Stop Listening To The Voice In Your Head

Your mind can generate a convincing argument for almost anything, and that is exactly why it can feel so hard to trust yourself. We talk about the real battleground of signal vs noise: the inner world of self-judgment, comparison, perfectionism, fear, and that familiar “yeah, but…” voice that shows up right after inspiration.

We break down why internal noise gets louder when your nervous system is dysregulated, and how regulation changes what you can access mentally and emotionally. Using a simple stoplight framework, we explore what it looks like to live in green, yellow, or red, and why the same problem feels completely different depending on your state. From there we get practical about the skill that cuts through mental chaos: objective awareness. You will hear it called witness consciousness, the observer, detachment, mindfulness, and more, but the point is the same: you are not your thoughts, you are the one who can watch them without believing them.

We also dig into anxiety and “story” and how resistance turns a raw sensation into unnecessary suffering. When we step out of the meaning-making machine and choose a neutral interpretation, we free up energy for presence, integrity, creativity, and heart-led clarity. If you have been collecting information but still feel stuck, this is an invitation to turn the idea into a trained mental skill, and let wisdom become your signal.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Heart First Frame

Heidi 0:00

Welcome back to the show.

Ryan 0:01

We're going to talk about signal versus noise again today a little bit. You excited to keep this conversation going?

Heidi 0:06

I am. Yeah.

Ryan 0:07

We're going to talk mainly about the idea of internal. Everything always comes back. This is heart first. Understand the difference between activity of the mind, getting going from the mind into the heart. Um yeah. So let's just let's just start with noise, and then we'll go to signal. Let's start with understanding from an internal perspective. In our last conversation, we talked about just kind of the introduction of signal versus noise, how you know information from our external world creates everything inside that we're experiencing, every image, every conversation, our environment, right? So making sure that we're clear about what who it is that we want to become, the experience we want to have, the impact we want to make, and making sure that our external world is curated at at least an 80% to 20% signal versus noise ratio. But now let's let's just make this entire conversation and see how far we go with it uh about internal, the internal concept of noise versus

Defining Internal Noise

Ryan 1:12

signal. What's the first thing that comes to your mind?

Heidi 1:16

Internal noise.

Ryan 1:18

Yeah.

Heidi 1:19

Yeah.

Ryan 1:20

What does that mean to you?

Heidi 1:22

Self-judgment, comparison in a negative way. Uh fear, worry about what other people are thinking, or things that I can't control. Creates a lot of noise. Noise that can stop you from taking action on something that you really believe in or becoming the version of you that you want to step into. Uh something that can cause you to close, cause your heart to close, and for you to be less available to hear signal, true signal.

Ryan 2:01

The thing that stood out to me when you just were talking there was comparison, perfectionism, doubt. Right? There's just we we all know that you know, if you've listened to Michael Singer at all, right? We are huge Michael Singer fans, right? There's this roommate in our heads. And and there's two of them. There's one that's sometimes positive and uplifting and optimistic and believes you can do this and wants to, you know, wants to go explore life and create and we have moments of inspiration. And then there's this other one who goes, Who do you think you are? Right. And and well, you know, and and comparison, uh comparison and and judgment and criticism and doubt and fear.

Heidi 2:51

There's the first voice that says, I have an idea. And then the second voice that says, Well, but yeah, but yeah.

Ryan 2:58

Yeah. So we're not going to talk about where these voices come from, but we all know they're there. Yeah. Are you ready for it? So this is the worst piece of advice anybody could ever have, in my personal opinion. I was probably 17, maybe

