Tweet

Shut The Duck Up!

Written by: Tim Brownson

Article Overview: Is the voice inside your head supportive?

Shut The Duck Up!

We all have a voice inside our head that chatters to us constantly about the day-to-day situations we find ourselves in. It’s one of the main ways that we interpret external data. We mull it over often at either a conscious or sometimes unconscious level and construct conversations internally with ourselves.

Although we all have this voice (or more often than not, several different ones) we have our own particular versions some of which can be more helpful than others

Does your voice support and encourage you when things aren’t going quite as planned or does it become aggressive, whiny, rude, pessimistic and thinks nothing of tearing a strip off you? Is it often far more hostile and abusive to you than you ever would be to other people?

I once heard this voice likened to that of a bad tempered miserable old duck! Yes that’s what I said, a duck. Close your eyes and you can hear the voice in your head now quacking away at you. You may not have noticed it’s duck-like aquatic qualities before but now you can. Do you know why you can? Because inside your own head you can hear whatever you want to hear.

You can of course hear your own voice in whatever tonality that you care for, or if you’d prefer you could be listening to yourself in the dulcet tones of Jimmy Stewart or James Earl Jones or even Oprah Winfrey. There really is no limit to the options, they are as infinite as your own imagination.

So with all the people to go at, why on earth would anybody ever pick the desperate duck? That’s a real tough question to answer because regularly I’ve people tell me that there isn’t any voice inside their head in the first place, I usually respond with “So you’re dead then?”

The fact is, we have had years to perfect our quacking and it happens so quickly and so unconsciously that many people have stopped noticing it. We mess up at something and the voice is sat there in the background ready to chime in “Quack, you are a failure, you never do anything right, you are an embarrassment”

Even when something goes well it can still undermine with “Quack, you just got lucky, wait until they find you out” It’s so insidious and so good at its job that its barely noticeable but the overall negative effect on you can be enormous. It has a drip-drip effect that serves only over the course of time to make you believe that what it’s saying is true, which in turn makes it so. It sets your own reality for you. That’s what I said; a duck sets your reality for you.

So maybe it’s about time to if not shut the duck up, then make him a little bit more friendly and supportive. You do need a voice inside our head so let’s pick one that you like. You can drop the duck or whatever you have now and chose a voice that makes you feel good if you really like.

You still want to be able to get the message across, so don’t make it so chilled and laid back that you never take any notice of it. You can even choose 2, 3 or as many voices as you want for different occasions. The only criteria being that the voice should always support you, always be helpful, never aggressive and it never puts you down.

Wouldn’t that be great, a voice that treats you with the respect that you deserve, the kind of respect that you like to offer to other people? If you perfect this and it does need practice to break some embedded habits, then I guarantee you will feel a great deal better about yourself.

Related Articles
  The Gecko vs. The Duck
  If it Looks like a Duck....
  100 Ways to Succeed #104
  Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Psychopathologies
  Lesson #2: Don’t Try to Tame a Wild Duck

