The Quiet Voice That Knows Who You Are

The life I longed for — where is it?

Inside a drab, dimly lit office tower, a worker bends over his grind. His pay is meagre, his job dull and repetitive, and he seems bound to this still, unmoving world. To his eyes, a fulfilling life feels hopelessly out of reach — a mere fantasy; all he can do is face reality and toe the line. And yet he cannot help but feel, deep inside, a pull to break away from this state — a pull that leaves him anxious and uncertain: "Do I really want to live like this?"

If you listen closely, you will find that deep within you there is always a voice — a gut feeling — yearning for freedom, yearning to live a fuller life. And perhaps you also hear that faint voice murmuring in your mind: "This isn't me. I don't want to lose my true self; this isn't me — the life I longed for, where is it?"

Deep within everyone lies a voice intent on pursuing a fulfilling life. This observation comes from Carl Rogers, one of the most influential psychologists of all; when our inner self is given freedom, we are able to realise our inner potential to mature and grow.

Humanistic Psychology Humanistic Psychology

How does the inner self find freedom? What does that voice deep inside yearn for? These questions all find their answers in Carl Rogers's "humanistic psychology" (humanistic psychology). Rogers held that anxiety stems from an inner incongruence. When there is a marked gap between a person's actual self and their ideal self, incongruence arises. This means the person cannot truly realise the ideal state they hope for in their heart, because of the various constraints and challenges of real life. Such incongruence can lead to psychological discomfort and stress, and may even affect a person's self-esteem and psychological health.

To reduce incongruence, Rogers encouraged people to face their inner feelings with courage, to accept their true self, and to remain free of the influence of others' expectations and judgements. Through this pursuit of self-acceptance and authenticity, a person can gradually bring their actual self and ideal self into harmony, and so reach a healthier, more flourishing psychological state.

In other words, when we deny our true feelings, or when social expectations, values and other pressures keep us from showing our true self, the result is stress, anxiety and a sense of loss. Why do we not listen to our own hearts? What stops us from becoming the person we ideally want to be, leaving us unable to realise ourselves and stuck in the present?

The inner voices we cover over

Think of the things that feel unrewarding to you, and yet you keep doing them anyway — perhaps simply because they fit your "self-image". Self-image is a person's perception and evaluation of themselves, including how they view their own appearance, abilities, traits, values and behaviour; it can be positive, negative or neutral. These perceptions and evaluations are usually built up over the course of growing up and through social experience — through self-reflection, interaction with others, social comparison and so on.

When a person holds a particular expectation about their self-image, they fold that expectation into their behaviour, which in turn influences their performance and actions, forming the psychological phenomenon known as the self-fulfilling prophecy (self-fulfilling prophecy). These influenced behaviours can bring about the very outcome that was expected, so that the expectation becomes reality.

For example, if a person is told they are a highly talented musician, they will practise music with more confidence and put more effort into it. This positive belief and behaviour may eventually make them a genuinely excellent musician, realising the outcome they had expected all along. Conversely, if a musician is told they have no talent, they may begin to doubt themselves and perform poorly in this area. Such negative expectations may ultimately lead them to perform worse than they otherwise would.

This psychological phenomenon reminds us that expectations and beliefs have an important influence on a person's behaviour and outcomes. In education, work, relationships and so on, offering positive support and encouragement, and helping a person build a positive self-fulfilling prophecy, helps foster personal growth and success. At the same time, avoiding negative, limiting expectations can prevent a negative self-fulfilling prophecy from taking hold.

Living for yourself, or living for others?

Beyond maintaining a self-image, have you ever tried doing something not because it serves your own life goals, but only to win the respect and praise of others? Rogers believed we have a psychological need to receive "positive regard" — that is, the respect, approval and acceptance of others. At times, this force can mask the drive towards self-actualisation, so that we act not for our own goals but only to gain others' respect, drawing our sense of self-worth solely from how others see us. Is there any authenticity in our behaviour at all? If we act for the sake of others' approval, we may well betray ourselves and end up troubled.

