Not my normal kind of post, but if you don't dig it, you can delete the email or skip reading it and I'll have another post that I hope is more helpful for you tomorrow.
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night. At 2 am. And I was awake until at least 3:30 am. And in my head were all the crazy things that you worry about when you wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to bed.
There's a voice in my head. There's a voice in your head.
And we can hear what it says. Loud and clear.
Maybe it's accusations. Maybe, like me, it was questions. Worry and stress.
There's a voice in my head. There's a voice in your head.
And we can hear what it says. Loud and clear.
But that doesn't mean we have to listen to it.
I have friends. You have friends. And these friends can sometimes have different opinions than we do on things. But we can still talk. And even if we have a deep and thorough discussion, we may still agree to disagree.
You see where I'm going, right?
We can hear each other. Loud and clear.
But that doesn't mean we have to change our perspective.
I don't normally wake up at 2 or 3 am in the morning. I normally fall asleep and sleep through the whole night. Last night was weird.
But the stress I had wasn't weird. It just normally happens in the daytime. While I'm awake. While I'm doing work.
It creeps up without me expecting it.
Are you doing your best work?
Is this what you should be doing?
Are you challenging yourself the most you can?
The questions sit in there and appear at the strangest times. Sometimes they're not about work. They might be about life at home.
Are you doing the right thing with your girl?
Should she go to school early or take a year off?
Should you let her go further away?
Work. Parenting. Or even side hustle.
When are you going to finish that book?
Will anyone buy it?
What's the point? Are people bored by now with that topic?
There's a voice in my head. There's a voice in your head.
And we can hear what it says. Loud and clear.
But that doesn't mean we have to listen to it.
I finally got back to bed. Woke up, came upstairs and got on the computer. And there I saw it. Not once. Not twice. But three different people on Twitter talking about the internal questions, the insecurities, that they were hearing in their head.
And I thought – there's a voice in my head. There's a voice in your head.
But that doesn't mean we have to listen to it.
Sometimes it lies. Our inner critic is a liar. And I must choose to ignore its lies.