Finding Your Strong Inner Voice: Learning to Be Kinder to Yourself

Do you ever feel like the voice in your head is your biggest critic?

In this episode, Brian and Linda Schubring explore one of the central themes from Unfolded: Lessons in Transformation from an Origami Crane—the importance of self-compassion and learning to recognize your strong inner voice.

Together, they discuss why many of us mistake outside criticism, judgment, and expectations for our own thoughts, and how reflection can help us reconnect with who we truly are. If you've ever struggled with self-doubt, confidence, or knowing which voice to trust, this conversation offers a thoughtful place to begin.

In This Episode

• Why everyone has a strong inner voice
• How outside voices can shape our self-perception
• The difference between criticism and self-awareness
• Questions that help uncover your authentic voice
• Practical ways to create space for reflection and growth

Resources

• Unfolded: Lessons in Transformation from an Origami Crane
• Learn more about Leadership Vision
• Explore coaching, team development, and leadership resources

Key Quote

"Remember that you have a strong inner voice and be gentle as it emerges."

Transcript

A Bold Claim About Inner Voice

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I want to start with this. I believe that everyone has a strong inner voice. Boom.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Part two. Part two is.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

That's my girl. But I don't. No, no, wait, wait. So everyone has a strong inner voice. Mute the producer.

Why Self-Compassion Shapes Leadership

SPEAKER_02 0:19

You're listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Hello everyone. My name is Nathan Freeberg, and today on the podcast, we are gonna be exploring an idea from Brian and Linda's book, Unfolded. And we're gonna be talking about self-compassion, finding your inner voice, and learning to be gentler with yourself. There is a link in the show notes if you would like to learn more about any of these things, as well as purchasing a copy of your book and learning more about what we do. Alright, let's get into it. Brian and Linda, hello, welcome back as we record this on the one-year anniversary of Unfolded Lessons of Transformation from an origami crane, which reached bestseller status. Oh, this is the original. This isn't the one with the new thing on the top of it. Do you have one of those? I don't. Really? But it reached bestseller status on a couple different lists that I don't have in front of me at the moment. Do you remember them off the top of your head?

SPEAKER_04 1:16

USA Today Publishers Weekly and Porch Light.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

And Porch Light. Congratulations again. There's a big chunk of this book that's about learning to speak kindly to yourself. Yes. And Laura, our colleague, we were kind of kicking ideas around ideas for different podcast episodes. And she's like, well, this one's personal to me. Here's a way this book kind of hit me at this moment. And so I'm wondering if you could ask Brian and Linda about this. And I said, absolutely. So today we are going to talk about something that Owl says about being gentle

The Quote That Starts The Debate

SPEAKER_02 1:50

when others speak to you, and like how do you do that? And so I'm going to read just a small part of this quote, you know, the larger context. OWL says to OC, be gentle when others speak to you with doubt and judgment. Trust in small changes and the process of becoming more and more of who you are on the inside, your map, with kindness and love towards yourself, you will become free to fly. Where this kind of started, or the first question is, because I feel this too, but what happened if you don't have a strong inner voice? What happens if you can't be gentle to yourself? What what happens if you can't trust in those small things? Like, how do you tune that out? I don't I don't know where to go with this. Like, what would you say to somebody wrestling with this?

SPEAKER_04 2:37

All right, I want to start with this. I believe that everyone has a strong inner voice. Boom.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Part two. Part two.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

That's my girl. But I don't. No, no, wait, wait, wait. But I don't, Linda. So everyone has a strong inner voice.

Noise Versus Your True Inner Voice

SPEAKER_04 2:52

And I believe everyone has a strong inner voice, and oftentimes that voice gets piled on and covered up and pushed down and uh made to feel weak or insignificant, and sometimes it's quieted, and sometimes the strong extroverted voice is actually shut down and not listened to and not understood. And the message around the strong inner voice, and I'll let Brian speak to this because he was the he he wrote some of this, but I was the one that was interpreting some of it. The strong inner voice for me is how do you dig out that strong inner voice and let it emerge? And when it emerges, watch out. What do you want to say, Brian?

