the find-your-voice process

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Today's post was written by Dr. Brian Alman and Stephen Montgomery, authors of The Voice: Overcome Negative Self-Talk and Discover Your Inner Wisdom. The post focuses the Find Your Voice process and comes to you as an excerpt from their book. If you're anything like me, you know how important it is to overcome negative self-talk and I hope this post helps you to focus on the positive!


The Find Your Voice process is based on the knowledge I've gathered about personal transformation in my thirty-year counseling career. This knowledge was gathered not only  from Dr. Erickson, but also from many other gifted teachers around the world; gathered not only from my own experience as a patient and therapist, but also from my studies of meditation, self-hypnosis, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), The Secret, and many other methods of self-help and mind-body healing. It has taken me years to make this process simple, quick, and effective. Here's how to deal successfully with any physical or emotional challenge. Spend just a few minutes a day, and as often as needed, taking yourself through the following three steps:


Step 1: Experience Your Challenge
First, stop trying to get rid of your challenge; that never works and is even counter-productive -- the harder you try to fix yourself, the stronger your challenge becomes. Instead, begin to focus deliberately on the experience of your pain, craving, fear, sadness, and so forth. Let yourself become fully aware of all your difficult thoughts, feelings, and sensations -- everything that's part of your challenge. Then flow right into accepting your experience just as it is. And last, find some private way to expresseverything you're thinking and feeling -- go ahead and say it all to yourself, write it down, act it out in your imagination. When you go deep inside and experience your challenge thoroughly and wholeheartedly, you learn what it feels like to be in touch with your true, authentic self, and this begins to empower the voice of your inner wisdom.


Step 2: Judge Your Challenge
Next, you need to deal constructively with your Inner Judge, that self-critical voice in your head that's quick to blame you and punish you for your mistakes and imperfections -- even for being challenged at all. Poised in opposition to your true healing voice, your Inner Judge is the tireless voice of your social/family programming, and it's been drilled into you for so long that there's no getting rid of it. In fact, if you try to fight your Inner Judge, you only end up being more judgmental -- you are, in effect, judging  your Judge -- and this only gives it energy.  As in Step 1, the better way is to become aware of, to accept  and to express your Inner Judge. Only by embracing your Inner Judge and working with it can you relax this controlling, overanalyzing, never-satisfied, endlessly adversarial part of your mind.


Step 3: Resolve Your Challenge
Finally, as you experience and engage positively with all your pain and negativity -- as you embrace all the thoughts, feelings, and self-criticisms that are driving your challenge -- you find yourself spontaneously developing a new and more loving relationship with yourself. This new perspective on yourself naturally quiets the many strident voices of your challenge clashing in your mind, and almost immediately you begin to hear your true, authentic voice, your deep intuition, your TruSage. This voice is the real source of your healing power -- it's where all your own best answers come from. And once you're able to listen to your voice, you quickly and effortlessly imagine creative ways to resolving your challenge. It's as if new ideas for health and happiness simply bubble up from your unconscious. And the more you listen, the more the craving, the pain, the fear -- whatever your challenge -- just dissolves away. It's really quite a miracle. And I don't use the world "miracle" very often.


That's all there is to it: 1-2-3. Each of the next three chapters will explain in detail how to accomplish these steps, offering a great many ideas, exercises, and techniques for getting in touch with your healing inner voice. In no time at all, you'll be moving quickly through the process, feeling confident that you can manage your challenge, instead of having it manage you.   


Dr. Brian Alman, author of The Voice: Overcome Negative Self-Talk and Discover Your Inner Wisdom, is on of the world's leading authorities on mental fitness and mind/body wellness. During his thirty years of private practice, he has coached and trained more than ten thousand people on quality-of-life issues such as weight loss, stress reduction, pain control, problem-solving, relief from addictions, and disease management. Through his company, TruSage International, Dr. Alman reaches many hundred thousand more. TruSage International i mind-body wellness company that helps clinics, hospitals, and specialists deliver high-quality, personalized follow-up through wireless technology.

Stephen Montgomery, co-author of The Voice: Overcome Negative Self-Talk and Discover Your Inner Wisdom,is the editor-in-chief of Prometheus Nemesis Book Company, the publishers of Dr. David Keirsey's works on personality types and temperament styles. Montgomery has worked with Alman for twenty years and is the co-author of his most recent book, Keep It Off. For more information please visit TruSage International or follow the author on Facebook and Twitter

 

Comments

[Dandy]

Hi,
These tips are powerful. When we struggle with inner criticism it is even more important to find out who we are when we express ourselves with positivity. That positive voice needs to express herself. Thanks for this great post!

[positively present]

Dandy - I'm glad you liked this guest post. Thanks for stopping by and checking it out!

[Mike P. @ f.i.t.]

Interesting post. We all deal with our challenges a little differently, but sometimes actually facing the challenge is the hardest part!

[positively present]

Mike P - Thanks! I'm glad you liked this guest post. Good point about how we all deal with challenges differently, but for most of us actually facing the challenge is the most difficult part!

[Athena]

Hi Dani,

This post is so awesome. A complete change in three simple (yet difficult to do) steps.

Thanks for such great post. :)

[positively present]

Athena - Thanks! I'm happy you enjoyed this guest post. These steps can be hard, but it's possible if one really puts his or her mind to it. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!