040: Why We Need to Stop the Inner Dialogue in our Heads

The podcast delves into the phenomenon of engaging in imaginary conversations within one's own mind, particularly anticipating dialogues with others. The hosts discuss how these inner dialogues, where one plays both sides of the conversation, are ultimately unproductive and can lead to unnecessary stress and frustration. They explore the idea that these internal conversations are not merely thoughts but rather immersive experiences that can affect one's emotions and behavior. The conversation highlights the importance of being present and the potential negative impacts of overthinking and rehearsing conversations that may never occur. Additionally, they consider the intentions behind these inner dialogues and question whether the investment of time and energy in anticipating multiple scenarios is worth the mental toll it can take.

Connect with Mike Chang:
- Instagram: @mikechangofficial
-Youtube: Mike Chang
- Website: www.flow60.com

Connect with Stephen Yeh:
-Instagram: @iamstephenyeh
-Twitter: @iamstephenyeh

Transcript

Mike: [00:00:00] So I was driving yesterday and came to this realization that we people don't need to have this inner dialogue in our head, particularly where we are having a conversation with somebody else in our head. It's been a while since I did that, but it happened yesterday. And I remember I was driving. And everything was fine until I started to think about what I'm going to say and what this person is going to say.

And, , this is on one of the, one of the business meetings that I actually had. To be honest, I had it this morning, but I was thinking about it yesterday. And I came to the realization that It's absolutely completely useless to have conversations in our head about where we are playing [00:01:00] both sides, and I want to talk about that today because it's not only is it useless, I mean, , it actually creates so much problem because I was driving, I was feeling fine and before I know it, I'm sitting there and I'm like, I feel a little frustrated, I feel upset and I'm thinking, I'm driving, I'm going, what just happened?

I, I was just fine literally a few minutes ago and then suddenly I'm driving everything is fine. Nothing's changed except for the fact that now I feel a little frustrated and upset as if this person is trying to attack me or doing this, but nothing actually happened. This was just dialogue in my mind.

And I remember I focused on breathing. I came back to the present moment. I let it go, let it go. And then finally when I'm feeling back to normal, I'm feeling good. I was like, what just, what did I just do there? And I remember I used to do this. All the time, all the time, it's nuts. Yeah. You ever, this is something that happens for you, 

Stephen: Stephen.

I mean, it happens [00:02:00] quite a bit. I mean, especially those that, you surround yourself with, especially , with my partner, that happens a lot, especially with, brothers or relatives and things like that. You know, I can totally see it in terms of colleagues for people. And it's just one of those things where it almost, I don't know if it's a societal thing, but for sure, pretty much it happens to everybody and kind of like what you were saying, I didn't even know it was going on.

Mike: Just to clarify what you're saying is like, you would, let's say like with your partner, like you would act like her and you will say like, she will say this, da, da, da, da, da. And then you will say this, da, da, da, da. 

Stephen: Yeah. So in like, I just, let's say I'm working and then something pops up.

I think about her. About a certain situation. Now it's like me speaking to her. She's saying something back and in me [00:03:00] reacting and responding back to that. And then as I'm sitting here looking into the space of nothingness, this whole story is is getting built. She has no idea in, in real life, but especially if it's like a hot topic.

Now I'm getting frustrated. So when I finally go to her, I'm already pent up or at least I'm already feeling a bit frustrated before even chatting with her. 

Mike: There you go. And the 

Stephen: thing, and the reason why I'm so okay with talking about this is because I know almost everybody. Does the same thing, and this essentially in Buddhism as well, is this is the aspect of Maya that is talked about.

It's the perception illusion essentially because we have all these filters and stories inside of us that doesn't really match reality. And it seems like you just had one of those cases for yourself yesterday that you picked up [00:04:00] on 

Mike: and it's been so long now. Because this used to happen to me all the time, all the time.

And there has been a really long stretch where this doesn't happen. Like, probably in one year it's maybe happened, I don't know, 10 times, it's like, it doesn't happen. Like when it happened, it was strange. It was like, Whoa, this is happening. Wait. And then I started to feel it and I go, wait, this is not, something I do.

Like It was, but it used to be an everyday all day long thing, but this is different. I think before we may look at it and go, well, this is just about being present and not constantly thinking, but this is not just thinking, you know, it's not just thinking because we can sit there and think, think about an idea, think about an outcome, the details of this outcome.

What needs to happen, and what will happen when this [00:05:00] happens, and then the effect of that, and the effect of that, and the effect of that, and what pieces need to, like, we can think about those things, but what we're talking about here is When somebody is having a conversation with somebody else in their own head.