Article Tags: life coaching, reality



Related Forum Posts
Re: What are you doing if o have a bad day? - If you're looking to relieve some stress or just take the edge off from having a bad day, I highly recommend buying an original Nintendo NES with Duck Hunt. You wouldn't believe how much fun shooting virtual ducks on the TV can be. If I get mad or just have a bad day in general, I just pop it in and play for a while, trying to beat my high score. It's great to do something different every now and then and take your mind off of your problems.
Re: What are you doing if o have a bad day? - [quote="Alan Mater":2v1ehobi]If you're looking to relieve some stress or just take the edge off from having a bad day, I highly recommend buying an original Nintendo NES with Duck Hunt. You wouldn't believe how much fun shooting virtual ducks on the TV can be. If I get mad or just have a bad day in general, I just pop it in and play for a while, trying to beat my high score. It's great to do something different every now and then and take your mind off of your problems.[/quote:2v1ehobi] I love it! What a great idea!
Top 50 Entrepreneurs Ever! - And the Top 50 Entrepreneurs of all time are… (In no particular order) Hugh Hefner – Obvious. Oprah – Born to a single mother in rural Mississippi, did what she loved and never let up. Popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre. Simon Cowell – Guy made millions off Karaoke. Jenna Jameson – Worth $70 million using only what god gave her. Henry Ford – Standardized efficiency. Thomas Edison – Numerous failures on the road to success. Perseverance! Adrian Block - 1612 establish the first known brewery in the New World on the southern tip of New Amsterdam (Manhattan). I live in a city with more than 30 breweries operating in the city limits…think these guys were onto something. Hans Christiansen – Partners with Adrian Block. Adam Osborne – Creator of the 1st personal computer. Howard Hughes – Say what you want about him the man had a vision and stuck to it. Madame C.J. Walker – 1st Female African American Millionaire…and she did it in early 1900’s. Safe to say she had a lot of obstacles, but persevered and prospered. If you think you have more working against you than Madame C.J. Walker did, think again. Mary Kay Ash – The woman behind Mary Kay cosmetics. Redefined affiliate marketing. Howard Schultz – Who’s gonna’ pay $4.00 for a cup of coffee? With $2.5 billion plus in total revenue the answer at Starbuck’s is a lot! Alexander Graham Bell – Inventing the telephone in 1876 was about as wacky an idea as teleportation is today…did that stop him? King Croesus – Minted the world’s first coin in 6th century. Benjamin Franklin – Author, printer, inventor, businessman. Ray Croc – Where do you go for dinner when you spent all your money on $4.00 Starbuck’s coffee? McDonald’s! Franchising and national expansion (both stores and waistlines) would never be the same. Sam Walton – Speaking of saving money and expanding like crazy. Sam Walton found a niche and filled it, regardless of what you think of the extra traffic Wal-Mart brings to your neighborhood. Ernest Gallo – Took what was once an exclusive product and repackaged it for the masses. I was 20 years old before I knew wine came in anything but a “jug”. William Middlebrook – Giving William the nod for inventing the paper clip, although some debate remains. However, you have to include the inventor of the paper clip in this list since we’ve all said, at one time or another, “and whoever invented the paperclip is rich, and I’m still working in this crappy office!” Bill Gates – Took a risk and was a first mover in a market that exploded. Steve Jobs – Make your products easy and people will love to use them…making a dead sexy laptop doesn’t hurt either. Mayer Amschel Rothschild – Started the world’s first international bank in the mid 1700’s. What did you do today? Scrooge McDuck - Scrooge has emerged from being a mere supporting character to a major figure of the Duck universe. Parlayed early success into his own comic book series, television appearances, films, and video games. As big as David Hasselhoff in Europe, he seized opportunity when it arose. Russell Simmons – Worth $325 million, and started as a teen street hustler. A hip hop pioneer and visionary who has shaped the hip-hop scene of the early 80’s, has branched off into fashion, television and film. And I don’t care if you grew up in Brooklyn or Beverly Hills you remember “Russell Simmons Def Comedy Jam”. Ron Popeil – Net worth in excess of $100 million dollars. A consummate salesman, he had us believing we NEEDED a food dehydrator and spray paint to cover our bald spot! The Phoenicians – Inventors of the sail boat, and could be credited then with giving our early explorers the means to take over the western hemisphere. H. Ross Perot – Used a $1,000 loan from his wife in 1962 to start Electronic Data Systems. Became a billionaire as computer systems drove the need for electronic data storage. JP Morgan – How many people get credited with having saved or rescued the U.S. national economy in general—and the federal government in particular—on two separate occasions? Not many, and JP was a merger monger legend in his time. Charles Schwab – Founder and CEO of the Schwab Corporation, made having a broker cool and accessible. Worth $5.5 billion for his efforts. Larry Page – Google, need we say more? Sergey Brin - Google, need we say more? Philip Knight – In partnership with Bill Bowerman created Nike. What’s the reward for taking a product everyone uses and making it functional and fashionable? Try a net worth in excess of $9 billion dollars. George Lucas – Start with a vision, add some talent, and never waiver. Stars Wars is as well known on this planet as Coca-Cola, and Lucas is worth a cool $3.6 billion. Doctor John Pemberton – Pharmacist who in 1886 invented Coca Cola. Forced to change his formula from including wine due to prohibition his elixir with “tonic and nerve stimulant properties of the coca plant and cola nuts sweetened with sugar” became a sensation. Eberhand Anheuser- Founder of Anheuser Busch Brewing and Budweiser beer…thank you sir for the many mornings where I regretted the night before. Adolphus Busch - Founder of Anheuser Busch Brewing and Budweiser beer…bless you for allowing me to think I am funny, great looking, and a fabulous dancer for a few hours every Saturday night. Jeff Bezos – Founded Amazon.com in 1994, and wrote up the business plan for his company on a cross country drive from New York to Seattle. Was a .com entrepreneur before there was even a term for it. Thomas Kinkade - Americas most collected living artist. Marketing works people. Erno Rubik - Invented a puzzle only .000001% of the world population could solve without cheating, and sold millions! Marketing works people. Alex Tew - 21 year old entrepreneur made $1,000,000 off the “Million Dollar Homepage”. Adding him to the list to illustrate that great ideas are sometimes in plain sight. Didn’t we all think, “I wish I had thought of that”? Henry Hassenfeld - Owner of a textile plant in 1923 his company struck gold when they developed a way for kids to play doctor. The first toy the plant ever produced led the way for the likes of Mr Potato Head, GI Joe, Life, Yatzee, Candyland, and just about any other game we played as kids. Partners with his brother Helal Hassenfeld. Helal Hassenfeld - Thanks for the memories man, I still get misty eyed thinking about Cobra Comander and the words “YO Joe” will live with me forever. Rollin King - In 1965 started a regional airline serving 3 Texas cities. 40 years later Southwest Airlines has 3500 flights a day and is the number one airline in the United States and the World by number of passengers carried. Herb Kelleher - Partnered with Rollin King to start Southwest Airlines. The guy started an AIRLINE COMPANY for crying out loud, that’s ballsy. Guy Laliberte - Made the circus cool again. Founder and CEO of Canda’s Cirque du Soleil, Laliberte founded Cirque in 1984, and revolutionized the idea of what a circus could be. Cirque du Soleil has toured more than 100 cities around the world. Admiral Zheng He - Built the vaunted Treasure Fleets, comprising dozens of ships and tens of thousands of sailors, and led them in trade missions across south Asia and as far west as Africa and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. In seven voyages from 1405 to 1433, Zheng He spread China’s goods across the world and returned with treasures for the Ming Dynasty. Andrew Carnegie - The Scottish immigrant and weaver’s son built a steel empire whose mills churned out the railroads, ships, and structures of post-Civil War America. Milton Hershey - In 1905 built the worlds largest chocolate factory. His name has become synonymous with chocolate, which Americans consume more than 11 pounds of each year. Gary Dahl - A millionaire for selling rocks, pet rocks, enough said.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Unspoken Yet Important Rules for Book Proposals

The Pure FUN of Learning & Using NLP

Selling with Humor (and a Sorry Butt)

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.