The Worst Advice Ryan Got

Ryan 3:18

18. I was hanging out in a in my friend's garage with my friend's dad, who I really respected from high school. And I was helping him with something. I can't remember where my buddy was, but like I was hanging out with a dad, and we're peddling in the garage, building something. Maybe he was helping me fix something. I can't remember. Anyway, we're kind of talking about life a little bit, and I kind of opened up to him. It was my very first times I had ever remember opening up to anybody that I was struggling internally, had an internal battle going on. And he said, Well, it's probably because you're not listening to the voice in your head. He said to me, Listen to that voice in your head. And he didn't give me any other context. I thought, oh, there's a voice in there. So it was the first time I realized, you know, right, because if we're not aware that there's a voice, then we just kind of are lost in it, right? Yeah. And so I went on about my life, and it it took me until somewhere around my probably mid-30s-ish, uh, maybe a little bit later, before I came to the opposite conclusion. After going through, you know, probably about two decades worth of listening to the voice in my head, believing my thoughts, believing everything that I thought to one degree or another, right? To one level or another, allowing those thoughts to govern my internal state, allowing myself to feel the incongruence with those thoughts, allowing them to push me to pull me, to take me up, to pull me back down, uh, roller coaster, absolute roller coaster. And and being confused because of the conflicting message like you're talking about that says, I want to go do this, and the next minute, well, yeah, but who do you think you are? Whatever, right? 20 years later, I came to the conclusion and to the commitment basically that that I continue to strengthen the ability, the skill around is that I don't listen to anything that my voice is the voice of my head is saying. And it still talks, it's not nearly as loud as it was, you know, 10-15 years ago. But like that's the worst advice I ever got.

Heidi 5:40

Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't mean you resist it, it just you just allow it to be there without actually getting involved with it, merging with it and taking that as truth. Yeah.

Ryan 5:53

So let less let's let's how do you handle the noise in your head? We're not again, we're not gonna talk about where the noise comes from or what the noise is trying to do from a brain, mind, body system perspective. But we will like, what do you do with it? And that there is this constant dichotomy between negative, positive, you know, fear-based, like inspirate and versus inspiration and motivation, and like all of this is fleeting, all of this is coming and going and constantly happening from one moment to the next, right? The first thing I think we have to just like the most fundamental basic level is to understand that if your nervous system is dysregulated, there's gonna be more noise.

Regulate Your Nervous System First

Ryan 6:40

The volume of noise is going to turn up, the volume of fear, doubt, judgment, criticism comparison, the volume is gonna be turned up.

Heidi 6:46

And your ability to work with that is going to diminish.

Ryan 6:52

Versus if you're regulated, if you're in a state of homeostasis, or what we and I I called it green in the last episode. If you looked at it from a stoplight perspective, green is safe, beaming and gleaming, like you're thriving. Yellow, and it not and none of these are necessarily bad, they're just the reality of our nervous system. Yellow is kind of like danger, slow down, caution. Red is like stop. Like you're feeling rejected, embarrassed. Fight or flight, right? That the narrative in your head, when you when we do nervous system mapping with people, we are able to actually map their nervous system, the narrative is is louder, is more constricted, is more diminishing, is more fear-based if someone's in red or yellow versus in green. It's very optimistic, right? So the first level is just to recognize that you know, from a fundamental perspective, whatever is happening internally from signal versus noise, the noise is gonna be louder if your nursing is dysregulated, if you're in yellow, yellow or red versus green. I think the next piece that sometimes we start with this when we work with different individuals, teams, or or or individual athletes, or whatever is you are not your thoughts. You are the one observing your thoughts. You are

You Are Not Your Thoughts

Ryan 8:18

not your thoughts, you are not your body, you are not your emotions. And that this introduces the absolute most powerful skill, mental and emotional skill for well-being and for performance. In sports psychology, they call it objective awareness. In yogic uh type of circles, they would call this witness consciousness. Um, in quantum physics, they would call it to be the observer. Um in logotherapy, Victor Frankel calls it to be detached.

Heidi 8:56

That's how you know you're hitting on something when when there are different terms for it in so many different well-studied disciplines.

