurity, and the territorial needs of each, sometimes give our intuition a false sense of reality.  

One of the Hoffman teachers described a morning where she felt like she was really connecting with the group. She even saw one student intensely leaning in. I am killing it, I’ve never been more captivating, she thought to herself.

As that student leaned in some more, he interrupted her to say she had some spinach stuck in her teeth. Her emotional child quickly told her she was embarrassing herself, and . . . the speech fell apart. It was her intellect’s job to tell her that the spinach had nothing to do with the quality of her speech. The speech was the speech, but we often listen to whatever voice is giving us the worst headline. This is when every entrepreneur’s worst nightmare kicks in: self-protection. (Actually, this is the case for everyone who takes ownership of their job.) If we believe we are opening ourselves up to criticism, we will rarely take the next leap.

Listen to and heed your four voices

I sat next to a young woman on a plane recently who confided that she wanted to start her own business and leave the successful fashion company she worked for. “I have a great idea, I have the work ethic, I have the support, now I just need some guts,” she told me.

I spent the next 30 minutes having a conversation with her that, had she known about the internal narrator, she could have had with her four voices. If she no longer enjoyed her job, and her résumé was updated enough to help her net a job more aligned with her future startup goals (in order to learn from), what was she really risking? She just needed her intellect and emotional child to collaborate instead of argue. “I never thought of it that way,” she said. “I concentrated more on the possible failure than the actual consequences.”

Thinking of these voices as allies who truly support each other and their needs changes the game in an instant. The intellect is responsible, dedicated, and prepared. The emotional child finds enough room for balance to keep the intellect restored. The body keeps them both upright, and the spiritual self is the alchemy of the other three when they are all doing their jobs. 

There is an antiquated viewpoint that great leadership, whether a football coach, president, CEO, or chef, needs to lead with an iron fist to find greatness. Perhaps these less-than-benevolent leaders just needed to get their own four voices on the same page instead of leading with an iron fist. 

Morning check-in

I checked in with my four voices today. My intellect is worried about my two restaurant openings this month. My body is sore from travel. My emotional child doesn’t see any leisure on the schedule. And my spiritual self can see the high of Hoffman beginning to fade. Instead of them arguing over which voice should be the most prominent, they have decided to all work together to make it through this arduous ride.

You do not need Hoffman to connect to your own voices (although it helps). It’s a perfect morning practice to check in with all of them and thank each one for what they do for you. Giving them a face and identity certainly helps in connecting the dots. My intellect is the version of me who wears the black suit on the dining room floor. My emotional child is me at 12 years old with a broken smile and V-neck terry-cloth shirt. My body is me, in the best shape. And my spiritual self is framed with a backlight. I see them every morning during my check in, anxious to help each other. It’s such a shocking contrast from before that it feels like a completely different life. 

Spend a moment today and break yourself down. Where is the anxiety coming from? Which voice needs grace? As soon as you start tracking it, you’re one step away from being a better leader and a more empathetic soul.