The Inner Dialogue – The Internal Dialogue

What Is the Inner Dialogue?

The inner dialogue is the constant stream of thoughts, words, and mental conversations that go on in your mind from the moment you wake up until you fall asleep. It’s the voice that comments, judges, plans, worries, imagines, and reacts to everything you experience.

Sometimes it speaks quietly in the background; at other times, it takes full control of your attention. This inner voice can motivate and guide you—but it can also drain your energy and create anxiety when it becomes negative or repetitive.

Becoming aware of your inner dialogue is the first step toward mastering it. Instead of being unconsciously led by automatic thoughts, you begin to see them as mental activity—not as who you truly are.

This shift allows you to choose your thoughts, create peace within, and direct your mind with attention and mastery.

Examples of Inner Dialogue

There is a constant swirling chatter in your mind: ‘What if I don’t succeed? Did I miss the sign? Why is she acting that way?’

The questions seem to multiply faster than you can answer them, and the voices, doubts, judgements, and hopes, echo on their own. You keep thinking you should quiet it all, but the stream just keeps going.

What would it feel like if you listened to the inner chatter and didn’t respond? What if, just for a moment, you observed the dialogue and didn’t let it run the show?

Do You Talk to Yourself?

When we hear people talking aloud to themselves, we consider it weird. This, of course, refers to talking aloud.

However, almost everyone conducts an automatic inner dialogue —an inner conversation in their mind —that others are mostly unaware of.

People talk silently with themselves in their minds. This, we do not consider as odd or weird, but as natural.

It is the habit of the mind to keep thinking and keep conducting internal dialogues.

• You might sometimes ask yourself, “Does he love me?” and then start discussing this matter in your mind.
• Do you keep wondering and thinking, “Will I get the promotion?”
• Do you sometimes keep torturing yourself with the question, “Why did he say that? Why did she do that?”
• Just think of all the times you tried to convince yourself to do something or avoid doing it. You kept searching in your mind for reasons and excuses, why you need to do something or avoid doing it.
• How many times have you commented, analyzed, or expressed your opinion about various matters in your mind?

As you see, this is a natural and common activity. It is a continuous conversation going on in everyone’s head.

A lot of energy, time, and attention are wasted on discussing meaningless, unimportant matters. This conversation goes on from the moment of waking until falling asleep.

If someone hurts you in some way or says something you do not like, what do you do?

You enact a whole scene of anger in your mind. You envision yourself talking angrily, shouting, and saying not so nice things.

If you are seeking a new job, do you repeatedly tell yourself that you are not going get this job or that you are not skilled enough? This is a discouraging process that leads to unnecessary worrying and mental exhaustion.

Do you spend hours in such negative, destructive inner dialogues? Do you really need this kind of internal dialogue? You can substitute it with positive self talk.

Actually, it happens by itself. It is a habit of the mind, but this does not mean that we have to leave it as such and accept it.

Definitions of the Internal Dialogue

The explanations above have certainly made it clear what does internal dialogue means.

Here are a few short definitions:

• The process of asking yourself questions and answering them.
• The process of repeating words and thoughts in the mind.
• It is the little voice in your head that comments on your life, circumstances and situations, and on other people.
• Wikipedia defines it as, “An internal monologue, also called self-talk, inner speech, inner discourse or internal discourse, is a person’s inner voice which provides a running verbal monologue of thoughts while they are conscious.”

Sometimes, it is a dialogue with ourselves, and sometimes, it is just a monologue.

The Nonstop Inner Dialogue

The inner dialogue continues while working, studying, reading, watching TV, talking, walking and eating.

There is a constant activity of judging of people, commenting on what is going on, planning, gossiping, and conducting mental conversations with people you know or don’t know.

These inner talks create a snowball effect. The more you conduct them, the more you become chained to them, unable to stop them. When the emotions are also evoked, more power, energy and attachment are added. This has an adverse effect on the behavior, judgment and general performance.

On many occasions, the inner dialogue is negative, and strengthens any negative attitude or behavior.

Most people do not have enough faith in themselves and in their abilities, and therefore, they allow their mind to engage in negative inner dialogues.

The process and effects of these inner conversations are similar to repeating affirmations. Constant thinking about the same subject, affects the subconscious mind, which consequently, accepts these thoughts and words and acts on them.

Negative inner dialogues create negative results, and positive inner dialogues create positive results. That’s why you should switch to positive self talk.

It’s simple. If you fill your mind with negative dialogues, you start expecting negative results, lose motivation and avoid taking action.

On the other hand, if you keep conducting positive dialogues, you become a more positive person, seek opportunities and take action.

How to Use Inner Conversations to Your Advantage

Inner conversation is an automatic activity, which goes on whether you are aware of it or not. If you learn to become aware of it, you gain the ability to control it. You can turn it into a positive dialogue. If you do that, you come to realize that you have a mighty power in your possession.

How to do that? Try to be mere aware of your thoughts and internal conversations.

1. Calmly, try to watch what is going in your mind, even if after a few moments you might forget to do so.

The inner dialogue goes on, even when physically, you are engaged with something else. It is not so easy to mentally separate oneself from the thoughts and words that flow through the mind.

2. Over and again, strive to keep your attention of what is going inside your head, and eventually, you will be able to become aware of the inner dialogue for longer periods of times.

Watching the mind and what is going on inside it develops detachment, and this makes it easier control of the mind and its nonstop chatter.

3. Whenever you catch yourself conducting a useless, futile conversation with yourself, stop it. Change it to something more useful and meaningful. Replace the subject and the words with something more positive. It is just like listening to a recording. Why not replace it with another recording that you like? Why let this recording play by itself?

Change the words of the inner dialogue to positive ones, about good health, happiness and success.

There is another thing you can do, but this requires a certain degree of concentration and willpower. You can learn to stop this inner conversation, by ignoring it, and giving your mind a vacation from the thoughts that run in it.

Why not let the mind rest for a little while, and enjoy some rest from the its incessant conversations. There will be more happiness and peace, when this dialogue is silenced.

It’s okay to have an inner dialogue sometimes, but most of the time, it is just a useless chatter, which distracts the attention from what you are doing at the moment. By becoming aware of it, replacing it with positive thoughts, and refusing to become involved with it, you gain the ability to control it.

If you wish to learn more about calming down your inner conversation and enjoying inner peace, you will find the book Calm Down the Nonstop Chatter of Your Mind most useful.

Image source – DepositPhotos