Last week a friend said something to me that was particularly impactful.

It was along the lines of, “Well Gun, that’s because every internal thought was once an external voice.”

What does that mean exactly?

You know that feeling when you hit shuffle and the perfect song comes on? How your mood went from melancholy to cheerful in a split second. Or, when your friend calls and you just laugh and laugh and laugh and then just smile for the remainder of your drive home. Or, when that SPCA dog commercial comes on and Sarah Mclachlan makes you want to adopt every dog in the world?

Those are examples of powerful external voices. They change the dialogue in our minds saying one thing to the exact opposite in an instant.

The internal voice is the voice that gets you started in the morning with a bang rather than dredging around place to place. It’s what gets your mind going thinking of cool ideas. It’s what can lead you into a spiral of self doubt and laziness.

This has nothing to do with free will or thought, it’s not to say you can’t control your own mind and mood. Just to take note of the power of the externals and how you can use it as a tool.

Feed yourself with positive peoples, videos, podcasts, movies, books, and songs… because positive external voices become positive internal voices.