Ryan 9:04

Yeah, and here's what's really neat about this: like a lot of people are like, oh yeah, not my thoughts. And oh yeah, no, I'm able to observe things, right? Like, no, truly to be able to detach, to watch a thought come, to watch it go, and to what and legitimately or an emotion fluctuate to rise up inside of you, and and then for it to settle back down again and for you to not be at all attached or identified with it. Yeah, this has become since I had that shift from listen to everything in my head to listen to nothing, like this skill is a mental skill that can be developed, absolutely can be developed, and there's a very practical way to develop it, um, which maybe we'll do a lesson about mental skills later. And it absolutely works. Yeah, it absolutely works to create space between you and the thoughts, between you and the emotions, between you and what you're experiencing internally. That's like fundamental to be able to eliminate noise and focus on signal to go from your head to your heart. If you don't create the ability to detach, to observe, you know, and they also call it uh mindfulness, non-judgmental awareness, to be able to observe something just for what it is. Like, huh, there's a thought. Yep, and here it comes, and there it goes, right? And it and it's somehow distracting me, it's somehow diminishing to me, it's somehow trying to keep me safe, to conserve energy. It has something to do with my past experiences. My mind is my mind is you know has been conditioned based upon all of my past experiences, has something to do with a what a parent told me one time, uh, you know, a friend, uh uh a peer, a coach. Somebody has said something to me that then got lodged in there, and now it's it's popping back up again. So how how well how good can I get at just watching it and just observing it, of not attaching to it, not identifying with it, not allowing it to pull me down, to distract me, right? So that if I'm able to do that, then I'm able to differentiate between signal and noise. I'm able to pay attention. And I've been saying this a lot recently. You know, you know it's coming. Pay attention is us paying energy. Attention is energy, where your attention goes, energy flows. So when I pay attention to something, right, I'm giving it my energy. And if I give my energy to noise, what do you think increases?

Heidi 11:55

Noise. Noise.

Ryan 11:56

If I allow for, and it's not reason, like you said, it's not resisting, it's not I'm not fighting against it. I'm not trying to interdict it, I'm not trying to push it away or anything else because that's just gonna create more noise. I'm able to just observe it. I'm able to notice that there's doubt, that there's fear, that there's judgment, there's comparison, there's criticism happening, and it's huh. Right? Yeah. When I do that, it gives me the ability to get out of my head into my heart, which is where signal lives. Signal does not live in your head. Your mind is caught in this deep for just a moment. I know how you sometimes caution me to go too deep, but just deep for just a moment. Your mind's job is to try to solve the problems of your heart. Right? It's trying to make you feel okay. It's trying to make you be okay. Your mind's constantly trying to analyze and trying to figure out like, how can I make it to where my heart will be settled? So if I just stay in my head, constantly trying to solve problems, constantly by paying attention to noise, it's just gonna stay in that surface chop of the mind and it's gonna con and it's just gonna turn into more. I saw you going on a thought trail there.

Heidi 13:23

I was actually shifting around because my neck was getting sore for turning.

Ryan 13:28

I thought you were turning towards me to have like some real big aha.

Heidi 13:31

I thought I was gonna have something. Well, it does bring something to mind just working with a client even earlier today that was experiencing a level of uh what they would describe as anxiety. When we resist it, when we think I shouldn't feel like this, I don't have a reason to feel like this, and our minds trying to go to work to figure out what the sensation is. We're just perpetuating it, creating more of it. Or when we can look at it with compassion and go like, huh? Okay. This is hard. This is unpleasant. All right, this is part of the human experience. Maybe there's something here for this to teach me. You know, it's like opening up to that uh sensation and seeing that maybe what we're experiencing is a can be a form of signal if we get out of the story.

Ryan 14:30

What do you mean by get out of the story?

Heidi 14:32

Get out of the narrative of uh what we're making it mean.

Anxiety Without The Story

Heidi 14:36

Because so much of what we experience, you know, like typical life coaching would be like, hey, your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings create your action or inaction, and then that creates a result that you're going to have. But what we know is that the everything is a huge feedback loop between your your body, your brain, mind, nervous system, all everything's all interconnected. So we can be experiencing a sensation, um, not necessarily know what that sensation is. And so we'll our mind will kind of go to work to try to figure out what's wrong. And it will look for things outside of us and it will look around at all the noise to try to figure out, okay, how do I solve this problem? But it's actually in what you're talking about, that objective awareness, just being able to look at it and see it for what it is, which is just a sensation, it's just some information happening in your body and then not necessarily make it mean something that's going to diminish you. Yeah.

