This article on how to find your voice is an after-the-fact companion to my blog post Be Who You Are, which extolled the virtues of an authentic life. I have received many questions about how to begin that journey: Here are my thoughts on how to find your thoughts.

You must know what you truly believe, what really matters to you, what you actually value, to be an effective agent in the world. External data and others’ opinions are important parts of the equation, but eventually you have to formulate what you think about your world, even if it changes over time. The process is iterative.

What Do You Think?

It is difficult, at first, to untangle the barrage of thoughts that occupy your mind at any given time. Let’s take a moment to quantify that: according to a study by Klinger, E., & Cox, W. M. (1987-1988), the average person has anywhere between 6,200 to 6,800 thoughts per day. That’s roughly a completely formed thought every 12 seconds. More distracting still, you are likely not even aware of most of them.

In the Western World – and increasingly, all over the world – our minds are untamed. From the time we are old enough to sit up and hold an iPad, we are assaulted with a high-speed river of information. Short videos, advertisements, first-person shooters and MMORPGs compete with darker influences that exist specifically to indoctrinate us into specific ideologies. We become adept at keeping pace with the flow; we notice many topics in a short period of time but don’t pay attention to most of them.

Microsoft (2015) itself found that the average attention span of a human being dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2015, and that was nearly a decade ago. If that trend is linear, we are down to about 2 seconds at this point. A goldfish has an attention span of about 9 seconds.

Thus is the advent of “doom scrolling.”

Do the math: if you have a coherent thought every 12 seconds but only pay attention to a given stimulus for two or three seconds at a time, you aren’t thinking, you’re observing. There is a huge difference between the two, and massive implications for your ability to find your voice.

What Are Your Influences?

Sooner or later, you have to stop scrolling and go to work or school. Surely that helps with the ability to form your own thoughts, doesn’t it?

The good news is that to be successful at work or school, you must learn to increase your attention span.

The bad news is that

1. You learn to pay attention only in certain circumstances (the boss is watching; you have to take notes),
2. You are being told what to think as a natural by-product of education or corporate culture, and
3. There are “soft “ – interpersonal – skills in each environment that are more important to your success than the actual “hard” technical information you must master.

So-called “soft” skills can be the most damaging of the three. “Interpersonal communication” really just means learning how to play the game, in a professional or academic setting. How do you impress your boss in order to someday become her boss? Whose ass do you kiss and how do you demonstrate that you are more devoted to the corporate bottom line than your competition? How do you communicate to your professors that you are the most dedicated student and therefore most worthy of the next teaching assistant opening?

Think Independently

Don’t misunderstand: it is imperative to learn how to “play the game” to succeed in life. (If you don’t believe this, just march into the CEOs office on your first day and recite your manifesto of “what’s wrong with this place.” Then use the resulting unemployed time to reconsider your choices.) The game you learn to master, however, is someone else’s game, and doesn’t help you find your voice.

To recap, modern life for most of us consists of non-stop media images moving so quickly we can’t pay attention to most of them, interspersed with hours of thinking the way someone else expects us to, as a matter of survival.

How to Find Your Voice

The process used to find your voice is meditative. The problem, for most people, is not that you aren’t capable of thinking your own thoughts, it is that you aren’t used to it. The trick is to reprogram your brain to pay attention long enough to tell which thoughts are internal (yours) and which are external (everything else).

In other words, you have to relearn how to think, as opposed to observe and react.

Critical thinking practices are paramount:

1. Self-Reflection: Make time to understand your values, beliefs, and emotions. What makes you happy, sad, or inspired? What do you strongly believe in, and what is non-negotiable? Try to separate what you have been told from what you really think.
2. Take a Break: Take time away from others’ thoughts – electronically and in-person – to create a mindful, intentional space to evaluate what you actually value. Spend some time in actual meditation.
3. Question Everything: Be conscious of the media content you consume. Understand that every piece of content is created with a purpose, and not all align with your values. Critically evaluate the information you consume. Think, “Who profits from this perspective?” Don’t accept it blindly.
4. Diversify Your Sources: Seek out different perspectives to broaden your understanding and avoid spending time solely in “echo chambers.” Or at least spend time in a variety of echo chambers. Remember the goal is to differentiate between external influences and your authentic voice.
5. Communicate Openly: Share your thoughts and feelings with others, even if they may differ from popular opinion. Find an environment – with real, in-person people, if possible – in which it is safe to express yourself. Respectful debate – while becoming a lost art – is still one of the best ways to gain perspective on what you really think.

You must first define what you think in order to determine how to act. Only then can you begin to find your purpose.

References:

1. Council for Research Excellence. (2009). Video Consumer Mapping Study.
2. Cox, W. M., & Klinger, E. (2011). Measuring motivation: The Motivational Structure Questionnaire, Personal Concerns Inventory, and their variants. In W. M. Cox & E. Klinger (Eds.), Handbook of Motivational Counseling: Goal-Based Approaches to Assessment and Intervention with Addiction and Other Problems (2nd ed., pp. 161-204). Wiley.
3. Kardaras, N. (2016). Glow kids: How screen addiction is hijacking our kids-and how to break the trance. St. Martin’s Press.
4. Klinger, E., & Cox, W. M. (1987-1988). Dimensions of thought flow in everyday life. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 7(2), 105-128.
5. Microsoft Corp. (2015). Attention spans. Consumer Insights, Microsoft Canada.
6. Rosen, L. D., Lim, A. F., Felt, J., Carrier, L. M., Cheever, N. A., Lara-Ruiz, J. M., Mendoza, J. S., & Rokkum, J. (2014). Media and technology use predicts ill-being among children, preteens and teenagers independent of the negative health impacts of exercise and eating habits. Computers in Human Behavior, 35, 364-375.

As always, I welcome your thoughts. You can reach me through the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or the blog section on my website. If this article as of value to you, please follow my Instagram and Twitter accounts. And be sure to subscribe to my River Of Creation podcast – The Podcast for Creators! – coming later this year.

Be well; do good!

• JWW