Listening to your inner voice

We all have an inner voice.

As you're reading this text right now, there is a voice running a not-so-silent commentary in your head: 'I wonder where this is going…' or 'I must pick up the kids in ten minutes', or 'I shouldn’t have said that to my colleague'...

On and on it goes, the endless inner chatter that keeps us company all day long.

If I pause for a moment and really listen, I can hear this voice. Sometimes it’s kind and encouraging. But more often, it can be critical, impatient, or downright harsh. That’s not surprising when we think about where it came from. Our inner voice first developed to protect us, to keep us safe when we were small, when we didn’t yet have the resources to manage life’s challenges on our own. It learned how to speak in the tones it heard around it.

But now, as adults, we have more capacity to care for ourselves. We can make choices, set boundaries, seek support, and soothe ourselves. Yet the old voice often keeps speaking in the same fearful or self-blaming ways. It doesn’t realise that we’ve grown.

Over time, this constant inner noise can drown out our confidence and our sense of what’s possible. When left unexamined, it can feed anxiety, depression, addictive patterns, eating struggles, and difficulties in relationships or work. It can whisper in the quiet of the morning when we wake, or echo in the darkness when sleep won’t come.

So today, I invite you to take a deep breath and check in.

How is your inner voice speaking to you right now? What is it saying, and how is it saying it? Does it sound like a friend, or like someone from your past? Is it able to pause and give you space to breathe, or is it racing ahead, filling every silence?

Notice, too, how its tone affects your mood. Do you feel more settled and open, or more tense and heavy? Are you drifting toward self-kindness or toward self-criticism?

There’s no need to change anything yet. Simply pay attention with gentle curiosity. See what kind of journey your inner voice is taking you on today.

You’ll probably find that you keep forgetting to notice, and then remembering again. That’s perfectly okay. In fact, it’s the heart of the practice. Learning to observe your inner voice is a form of attention training. Like any practice, it takes time, patience, and care. The goal isn’t to silence the voice, but to become aware of it; to listen without getting swept away by its stories.

So next time you hear that familiar inner chatter, try to pause. Take a breath. Notice the tone, the words, the impact. Offer yourself a small smile of recognition. You’re learning to listen differently, not to believe everything you hear, but to stay gently present with yourself. And that simple act of noticing can be the beginning of a quieter, kinder relationship within.

In my work with women, I often see how this inner voice can shape, and sometimes limit, how we move through life. Together, we learn to listen more deeply: not just to the chatter of the mind, but to the quieter knowing beneath it, the intuition, the body’s wisdom, the truth that which wants to be remembered.