#153 The Quiet Voice That Knows So Much

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey there and welcome back to Your Favorite You.

I'm Melissa Parsons. I am a life coach for amazing women and I'm so grateful you're here with me today. If you've been listening along for a while now, you will know that I've been doing my own parts work lately, something called Internal Family Systems.

And I've noticed something fascinating that I'm called to share with all of you. The parts of me that are critical, anxious, perfectionistic, they are loud and they sound so sure of themselves. They speak with authority and urgency.

They sound like you're not doing enough or that was terrible or everyone's going to think you're a fraud, but my inner knowing, what is called self in internal family systems, that voice is quiet. It often will speak in whispers.

It's calm and certain, but not urgent. It says things like this feels right or you're exactly where you need to be or just take a breath. And here's what I've realized. If you're not intentionally getting quiet and listening for that whisper, you may miss it and the loud voices may drown it out completely.

Recently, my clients have been bringing me what they think are these small, quiet wins, and I'm sitting across from them on the Zoom screen thinking, are you kidding me? This is everything. Today I want to talk about learning how to hear and how to trust that quiet voice that actually knows so much.

In IFS, or internal family systems, there's an understanding that we all have different parts of ourselves, likened to an internal family. Some parts are protective, trying to keep us safe by being perfect or controlling or overachieving.

Some parts are firefighters who jump in when we're overwhelmed or things are failing out of control. Other parts are exiles. These are younger parts of us that have been shut away for their own protection.

And then there's what is called the capital S self. So when I say self in this podcast, that is the self that I'm referring to, this capital S self. that is the core essence of who you are that embodies what Dick Schwartz, the founder of IFS, has called and coined the eight C's.

Calm, curious, compassionate, clear, confident, courageous, creative, and connected. The thing is, those protective parts and the firefighters, they learn to be allowed to get your attention. They think if they're not shouting, you won't listen.

Your inner critic doesn't whisper, hey, maybe consider proofreading that email. Instead, it shouts, that email was terrible. Everyone's going to think you're an incompetent oaf. Your anxious part doesn't gently suggest you might want to plan ahead.

Instead, it often screams, you're going to be late. You're going to forget something important. Everything's going to fall apart. But self, capital S self doesn't need to shout because it just knows.

It doesn't need to convince you or argue with you or create urgency. It simply quietly offers wisdom. As I've been doing this work, I've started to notice the difference. When my anxious part is talking, there's urgency and drama and this feeling like I need to do something right now.

When self is speaking, there is this calm knowing. It's like the difference between someone frantically waving their arms, shouting directions, and someone gently pointing you toward home. For the past several years, the feeling that I have loved to feel the most is something that I have coined called grounded certainty.

This makes so much sense because it is very closely tied to my self energy. And here's the problem. We live in a world that rewards the loudest voices, achievement, productivity, constant improvement.

These all come from parts that know how to get our attention. So we get really good at hearing them and worse and worse at hearing the softer self. So like I said, my clients have been bringing me these wins that feel small and quiet to them, but friends, these are the exact moments when self is speaking.

So let me share a few examples because I bet you'll recognize your own quiet wisdom in some of these stories. I have a client whom I love whose youngest is headed off to college this year. She came to our latest session and, you know, whenever my clients apologize or they say this might be silly, it's never something that they need to apologize for and it never turns out to be silly.

But she was saying, I've been noticing how sad I am about her leaving. Now, she's been through this transition before with her older kiddos and had just kind of powered through it, staying busy, focusing on the positives, of course, taking care of this one still at home too, and letting her achieving part handle it all.

But this time she's allowing herself to feel the sadness. And we talked about her understanding what an honor it is to be sad that her kids won't be living with her anymore. That quiet recognition, it is self-speaking and not the part that says you should be excited for her independence or stop being so emotional.

But that part that whispers, this sadness is love. This sadness means you're doing good. Another client told me, I've been noticing something weird. I'm not constantly thinking about how busy I am anymore.

And somehow all of my stuff is getting done. For years, her anxious part had convinced her that the only way to be productive was to constantly ruminate about her to-do list and to stay in a state of low-level panic about all the things that needed to happen.

Her mind was constantly spinning. Did I remember to, I need to make sure I, what if I forget to, and then she also has a pretty loud part that's a protector reminding her to quote unquote not fuck it up.

So helpful, huh? When she was able to tap into self, it whispered a different truth. You can be calm and still get things done. And guess what, when she stopped listening to the frantic voice and started trusting the quiet one, everything became easier, not because she was working harder, but because she wasn't wasting energy on all that mental spinning.

I have another client who's been struggling with her relationship with her teenage daughters. This client's perfectionistic part had very clear ideas about how these girls should behave, what they should prioritize and how they should spend their time.

And this part was constantly giving my client feedback and giving her the idea that she needed to give her daughter's feedback. So telling them you need to work harder in school, you should be more responsible.

Why aren't you taking this seriously? But she came into the call last week and said, I think I'm finally seeing the value and just connecting with them instead of always having these high expectations.

That shift from control to connection, that's self. Self doesn't. need them to be perfect. Self wants to love them just as they are. And when she starts showing up from that place, guess what happened?

Her daughters started opening up more, coming to her for advice and actually wanting to spend time with her. And this one makes me smile every time. I have a client with a three-year-old who recently had a birthday.

This mama's perfectionistic part wanted to cut the cake perfectly and make it look Instagram worthy and create this beautiful moment. But she must have heard this quieter voice that said something like, let him do it.

So she stepped back and let her toddler tell her where to cut his birthday cake. It looked absolutely janky, crooked pieces, kind of all chopped up. And when she posted a picture of it in our group, I said, this is beautiful.

