One of my clients has big dreams—really big dreams. She’s young, smart, and capable. She’s the kind of client that you think will just go for it. That’s honestly what I expected. She has surprised me and herself, I think, by not making the kind of progress she thought she would. In trying to understand what is happening for her, we first ruled out other factors (such as depression) that might be responsible. As we talked, we landed on a recurring conversation that she is having with herself as the underlying cause.

What is that conversation? It’s one that we all have, wonder why we have it, wonder if we’re the only ones having it, and wonder if there’s something wrong with us for having it ;). It’s the conversation between what I call the voice of the Sage and the voice of the Critic. Our Critic voice gets activated when we are:

-Thinking of trying something new

-Deciding whether to take a risk

-Afraid of other people’s judgment

-Afraid of failing at something important to us

There are more situations than these, but these are the most common in my experience. The Critic voice is the voice that comes from the part of our nervous system whose job it is to protect us. Our brains don’t distinguish very well between physical harm and emotional or psychological harm—risk is risk and danger is danger where our nervous systems are concerned. The Critic voice’s job is to try to keep us out of harm’s way, and so it will send us messages that protect us in the short term. For example, the voice might say, “Why bother? It probably won’t work out anyway,” or, “What if people laugh or make fun of me? I don’t think I could take it.” And so on. If we stay still and don’t act or don’t take the risk, the Critic has done its job. We are safe.

This works beautifully in the short term, which is how we have survived over several hundred thousand years. We know how to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn our way out of danger. When we are safe, however, other parts of our brain and nervous system take over. Our prefrontal cortex becomes more active, and this is the part of the brain that has big plans for us. This is where we remember, solve problem, plan, and dream. This part of our nervous system tells us that we are capable and that we can manage the risk. Our Sage voice connects us to a sense of meaning and purpose and motivates us to make the choices that are going to move our lives forward and move us closer to achieving our dreams.

Guess what happens next? That process wakes up the Critic voice again, and now the battle begins. In my client’s case, it sounded a bit like this:

“I should post this on Instagram.”

“But it’s not ready yet, I should work on it some more.”

“My friends won’t care, they will just be glad I posted.”

“What if other people see it, though, and make fun of it?”

“It shouldn’t matter what other people think.”

“But I want people to like what I’m doing.”

“I can’t live my life for ‘likes’ on social media.”

Sound familiar? Again, we all have these conversations at times, and they are normal. We have a complicated hunk of meat between our ears and it’s trying to accomplish a lot of things all at once. It’s not always going to be a straightforward process to choose what our next steps will be. At the same time, we don’t have to stay stuck in these endless argument loops between the Sage voice and the Critic voice. They both want good things for us, and if we can learn to manage that, we can make choices that are intentional and grounded in our values and sense of meaning.

In my coaching, I walk clients through a process of discovering how to even hear their Sage voice to begin with (Stillness) and then we explore through Alignment how to make choices guided by our values. We can also identify the Sage voice in terms of how it provides Guidance. Eventually, my clients make choices that represent Embodiment—they are being led by the voice of the Sage but have also learned to understand and relate to the voice of the Critic. These choices allow for both voices to be present, and also move us closer to a life that represents our unique embodiment of the energy that created us. Embodied choices can be quiet or loud, small or large, close or far away. The choice itself doesn’t matter; what matters is that the choice is an aligned expression of the voice of our personal Sage. We all have a Sage within, and once we are trained to hear the voice of the Sage, we are no longer limited by the voice of the Critic. What we do after that is up to us.