Rogers held that our need for positive regard depends on a person's "conditions of worth" (conditions of worth) — that is, a person's evaluation and acceptance of their own value, and these evaluations usually come from external standards and expectations. Specifically, in the course of growing up and socialisation (socialization), a person takes on the values and expectations of family, educational institutions, society, culture and so on. These external standards and expectations become the yardstick by which a person evaluates their own worth. When a person's behaviour and traits meet these external standards, they receive positive feedback and recognition, and so form positive conditions of worth. Conversely, if a person's behaviour and traits do not meet these standards, they may receive negative evaluations, and so form negative conditions of worth.

Take, for instance, a child who is full of enthusiasm for football, but whose parents push them to spend their extracurricular hours on tutoring and study instead. The child has no space to realise their true self, and so covers over their inner voice, feeling that they only have worth, and only earn their parents' approval, when they comply with them. The ideal would be that, no matter whether the parents like the child's behaviour or interests, the child still feels accepted by their parents, has the freedom to realise themselves, and feels that their existence has worth. Fortunately, Rogers stressed that, whatever the past may have held, each person's inner drive to grow remains, and works throughout life to realise the self.

When a person's self-worth depends entirely on external evaluation, they feel inwardly uneasy, and strive to fall in line with others' expectations in order to gain affirmation and acceptance. Such a situation leads to a person's true feelings being suppressed, and may even cost them their real self. So, in order to realise healthy self-growth, Rogers believed people should rise above conditions of worth and genuinely accept and affirm their own inner value. He advocated building unconditional positive regard (unconditional positive regard), which means not taking external evaluation as the yardstick, but instead accepting all of one's own experiences and emotions non-judgementally (non-judgmental), and seeing them as precious and worthwhile. By building unconditional positive regard, a person can face themselves more authentically, express their true traits and feelings, and so realise healthier, more positive self-growth.

Reach for and listen to your inner voice, and live "authentically"

When we shed the obstacles that make us betray ourselves, we grow, mature and realise ourselves naturally.

The first step in finding and listening to your inner self once more is reflection. We can begin by asking ourselves a "miracle question": "Suppose you fall asleep tonight at your usual time, but in the middle of the night a miracle happens, and all the problems you face today are gone. When you wake up the next day, what is the first difference you notice in your life?" The point of this miracle question is to let a person break away from "real life" and imagine, free of constraints, their ideal life. It lets us understand the life our inner self truly wants to live, see the gap between the ideal self and the actual self, and then set some concrete goals to close that gap step by step.

In addition, mindfulness (mindfulness) practice is a tool that helps raise self-awareness and accept one's own emotions and thoughts. Sitting in a quiet place and focusing on the breath can let us become aware of the thoughts and behaviours that block authentic expression. At the same time, mindfulness lets us accept our experiences in a non-critical way, strengthen a positive self-image, and listen more closely to our inner voice. Most importantly, mindfulness teaches us to live in the present, free of the self-limitation created by past experiences, bringing us closer to the essence of authentic living.

Reading this far, at this very moment, you may already have arrived at much reflection and many insights. You can try setting aside a time each day, in a quiet, comfortable place, to write in a journal that helps you reflect — writing freely about the feelings in your heart, reaching for and clarifying your inner voice a little further. Through these methods, we can begin to peel back our own layer upon layer of veils, uncover the road towards genuine fulfilment, and ultimately realise a fuller life. Let us listen to our inner voice, trust our own gut feeling, and live in our own way — may the journey be as beautiful as the destination.

References

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2019). A Phenomenological Theory: The Personality Theory of Rogers. In Personality: Theory and research (14th ed., pp. 127–158). essay, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Rogers, C. R. (2013). A theory of therapy and personality change: As developed in the client-centered framework”. Perspectives in Abnormal Behavior: Pergamon General Psychology Series, 341.

Stith, S. M. , Miller, M. S., Boyle, J., Swinton, J., Ratcliffe, G., & McCollum, E. (2010). Making a difference in making miracles: Common roadblocks to miracle question effectiveness. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 38(2), 380–393.

Xiao, Q., Yue, C., He, W., & Yu, J. Y. (2017). The mindful self: A mindfulness-enlightened self-view. Frontiers in psychology, 1752.