The other day, I walked into a store and saw someone I know. They didn’t say hello, they just walked by. Were they ignoring me? Did I do something wrong? Were they being rude? Or maybe they didn’t even see me.
All the way home, I went back and forth with an inner dialogue. I replayed the moment, argued with myself, tried to explain it from every angle. By the end, I realized something important: nothing had actually happened. The whole drama was inside my head.
And this is what we do.
We spend so much time in our heads… debating, defending, imagining what someone else might be thinking. We give this “inner voice” opinions, judgments, even accusations. We argue with it. We let it shape how we feel. We even make decisions around what it says.
But here’s the truth: that inner dialogue isn’t another person. It isn’t an actual conversation. It’s not reality. It’s a story your mind is telling… and sometimes it’s just not true.
Eckhart Tolle describes it so clearly:
“An enormous amount of suffering is created by not realizing a large percentage of your problems consists of self talk in the head.”
That inner voice can be convincing. It tells “little stories in the head”… and then we look at reality through those stories, about ourselves, about others, about life. Some stories are small, some are big, but they’re still stories.
The freedom comes in recognizing the voice for what it is.
As Tolle says:
“The moment there’s an awareness that there is self talk … the possibility of freedom from the self talk opens up.”
Awareness breaks the spell. When you notice, “Wait, this is just a story in my head”, you step out of the noise and into presence. The voice loses some of its grip.
This morning, I actually caught myself doing this. I was having these thoughts… little stories playing out in my head… and I had to pause for a second. I realized I was getting pulled into them, believing them. Then I stopped and thought, wait… this is just a story in my head. The moment I saw it for what it was, something shifted. The noise quieted down, and I felt a bit more present… like I had stepped outside the story instead of being stuck inside it.
I’m learning to catch myself in those moments, and every time I do, it feels like a small bit of freedom. It’s not always easy… sometimes the stories feel real… but awareness changes something. I wanted to share this because it’s been helping me, and maybe it will resonate with someone else too.
Thanks for reading… and if this little reflection resonated, I’d love to share more of these with you here.💖🌿