Ryan 15:44

I have a client of mine I've been working with now for almost a year. And in our last call, she verbalized. Um, she's a leader, you know, uh successful leader who works a lot with nonprofit and different things. And she was telling me multiple stories that we hadn't talked actually in a handful of weeks, three or four weeks, just because how busy and travel and different things that that she was uh involved with. And um, she was telling me four or five different scenarios where that she noticed the meaning-making aspect of her mind because this happened that she liked or didn't like, or this didn't happen that she thought should have happened and hit certain expectations and how something was supposed to go and it didn't go that way, and how she was able to pull back and observe her mind trying to create narrative, story, place meaning on it. Like we are meaning-making machines. I say that all the time, and to legitimately, and that's why I asked you like what do you mean by story? Because this is what I tell people all the time like, get imagine how much energy becomes liberated, right? Because your mind is an energy field that's constantly trying to create more, is what is the more that you're feeding it. The more you're feeding is what you're paying attention to. If you pay attention to the negativity, try to solve the problems of the mind, you're just gonna create more problems. You're just gonna create more activity of mind. That's that's all you're going to do. Versus being able to just observe mind, observe it from 10,000 feet. Notice that it's trying to create some sort of a narrative, some sort of story that's going to help to keep you somehow safe, to conserve energy, to preserve your current self-concept or your current egoic construct. That's what it's constantly trying to do. That making sure that whatever is happening externally is going to match with some sort of internal belief structure or narrative of limiting belief you have about yourself. And so when this shows up a certain way, you see, I told you it's validation.

Heidi 17:53

We see that all the time because we see people stepping out of their old self-concept and going, like, ooh, I'm tuned into this new signal and realizing like I can be so much more. Oh wow, I kind of like how that feels. And then they go and step out and they start doing things differently, and yeah, they're being decisive, and they're like, hey, I like this and I don't like that, and they're having opinions about things and like really stepping it up, and then all of a sudden it's like womp, and they feel this constriction, and then the story is something's wrong.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Yeah.

Heidi 18:27

It's like, no, that's that's absolutely a part of it. It's just when we're in the story, that's when it can create unnecessary suffering.

Ryan 18:34

Well, even when we first started this, andor different times and phases when we we, you know, with the coaching, the podcasting, all that, there's been little times where we have been distracted by noise.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Oh, yeah.

Ryan 18:49

Internally, internally. Uh, a little self-doubt, a little criticism, a little judgment, a little narrative. What I am presenting is an idea that is liberating. I'm telling you, it's freedom. And this is what my client illustrated to me. She gave me four or five different examples where she in the past, before working together, she would have gone down that rabbit hole. It would have distracted her, it would have diminished her, she would have reacted to it, she would have said something that that probably wouldn't have been ideal, it would have caused some sort of disruption in a relationship, either in her marriage or a friend or whatever. And she was able to legitimately stay out of the story, stay objective, to determine what was the meaning that she was gonna place on it, how she was gonna respond to it, you know, what she what she was going to make it mean. Like, oh I'm gonna make it mean this because that's not going to diminish me. And at least the meaning is was neutral most of the time, most of her stories, the meaning that she placed on it was neutral. And she was emotional, telling me all these experiences and all these stories that would have happened that would have turned into something that was diminishing, and her being able to just be like, no, and then and then because of that, she was able to tune into what the moment was asking of her, who she wanted to be, and was able to be authentic in alignment in integrity with the version of herself that she wants to be, the most highest impact version of herself, where she's fully present, you know,

Choosing Meaning And Rebuilding Worthiness

Ryan 20:28

she's just sending and receiving love, she's operating from that place of abundance and feeling like she's and the word that really caused her to get choked up was she's like uh worthiness.

Heidi 20:45

Yeah.

Ryan 20:45

Because if we allow for ourselves to stay in the mind, if we allow for noise to be to be louder than signal, we will operate from some form of lack, some form of unworthiness, not good enough. And then we're trying to overcome that, right? With more noise. The mind will, like you said, will go external looking for some sort of validation or a way to try to solve the problem. This is what I'm talking about.

Heidi 21:13

Or a self-fulfilling prophecy of like, see, I'm not good enough because confirmation bias.