The I say this, and then he says this, or she says this. That, that is different than just using our mind. And that I think is, Not only just completely useless, it actually creates so much mental and emotional turmoil. So much mental, emotional suffering, because we know it's not happening, but because we are experiencing this event in our mind, we feel it in our body as if it happened.

And then when we actually have the [00:06:00] conversation, the meeting, when we actually do the dialogue, we aren't going there fresh, we're going there with already having five dialogues about this in our mind, 10 dialogues for some people, even more. So it's like we've been. You know, that feeling where you like bang your head against the wall inside your mind because you can't seem to get through that's the funniest you ever had that happen where you're in your mind and it's like, you're like, Oh, I can't get through to you.

Why can't you're almost like, like you're literally feeling stuck in your mind and then you don't know what to say to this person. And then this person responds back with this resistance. It's, completely nuts. But yet, this is exactly what happens to people's minds and exactly how my mind was before.

I want to talk about the intentions. I think a lot of people, when they think about this, they're like, okay, well, I can see that, but what else can I do? , because I'm not [00:07:00] purposely trying to create any issues. It's just that I want to figure out this thing. That's why I'm having this dialogue.

I want to make sure I'm prepared for this conversation. I want to know that. If I say this and they respond with A, I know what to respond and they respond with B, I know what to respond and they respond with C and so forth. Right? So therefore I want to be prepared. That's why I'm having this dialogue.

It's not just for fun, but if we think about it, like how many alternate responses could a person have? Now, sometimes we go, well, we can come up with as many as we can come up with. But , does that mean we're actually covering all the responses? Can you imagine like in our head, we think that there is 10 possible responses and then we go through 10 variations of dialogue and every dialogue is like back and forth, man, even if we, prepared and now we know what to respond to 10 responses, the amount of energy, And [00:08:00] attention it took to practice that outcome.

Even if we were to say that we are 90 percent chance that it's going to be one of those outcomes. We invest so much time and energy. And I think we have to ask, is it even, worth it? Because we feel a lot of times. We could feel pretty frustrated. We can feel upset and we haven't even had the real event happen.

We just feel a little frustrated because it's mentally draining to, run through, , 10 different scenarios of conversation in our mind of what we're going to say. Right. And you know how our mind goes when usually just coming up with, well, what happened, they say this and really extreme this.

And now how am I going to be able to overcome this really difficult response? What happened? They asked me this, what can I really say? And we're sitting there feeling stuck, when in reality this has never even happened. Our mind made it up, and then now our mind [00:09:00] feels stuck because we don't know how to answer it.

Yeah, it's completely nuts. 

Stephen: I remember when I was a teenager in my late teens, , I started picking up some of those books about picking up women, and there was a lot of that going on, which is just like, If she says this, then you can say that. And then, there's just like whole paragraphs and whole storylines of things that you can say based on what they say.

And after a while I was just like, man, this is absolutely crazy. Insane. Did you memorize 

Mike: those paragraphs? 

Stephen: , I, I remember there was that one side knowing that dialogue, but then there was another side, which is just shifting your state. And, , if you just shifted your state from, let's say, like a nervousness or like this in your scenario, more frustratedness and change it into more of a calm, relaxed state.

Now, all of a sudden you almost have more [00:10:00] access. All that dialogue, you don't need to know all that dialogue. It almost just feels like when you're more common centered, you can walk into that scenario, just feeling more confident, more calm, and essentially feel like the outcome that you're looking for has a much bigger probability of happening because of that.

Mike: So in other words, you know what to say, you'll know what to say in the moment. Don't need to plan it because you just jumble up the words. I think a lot of times this happens when, when we are in our head, planning out what to say in this situation, when we're having these inner dialogues and these conversations, and we're trying to remember when they respond this way, I'm going to say it this way.

So we're not even present in the real life conversation because they're trying to go back into a scenario in our head. So we're not fully present with what is being said. It's almost like we are selecting at this moment, which. Line can I [00:11:00] drop in? So we're not fully present with what a person is saying.

We're not fully present with how this person's feeling really. We can't respond well because we don't see everything. We're just partially here and partially in the background, just seeing which line, which thing we can say. And even if we found the line, it doesn't come out very genuine.

When a person is listening to us, they may feel like, Hey, I don't think you really heard me. Because we didn't, we just picked up on certain cues that stood out and we go, yep, this response would be really good versus actually listening to what person is saying and responding to what they say versus responding to what we are saying.

Think is the best response. 

Stephen: You know, it's so funny. This reminds me of like the political landscape right now that's going on you don't follow too much, but sometimes I'm on YouTube. I'm looking at all this [00:12:00] crazy protests going on. And , it's like this person says something and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it's like no, you're being racist and there's nothing about race talks about at all, but they just had all this preplanned kind of speech or reaction that they're ready to spill.

