Читать книгу Becoming an Invitational Leader - William W Purkey - Страница 19

Many names have been used to describe this hushed inner voice, including: self-talk, internal dialogue, inner-conversations, self-referent thought, concealed verbalizations, private speech, intro-communication, inner voice, personal cognitions, self-statements, and covert conversation. But whatever term we ascribe to this inner speech, it is clear that the whispering self is a vital part of the total thinking process in human consciousness. It arises the moment we think of something, most often with the aid of language to articulate it.

Carlos Castaneda, in his book A Separate Reality, explains the nature of the whispering self this way: “The world is such-and-such or so-and-so because we tell ourselves that is the way it is . . . you talk to yourself. You’re not unique in that. Every one of us does that. We carry on internal talk . . . in fact we maintain our world with our internal talk.” In a very special way each person is both subject and object. The whispering self is both speaker and listener.

A graphic description of how the whispering serves as both subject and object, speaker and listener, was provided by Steven Callahan, who was adrift for seventy-six days on a tiny float following the sinking of his sailboat. Here is how Callahan, alone in a vast ocean, described talking to and listening to himself: “Maintaining discipline becomes more difficult each day. My fearsome and fearful crew mutter mutinous misgivings within the fo’c’s’le of my head. Their spokesman yells at me. ‘Water, Captain! We need more water. Would you have us die here, so close to port? What is a pint or two? We’ll soon be in port. We can surely spare a pint. . . .’ ‘Shut up!’ I order. ‘We don’t know how close we are, might have to last to the Bahamas. Now, get back to work.’” This saga describes how a brave man’s determined intentionality in the face of insurmountable hardships leads to eventual rescue.

The way we use language — and the language we use — gives structure to our perceptual worlds. Although thinking can occur without language, the words we use greatly enhance thinking and influence behavior. Simply stated, the way to change the self is to change the self’s internal dialogue.

Internal dialogue seems so commonplace that it is almost akin to background music. Yet this inner voice is a potent force for good and ill, for it guides and controls overt behavior. As Csikszentmihalyi explained, “People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us come to being happy.” It is thought escaping into the open where it can be crystallized into recognizable self-talk and evaluated for its positive or negative messages. By listening and controlling this subtle inner narration, Invitational Leadership reveals itself.