Ryan 21:18

Here's all the my my evidence to prove that, prove what I internally believe about myself, and so you know, we'll probably talk about this concept of being able to truly be objective multiple times in the future, because it's one that like we just have to keep coming back around to. People just need to understand how powerful it truly is when you're truly able to step back and observe yourself from 10,000 feet, to not get caught up in story, to let thoughts and emotions come and go, just like a cloud passing by or a river flowing, and to not place your identity, your self-worth, any of it in any of that internal narrative. Any sort of internal dialogue, internal emotions, right? You are not your thoughts, you are not your body. And when you're able to get to that place, then what is left is stillness. What is left is quiet, is silence. The mind will naturally settle down. And then you can choose the meaning, you can choose the next thought, you can choose the response. And on a very higher level, you can even tune into a signal that uh is coming from something so much greater, right? But there's no way you're gonna ever hear that signal without developing that objective awareness. Because your mind would you'll stay stuck, you'll stay dog paddling, stuck, identified, attached, trying to fix, yeah, trying to resisting the that surface drop, the noise of the mind.

Heidi 23:01

So it's what we talked about on the last episode, which is like noticing what the noise is in the first place. So being able to really identify the things that are creating uh excess external noise for you, which it's all interconnected, the external and the internal, because uh like we have a uh I have a process that I teach where we work with specifically external and internal triggers in different weeks, and then it's like try to differentiate those two because they're just completely connected, yeah. Yeah, they're completely interconnected. So noticing where that noise is coming from, they're getting more clear through practicing objective awareness and becoming more aware of your thoughts and what's going on internally for you, sensations, raw sensations, all of that. Uh, and then finding the practices that help you to tune into the signal. Yeah.

Ryan 24:00

I just want so bad for people to hear how liberating it is to go from the idea that you are not your thoughts. I know I I I feel like probably people listening, enough people have heard that one way, shape, or form, Michael Singer, to actually building the mental skill. And not that I'm perfect at it, uh I've committed my life to developing that skill. Uh you know, I've committed to not listening. It doesn't mean I don't listen once in a while. But when I am not listening, when I'm just observing, when I'm truly non-judgmental, when I am that at in that detached, just observational state, man, how much more peace, how much quieter my mind becomes, how much more free and liberated I

From Knowledge To Wisdom

Ryan 24:54

feel, and how much more energy I have. Legitimately, that's the mechanism, one of the basic mechanisms of letting go. And when you no longer are uh paying attention to all these things that are noise that are outside of your control or just that are legitimately distracting or diminishing to you, when you no longer allow for your energy or your attention to go to any of those things, how much more alignment and creativity and clarity and direction. And how, and this is again, I'm practicing, so this is not me telling you that I've mastered this by any way, shape, shape, or form, but how much easier, effortless ease life can become. Doesn't mean we don't still have to do hard things, whatever. Like life is this constant navigation of hard and soft. But um I just want you to hear that, right? And I want people to really want to challenge people if you're listening to this podcast, and if you're either uh a former, current, or future client of our process, is that we you have to go from the idea into the actual experience of the idea viscerally, and that's how we go from information to wisdom. Information gets stored, wisdom is accessed through state regulation and through mental skills. So it goes from knowledge to understanding to wisdom. I believe most people stop at knowledge. Most people get an idea, they read a book, they hear a passage, whatever, and that's nice. I like that, but they never actually work on the skill, they never really get in the weeds with it to understand it for it to turn into a sense of inner wisdom. And wisdom is signal, right? If it's truly coming from your heart, then it's signal versus the noise of just more information, right? Thinking, well, I need more. I need the next book, the next podcast, the next whatever. And I'm saying, no, right? That's how we get from our head into our heart is developing that mental skill of objective awareness, of witness consciousness, of being able to detach yourself to not listen to the voice in your head. Imagine how free you would be if you could not listen to anything your mind was telling you. And you could only listen, and you only listen to your heart. And your heart led you. Right? That's heart first. Creating clarity and conviction and purpose and meaning all derived from your heart. That's a whole different way of experiencing life and operating. Anything final thoughts, words of wisdom?

Heidi 27:54

If your heart is leading you to a question or an idea for a podcast episode, uh, I want to invite you to go to the the link in the show notes. There's a way there that you can text us directly. You can send us a voicemail and we just want to hear from you. We want to hear some of your takeaways. If you want to share some things that you're learning here on the show, questions that you have, uh ideas for future episodes. We want to make sure that we're providing you value and that um

Text Us Your Questions And Takeaways

Heidi 28:25

that what we're putting out into the world is is serving those who are choosing to spend their time here and tune into our signal. So thank you so much for being here.

Ryan 28:34

Yeah, we appreciate you.