And I bet it tasted sweeter too. That is self. Self knows that a perfectly cut cake means nothing compared to experiencing your child's joy and letting them experience joy and a sense of autonomy. So why do we keep missing these moments of wisdom?

Why do my clients think that these profound shifts are small wins? It's because we've been trained to listen to the loud voices. Our culture rewards the parts that achieve and perform and optimize. The inner critic gets results, or at least it thinks it does, so we keep turning up its volume.

Plus, like I said before, these protective parts speak with urgency. You need to fix this now. This is a crisis. If you don't do something immediately, everything will fall apart. Self doesn't need to speak with urgency because self knows that most things actually are not urgent.

Self knows that you're okay right now in the moment. Even when things are challenging, self has this calm knowing that you can handle whatever comes, that grounded certainty that I talked about. And here's the tricky part.

The loud voices sound so confident. Your inner critic doesn't say, I might be wrong about this, but it says you definitely are going to mess this up. Your anxious part doesn't say, this probably isn't a big deal, but it says this is definitely going to be in a disaster.

Self is confident too, but it's a quiet confidence. It doesn't need to prove anything. It doesn't need to argue or convince. It just knows. So how do we start hearing that quiet voice? First, you have to create space for it.

And I mean literal physical space. Self speaks in stillness. When you're rushing from one thing to the next, checking your phone, staying busy, multitasking, the protective parts of you are running the show.

You need moments of quiet to hear the whisper. So next time I want you to try this before you make a decision, even a small one. Just pause, take a few breaths, and ask what feels right here. Not what should I do, or what would be most productive, or what would make everyone else happy, but what feels right to me in this moment.

That feeling of rightness, that sense of, oh yes, this, that is self. Start paying attention to how different voices feel in your body. When your inner critic is talking, where do you feel it? For most people it feels pretty tight, it's urgent, it's kind of buzzy, there's this tension in your shoulders, or your jaw, or your throat, or your gut.

When self is speaking, it usually feels calm, even if the message isn't what you expected. There's a sense of, oh yes, that's true, rather than, oh no, I have to fix this. And your body gets to relax a little bit.

You can also practice asking yourself, okay, who's talking right now? Is this my anxious part? Is this my perfectionistic part, my people pleasing part? Or is this self? Just the act of identifying which part is speaking can help you see self more clearly.

And remember, self has these eight C's. So calmness, a sense of curiosity, compassion, confidence, it sounds courageous, there's clarity there, there's a feeling of connectedness and creativity. So when you notice those things, you can kind of notice that you're in self-energy.

And please, please, I implore you start celebrating those quiet moments of wisdom. When you choose connection over control, when you let yourself feel sad instead of powering through, when you trust that things can be easy, when you let the cake be janky, these aren't consolation prizes.

These are the whole point. If you've been dismissing your own quiet wisdom as not enough or too small, I want to give you permission to reconsider that voice that whispers this is enough or you're doing fine or let it be messy.

That's not your lazy part or your low standards part. That is self. That's the part of you that actually knows everything you need to know. Your inner critic will of course tell you that this is naive or irresponsible or maybe both.

It will say if you listen to that quiet voice, you'll become complacent. You'll stop growing. You'll settle for mediocrity. But I've watched so many women start trusting that quiet voice and their lives don't fall apart.

The opposite happens. They get calmer. Their relationships improve. Their kids feel their love. Their work flows more easily. They stop exhausting themselves trying to be perfect and start enjoying the life that they're actually living.

So this week, I want to challenge you to get quiet and listen. When you're making decisions big or small, pause and ask what feels right. Notice when you're celebrating the loud wins but dismissing the quiet ones.

Start honoring those whispered moments of wisdom. Your self knows exactly who you're meant to be and how you're meant to show up in the world, but you have to get quiet enough to hear it. When you do, becoming your favorite you isn't work anymore.

It's just coming home to you've always been. If this episode has been making you consider work with me or you've been considering working with me for a while, stick around for the outro because I'm going to offer you a chance to learn more about working together with a workshop I'm giving on Tuesday, September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern time. Okay, folks, thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

Hey, before you go, I want to tell you about something special I'm doing that I think you're going to love. On Tuesday, September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern, I'm hosting a free workshop called Why Smart Women Stay Stuck and the one ship that's set you free. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I work with growing accomplished women who have achieved everything they thought they wanted, but still feel stuck in one way or another. This workshop is for you if you're tired of overthinking every decision, if you're exhausted from seeking everyone else's approval, or if you know you're capable of more but can't figure out what more even looks like.

I'm going to share the one shift that changes everything, how to move from external authority to internal authority, and I'll tell you exactly what that looks like and how to make it happen in your own life.  Here's what makes this even better. Just for signing up, you'll be getting a 25-question assessment called Am I Giving My Power Away? That helps you identify exactly where you've been handing your authority over to others.

And if you show up live and engage with me during the workshop, you'll be getting two additional bonuses. My permission slips for smart women, a collection of 10 beautifully written permission slips you can save to your phone for daily reminders that you don't need anyone else's permission to want what you want.

Plus, you'll get my five-minute internal authority check-in. It's an audio to help point you back to your own intuition. The women who come to these workshops tell me that they get massive clarity just from the hour we spend together.

Some say it really helps them make sense of why they're doing what they've been doing, and it's completely free. Go to melissaparsonscoaching.com/workshop to save your spot. That's melissaparsonscoaching.com/workshop.

Tuesday, September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern. Stop trying to think your way out of being stuck and start trusting yourself instead. I'll see you there.