SPEAKER_00 3:45

I want to say the same thing you said.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Do it again by say it in different words.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

Yeah, use different words.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Everyone has a strong inner voice. Whether you feel it or not, whether you feel it or not. And I believe that so much of people's inner voices are not their own. They're the voices of the noise around them. And people often confuse the noise for their own inner voice. That's my first point. Um, my second point is I believe that people when people struggle with their identity, when we when people struggle with self-acceptance, when people struggle with opinion or their intuition or their gut instinct, they're actually they're actually wrestling with their strong inner voice that's speaking against other messages and other influences that are happening around them. I do feel that this image of your strong inner voice is almost in continuous dialogue with the world around us. I do believe that people make conscious choices on which voices they want to be familiar with, which voices they listen to, and which voices that they want to then repeat for themselves. I could be going too long in my answer. I believe our strong inner voice is sometimes populated by the sounds and narratives and characters of other people and places and not our own.

SPEAKER_04 5:13

When we help the leaders and teams that we're working with become more emotionally healthy and mentally and professionally engaged, part of that work is having leaders pay attention to what that strong inner voice looks like and trying to discern and delineate between what are the voices of others that have been filled with judgment and criticism, what are the voices of others that have been too positive and too like not grounded in reality that aren't helpful in that, and what are the voices of the person that's that's actually true true to them, and how do you you meet that strong inner voice with kindness?

SPEAKER_02 5:57

So I I think I have a an above average inner voice, possibly strong, right? It's not the strongest, it's not whatever, but I just above average. Yeah, like have some credit. Come on, but yeah, yeah, yeah. But I guess what I'm saying is that there's there's plenty of times though where I I I don't. I just I don't feel like that. And I and I know with talking with other people that they're uh for a variety of reasons, they're just their inner voice is just beating them down. So I guess to hear you say you do have a strong inner voice, you do, like how do you say that to someone who just feels so beaten down has spent, you know, they're in their mid-40s and they just feel like they're getting kicked hypothetically in the face. Technically late 40s, so this is not me. How do you get that message across? It's one thing to say it. I believe everyone has a strong inner voice, blah, blah, blah. But somebody's like, no, no, no, she's not talking to me. Like, how do you where do you start? Where do you uh where do you help someone shift that narrative? Like, like it's interesting thinking of like watching my kids do things. Some of them are like, you know, I can do this, I can do this, like through, and others like, I can't do this, I can't do this. Like, how do you begin to shift that narrative from a I can do this even though it's hard and it sucks and it hurts from, you know, I can't do this, I quit, I'm not out. Does that make sense? Like, what's what's the first step in that process to being a person that says I have a strong inner voice?

Discernment Questions That Build Trust

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I think the first step in the process is a step of discerning, discerning whose voice it is you're paying attention to. That's the first one. Um, I think that there are people that I work with right now, clients of ours, where they struggle with discerning the voice of someone else with their own voice. That's why I think that there are people who accept the emotional tone or the attitude of others as their own, and they spend more time wrestling with the message of the external voice than they do paying attention to the probably the oppositional voice that their inner voice is saying. So many times in sessions, when I find myself working with someone, I will allow someone to spend time wrestling with the fear, the threat, the anxiety, the doubt, and the judgment that they're hearing from other people. And then once they've said that out loud, then I will ask them, well, what do you think about that? Or what do you find yourself thinking or feeling when that's happening? Then I'm asking questions which are getting at their inner voice. I think that people often don't give themselves the opportunity to reflect and to think on their own about, well, what do I think about that? Or what is my opinion about that? How does that make me feel? And that's and that process of acting asking yourself some self-reflective questions is getting yourself more in touch with and more trusting of your internal voice. I believe that more times than not, when I'm discussing these topics with people, they often know their inner voice knows what's right for them. They may know the right decision, they may even know that oh, this is difficult, it's gonna really suck. I've been through this before, but their inner voice can help them navigate the way. That's why I think it's important for us to spend time. Like in the book, the metaphor is we are made of a map. When we spend time reflecting on our map, I think that there is the inner voice of the past that echoes back to us as we think about where we've come from and who's influenced us. And it's it's that inner voice that I want people to pay attention to. In order for that to happen, we have to spend time in some type of reflective activity where we get to know ourselves better. And that's why this uh phrase that you read starts with be gentle. Uh, don't be oppositional, don't be too accepting, be gentle, because even in doubt and judgment, in threatening criticism, there could be elements of truth in there, and there could be a time that our inner voice is waiting to speak against those things, and we have to pay attention to how we listen and to make sure that we are listening to ourselves more than we are listening to the voices, the noise, and the narratives and the messages that are surrounding us.