And so, it's, it's essentially this on steroids. 

Mike: Now, so, by all means, we gotta cut out the inner dialogue. And instead of focusing on what we would say and what a person will say, we need to focus on what the outcome that we want to happen, and we can focus on the effects of that. We're still using our mind.

This isn't just about being present or not present. We can be in our mind, which means we're not present in real life here, not fully, but we can be in our mind analyzing outcomes. [00:13:00] When this happens, this will happen, and this will happen, and this will happen. And these outcomes are what we Want, not what we don't want.

We need to focus on what we want and make sure we're clear on that. And then we can focus on, Hey, if things don't work out, this will happen. And when this will happen, what can I do to steer it towards what I want? So now we can use our mind to, help us get clear on what's happening and to still create the best possible scenario.

Because that was really the point of why we would even have all the inner dialogue anyways. We're just trying to create the best scenario for our life. We're just trying to be mentally prepared. But instead of spending time on that and energy on that and just creating a lot of sabotage for ourself, focus our energy, focus our attention on what the actual outcome is.

Like if I'm talking to Natalia and I want [00:14:00] her to start doing this thing. And I think it's going to be great and all this stuff instead of focusing on I'm going to present it this way and she's going to say this and I'm going to say this and go back and forth instead just focus on okay so now I want her to do this so now when this thing happens what's going to happen from there what's the effect and then this thing's going to happen and this thing's going to happen and this thing's going to happen right how can she do this thing she can do it this way by doing it this this this this So then you see, it's focusing on all everything that I want to happen, the steps to how to get there.

If I know it right, focusing on the steps, focusing all of this and not giving any attention to the dialogue part, because essentially the dialogue part is the only time we would even think about that is when we have doubt. Of what we want to happen will happen so that we think about what we need to do to [00:15:00] convince the other person to do what we want to do.

That's what the dialogue is really about. So that in itself, the moment we even start the dialogue, what we're saying is that we're focusing on them saying no. We're focusing on a person causing resistance for us. That's what we are putting out there in the universe. That's what we're focusing on. The resistance that we're going to run into.

And because we focus on that through this dialogue in our mind, we create this resistance in our everyday life, because that becomes the filter in which we see our life. So then when we have this conversation with somebody, we've already played all of these scenarios in our head about the resistance and about how they're going to not listen to us, how they're going to come back with this and that, we already play those scenarios.

So when we're having the conversation, we're literally looking for when someone says that , we're looking for when they're going to go and show us the [00:16:00] resistance, just like how we played it out in our mind. And that just creates the resistance that just creates the obstacles you see.

So that our inner dialogue actually is the one that's creating all the problems, creating all the resistance of us. Getting what we really want. It absolutely makes no sense. It's completely useless. And if we really want to go and prepare for a conversation, we want to go make the best possible outcome happen.

Let's focus on the specific thing we want to happen, all the moving pieces it takes to go and make that thing happen, how we're going to make that happen. What's going to happen. All right. All of that and give no attention or time to the possibility that a person's going to stop us. Not because that may not happen, it could happen, but I'm not going to be promoting it, if it happens, it happens.

You know what I mean? It's like, we actually promote those things that we don't want because we create the freaking, conversations in our head. When we take a step back and think [00:17:00] about what we actually do as people with these dialogues, it's completely insane. And people just don't realize it.

They think it's normal. Everybody's doing it, but they don't realize what they're doing. They're creating all the resistance of everything they want. So I'm really glad I came to this realization as I was driving because I, and this is something that's happening all the time. This used to happen every day for me.

This was my normal life. And since it hasn't happened, I haven't thought about it until yesterday. Oh, and guess what that conversation I had today in that meeting earlier, all those scenarios I played out, I played out scenarios for about five minutes in my head and it felt really frustrated last night.

And then I'd let it go today, the meeting, nothing, none of that even played out. It was total opposite to what I thought. It was received entirely different. It was just a waste of time yesterday, a completely energetic drain. Not 

Stephen: just time. Luckily it wasn't that long. [00:18:00] 

Mike: It didn't even happen. It was just, I was, this is what we call overthinking, but I wanted to be specific because we can think about what we want and all the ways of getting it and all the details, but I want to be specific on is these useless inner dialogue conversations.

We got to cut those out. 

Stephen: All right. So hopefully that helped you guys. You know, that, that promotion part, that was hilarious. Yeah. Hopefully that was beneficial for you as it was for me. And, uh, we will see you on the next episode.