Shut up!

My new resolution is to ignore the voice in my head that tells me that my feelings/thoughts/opinions about a particular topic are wrong. Part of me thinks that sentence is wrong. It's too...obvious. There must be hundreds of self help books that contain a similar sentiment. Shouldn't I try to make that statement novel and MY OWN! Why should I do that? Doesn't the fact that the sentence reflects my thought at the moment be sufficient? Well yes, of course it does.

Why should I feel the need to put this sentence out on the internet where anybody can read it? Because I feel like it. It's just something that I want to do. I used to tell myself that I wrote things here so I could go back and read it later. These entries would be some kind of record of my thought process that I could go back and mine for insights or to see how I change with time. (It's important for me to see how I change with time because I'm in a constant struggle to keep getting better, a struggle that I'm struggling to understand. Maybe I should just accept it as part of me and be done with it...) The sad truth is I have a hard time rereading many of my entries. I get bored with them. I find myself a little boring and pedantic.

Perhaps those boring and pedantic entries, where I so earnestly wrestle with weighty career topics or offer myself pep talks for getting better, are the ones that appeal to the voice that tells me I'm wrong. Those entries reflect a topic with substance and significance. If that voice makes its impact here, it make its impact in other places as well. It's everywhere and unavoidable.

That doesn't mean I can't ignore it. That voice is the self-stealer. It makes we do what I think I should rather than what feels right. It aims to protect. It wants me to do what it feels is safe rather than letting me do what feels right in the moment. It wants me to fit in and do what is expected rather than to do what I want without really worrying too much about if it's the accepted thing to do.

I'm tuning that voice out, or at least recognizing it when it tries to put in its two cents. It's been drowning out the other parts of me for way too long.