Short summary
Key points
There is a voice inside your head and that voice is there because you are unconsciously cushioning yourself from reality. To master this voice, you must pay attention not to the voice that speaks, but to you that listens
Yes, There it is. It is the voice of your thoughts. It speaks in your head before words ever come out of your mouth and it speaks in your head even when words don’t come out of your mouth. It is a narrator when you walk down the street and notice things(1), like;
“Oh, there’s a dog at a fire hydrant. Wait, why does that dog look so much like Mrs James’s Labrador? Ah, that’s because it is Mrs James’s Labrador. The trees are beginning to brown, fall is approaching… I remember last fall, I spent so much time with Janet… I wonder how Janet is doing…”
If you notice, it doesn’t exactly have a stable direction of speech and it can and will jump topics without missing a beat. It even has the ability to argue with itself: “Did you buy new batteries for the smoke alarm? No, we don’t need new batteries. What do you mean we don’t need new batteries? We don’t. Yes we do, do you not remember the last time and how you nearly burnt the house down because you didn’t change the batteries in time? Oh, shut up, you don’t have the money for batteries. Oh, but you have money for tacos?”
Yep, it can get pretty wild in there considering the voice is talking to the voice, and the voice is inside you.
It would be pretty awkward if everything the voice said came out of your mouth. Not only would you have hurt many people’s feelings, and gotten fired a few hundred times, you would look absolutely crazy just walking on the street and talking.