Silence Is Golden

Silence is golden. I hear that phrase a lot. Usually from other people who say it in a very biting tone of voice. Maybe it’s because I am a drummer and I’m always making noise that tends to annoy other people. But even when I stop playing drums and shut off my stereo (which takes extreme willpower for me to actually power it down) and try to be “quiet”, everything still seems pretty loud. My external world may have dropped to zero decibels, but my brain is still cranked to the max and all I hear are a bunch of screaming voices getting louder and louder as they compete for my attention.

We all have voices in our head, don’t deny it. Psychologists call them our “inner dialog” but I feel more like it’s a one-sided lecture rather than a conversation with myself. The “me” on the outside really isn’t getting a word in edge-wise as the voices increase their intensity and read me the riot act.

I’ve done a lot of research on this “inner dialog” stuff and it is fascinating. All the self-improvement experts will tell you that you should turn that negative banter into positive affirmations, but I think that is so bogus. It sounds nice in theory, but let’s be real. I don’t know about you, but the voices in my head have absolutely no tact whatsoever. They are highly critical of everything I do and they are not afraid to speak up and tell me what they think. I once thought about following that “expert” advice and teaching them to say some nice things. The first training session went something like this:

Me: “Good morning, peeps. How’s it going today?”
Voices: “What’s good about it?”
Me: “Well, the sun is out and it’s a great day!”
Voices: “It’s hot and muggy. Go back to bed.”
Me: “But there’s a lot to do today, let’s get an early start.”
Voices: “Early? You’ve never been early for anything! Why start now?”
Me: “Well, I want to be productive today so I’m gonna get started…”
Voices: “Productive? That’s a big word for you.”
Me: “I think I can handle it. We’re going to start thinking positively now guys.”
Voices: *deafening sound of laughter*
Me: “Here’s the plan…Instead of you all nagging and criticizing me, I want you to say things in a nicer, more upbeat way. You know, encourage me. Motivate me. You can do it!”
Voices: More laughter followed by “Um…sure. Ok.”
Me: “Now what should I do first today?”
Voices: “Here’s something productive for you…why don’t you go work out?”
Me: “Hey good idea! And you were even nice about it!”
Voices: “Yeah – get a move on, chubby. And when you’re done with that why don’t you go practice your drums because you really suck on that new song…”

Yeah, I know. Kind of pointless to try to change them. So if you can’t beat them, join them, right? Go ahead and admit defeat if you want, but I don’t like to lose. And the more I played this “positive thinking” game the more frustrated I became. Finally, one day I decided I needed a new strategy if I was going to win. I determined if I can’t change how the voices talk to me then I could at least learn to interpret them in a more positive way.

When I was in college studying to get my music degree, I had the worst time with recitals. I absolutely dreaded them. I hated playing the piano in public and a piano recital was my worst nightmare coming true. Sounds crazy that I was majoring in music and hated performing in public, but that only applied to piano. I can sit down at a drum set in front of millions of people and feel right at home. Piano is just a whole other ballgame for me. Before every recital, the voices would start telling me that I stunk at piano and that I was going to totally mess up and make a fool of myself on the stage in front of all of my professors and peers. During my freshman year, that totally happened to me. Not once, but twice. The first time, I stopped in the middle of the piece and had to start over. The second time I fumbled through it and ended up skipping an entire section! My teacher was not pleased to say the least. In all honesty, I was just not prepared. (And I still think those recitals scarred me for life.)

By my sophomore year, I learned how to interpret the voices. I don’t know about you, but the voices in my head are just down right rude. They will say things like “you suck” but what they really mean is “you are not ready yet, keep practicing.” In reality the voices are really trying to motivate and encourage me, but they just lack proper people skills. It’s true. But the voices have a weak spot – a breaking point. In my quest to shut them up, I decided to play their game. If they were gonna be nasty, well – I can play that game, too. See the title of my web site? If you haven’t figured it out yet, I have a bit of an attitude. I am rather sarcastic and if you tell me something can’t be done then I won’t hesitate to prove that it can. So I started talking back. I’m really good at it – ask my mom. ;) I started replying to the voices by saying really intelligent things like “Yeah, I do suck at this so back off!” And then I would practice my butt off at whatever it was until I could nail it with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. Ok, not really – I needed both hands to play the piano.

Soon I figured out that getting into arguments and shouting matches with myself wasn’t working, but it was pushing me to be better at practicing and perfecting the music I was learning. And I found that the voices began to back down when I gave in to total preparation for a recital. When I buckled down and did what I SHOULD have been doing all along and learning the music thoroughly, memorizing and making it my own, that’s when the voices got really quiet. They ran out of things to say. I took ownership and responsibility for my actions and the voices no longer had anything to nag me about. I won!

See, the voices are not really out to get me. They are just trying to tell me that there are things in my world that aren’t quite right and they really want me to do something about them. My strategy to keep them quiet is to take notice of their complaint, translate the “you suck” part into something like “hey maybe you ought to work on this…” and then make plans to make it right. I have worked out a little system for dealing with the complaints. I used to say “take a number,” but over the years I have developed counseling sessions with each little screamer and it’s a very sweet arrangement. I’ll blog more on the details of these session next time. This is already WAAAYYY too long by blogging standards. However, the names and situations will be changed in order to protect the confidentiality of my own scary thoughts.