Pause And Create Space To Reflect

SPEAKER_00 10:28

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

What would that look like, the meditation or the practice?

SPEAKER_04 10:33

The practice sometimes looks like a question that we'll ask that is, well, who do you sound like? Wow, I've you know, I've been listening to you for the last few minutes. Uh, who do you sound like? And it isn't it it, you know, I'm not coming after them. I'm inviting them to reflect. And sometimes they'll say, Oh, yeah, wow, I sound a lot like my mom. Or, wow, I sound like a lot like the leader that I don't want to be, uh, the leader that I promised myself I would never be. And sometimes that the actual act is calling up the voice, not trying to be a certain voice, but calling up and reflecting on the voice that that you you are you are hearing from from yourself. And there are some voices that really keep us locked in the past and locked into old versions of who we are, and there are the the gentleness we we we believe, the gentleness is what helps bring you bring you forward into the future.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

In our book, part of the reflective process of getting in touch with your own inner voice is actually paying attention to other voices, what those voices sound like, and even asking yourself, well, who's saying it? Like, where is this coming from? Because if we can identify, oh, that message is coming from this person, then that helps us create some space for our voice to be able to be spoken out loud or to be spoken internally. Sometimes we need to create the space for our voice to even be heard.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

How do you create that space?

SPEAKER_04 12:07

Pause.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Pause. Okay. Pay attention.

SPEAKER_04 12:12

Yeah. Find find someone that can offer you some space and reflect back with with you and to you.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Pause. What am I hearing? Where's it coming from and who's saying it? What impact does it have on me? That's really important.

Doing Hard Things Gets Easier

SPEAKER_00 12:32

I think that also comes from things that I do. It's like, what am I hearing? Because like I will hear, you know, in my own mind, like an echo chamber of messages or narratives or something. Like, well, where's that coming from? Who's saying it? Is it still timely? What do I think about that? What do I really think about that?

SPEAKER_04 12:50

Okay, so you think think about this, right? And I don't want to get too much into AI, but you can like the average person right now can tell if something's been written by AI. Yeah. And it there, there's just you start to become known that way. And so to know the AI voice, I think we can learn our voice a similar way. And I think there's a belief that someone else can put a mouthpiece in in front of us and help us speak what we're really intending, or or AI can help us put the right words together so that we can bring our point across. And instead, I think there's this time. It's like, well, what in the in the midst of all this, what what sounds most like me? And how do I communicate those pieces? And I think it it actually takes some work. It isn't just like filling in a quick prompt, and it's understanding how you sound, how you want to sound, and what is most important to you.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

I made the kids avocado toast for breakfast. And one of them who is turning 10 next week was like, Can you cut this for me? Like, no, you can cut this. She's like, but it's hard. And that led to this conversation about just because something is hard doesn't mean we don't do it. And every time you do something that's hard, it gets a little bit easier and a little bit easier. And I think this is similar to the cutting of avocado toast, is that when you have this voice, whatever that is, if you can confront it or wrestle it with it, or just kind of lean into that, perhaps next time it gets a little bit less difficult or a little bit less harsh or whatever it is. And I mean, I don't know, maybe that's just uh an acknowledgement or encouragement for our listeners to kind of lean into some of those things. And as both of you said, you know, pause, take a moment, reflect back on maybe a situation or a setting or or whatever. But sometimes just even carving out the space to do that, though, is like, ah, we'll do it later. And then later turns into 25 years later, and we've never dealt with those things.

SPEAKER_04 14:48

Or never, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Uh any final thoughts on this one?

Final Reminder And How To Learn More

SPEAKER_02 14:52

I don't want to belabor this, but I do think it's important because as so many of us are, you know, try trying to grow, trying to be kinder to ourselves, whatever. Sometimes we can just get hung up on the little things.

SPEAKER_04 15:03

Remember that you have a strong inner voice and be gentle as it emerges and begins to speak perhaps what the world needs right now.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

That's good. That's good. Thank you, Linda. And thank you, listeners, for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. If you'd like to learn more about what we do, you can click the link in the show notes or visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. If you have not yet picked up your copy of Unfolded Lessons and Transformation from an origami crane, you can get yours wherever good books are soul. There's also a link in the show notes. My name is Nathan Freeberg. I'm Lydia Schubrick. And I am Brian Schubrik. And on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.