Episode 112: The Voices In Your Head–The Biggest Fan
In today’s episode, I am talking about the Biggest Fan. Your Biggest Fan always has your back and is wise about the struggle. Your Biggest Fan is the how. She is the one who will help you achieve your goals and be happier.
This month we are talking about the 3 characters that chat at us throughout the day and are at the There is a voice in your head.
She is the voice of kindness, generosity, and wisdom and I call her the Biggest Fan.
Of the 3 characters that are at the core of the Happier Approach, she is the best of all worlds.
She holds the goals of your Monger (to be safe and secure) without shaming and belittling you. She provides the support and encouragement of your BFF (“you are awesome”) without giving you a free pass to do whatever you want.
Your Biggest Fan always has your back, acknowledges your feelings, can see options, is wise about the struggle, and uses your values as guiding principles.
Your Biggest Fan is the how.
She is the one who will help you achieve your goals and be happier.
All this month we have been talking about the voices that carry on in your head. If you haven’t already, go back and take a listen:
In Episode 110 we talked about how the Monger, that mean voice that shames and belittles you, telling you that you’re not good enough.
In Episode 111 we talked about how the BFF has an amazing talent of always being able to justify any behavior and how she shames and belittles other people in your defense.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
How to identify the kind voice of the Biggest Fan even when you don't think you have one inside you
What steps you can take to access the voice of your Biggest Fan
Acknowledge what you are feeling
Slow down and get into your body
Kindly pull back to see the bigger picture
What some of the challenges of accessing our Biggest Fan can be
How the voice of your Biggest Fan has been silenced for a long time and how she will become louder as you listen to her more and more
How to be gentle with yourself and identify that the success you want is a learning process
+ Read the Transcript
With tears in her eyes, Sarah walks out of the conference room and makes it to the bathroom just before the waterworks begin. My boss just screamed at me in that meeting. I knew the project was behind, but I didn’t think we were THAT behind. How did I miss it? I spent all week organizing customer feedback. I didn’t realize he wanted us to be writing the copy already!
It doesn’t take long before the inner voice of her BFF has her back. “Come on, girlfriend, your boss is such a jerk. I mean to publicly call you out like that is just rude.”
Sarah says to herself, I need to hear from my Biggest Fan. She starts with:
Sweet Pea, stop torturing yourself! This is so hard. Doing it wrong sucks, especially when you thought you were doing it right! I get it that you are scared you might lose your job. That is understandable after getting yelled at. It is just embarrassing and humiliating to be yelled at in a staff meeting.
Let’s take some deep breaths. It’s okay to cry; getting yelled at in public is the worst. Let it out, and then we can figure out what comes next.
This is totally avoidable. Next time, let’s double-check (even triple-check) with him on what is his top priority. I know it is annoying (and let’s admit it, sometimes scary) to double-check, but it’s better than this feeling right now. Your co-workers get it. They have been called out before too. And truthfully, getting fired is probably a bit extreme. Go talk to your boss, clear the air, and figure out next steps.
See how her Biggest Fan helps Sarah find the middle ground? Her Biggest Fan is kind and understanding but also wants her to do her best and succeed. She isn’t enabling. She isn’t belittling. She is just there, a kind, wise, motivating voice.
She is the best of both worlds, self-compassion, and motivation. She is 100 percent kind and wants you to be the best version of you. Maybe even a version you can’t see yet.
“You’re listening to The Happier Approach—the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships. I’m your host, Nancy Jane Smith.”
This Month we are talking about the three characters that chat at us throughout the day and are at the core of The Happier Approach. Today, we are on the last character, the voice of Kindness and Wisdom; I call her the Biggest Fan.
Your Biggest Fan is the key to quieting your Monger. She is the one who will help you achieve your goals and be happier. Your Biggest Fan is the how. She is kind, generous, and wise and always has your back. She’s the best of both worlds. She holds the goals of your Monger (to be safe and secure) without the shaming and belittling, and she provides the support of your BFF (“you are awesome”) without the free pass to do whatever you want.
Your Biggest Fan is the voice that says,
“You are having fun. Slow down and take a breath. Do you really need another drink? You have been kicking butt on your workouts this week. You want to get up and work out tomorrow, and you feel so much better when you work out. You can stay and have fun without drinking more, so you won’t be hungover tomorrow.”
“Yikes, that is totally scary that your boss called you in tomorrow. Take a breath and do a quick stretch. It will all be okay; no matter what happens, we will figure it out. Let’s do some brainstorming. How can we best prepare for that meeting?”
Your Biggest Fan has this wonderful combo of kind, wise, and honest (sometimes brutally so).
As a simple reminder:
Your Monger shames and belittles you.
Your BFF shames and belittles other people in defense of you and has the amazing talent of always being able to justify any behavior.
Your Biggest Fan always has your back, acknowledges your feelings, can see options, is wise about the struggle, and uses your values as guiding principles.
The #1 thing I hear from clients when I discuss the Biggest Fan is, “I don’t think I have one of those.” Let me be the first to say that you do have a Biggest Fan. Trust me. Even when you don’t think you do, you do. You have that voice inside of you that wants you to succeed.
Your Biggest Fan is probably quiet right now, which is why you might think you don’t have one. She has been ignored for so long that her voice is meek, but over time, as you listen to her more and more, she will become louder and louder.
I have found 3 steps that work to access your Biggest Fan Voice. The first step is to acknowledge what you are feeling. This is so important because when we have HFA, we tend to ignore our feelings. We ignore our experience because we tell ourselves we SHOULD feel a certain way. By Acknowledging our feelings, we are starting to build that self-loyalty which is so important to decreasing anxiety AND decreasing the voice of our Monger.
Feelings can be a tough subject. There are a lot of preconceived ideas around feelings and how we should or should not experience them. We have A LOT of judgment around feelings, good feelings, bad feelings, positives, and negatives. That is why this step is simply to acknowledge your feelings. Not judge them, justify them or determine whether or not they are okay.
Frequently throughout the day, I will say to myself, what are you feeling? And then, I will pull out the feelings sheet (attached) and name 7-8 feelings. I always have the tendency to judge them, so I will repeat to myself, you ARE feeling this way, it is what it is. For much of my life, I willed myself to feel a different way, or more likely, my Monger willed me to feel a different way through belittlement and shame. Giving myself permission to just label the feeling and acknowledge it has made a HUGE difference in building loyalty with myself and hearing from my Biggest Fan.
The reason Acknowledging what you are feeling is the first step is because it is a bit of an intellectual exercise. When you hear your Monger (or BFF) talking to you, and you are in a frenzy of drama or shame, the LAST thing you want to do is slow down and get into your body, you WANT to stay in the frenzy so acknowledging what you are feeling is just a small way to break through that frenzy and calm yourself a little bit.
Which brings me to the next step, which is: Slow down and get into your body. On this one, I encourage you to do a full-body movement, dance, wiggle touch your toes. Just taking a deep breath or sitting up straighter won’t cut it. You need to break the frenzied mind, and the ONLY way to do that is to move your WHOLE body. Those of us with HFA spend too much time in our heads, to the point where we forget we have a body. The number of times I practice this step and remember, oh yes, I actually have a body is incredible to me.
And the 3rd step, Kindly Pull Back to see the Big Picture.
The key part of this is kindly. Too often, when we pull back, we get lost in a sea of judgment. Our Monger tells us, “You are doing it wrong,” “You will fail,” “There are too many options.” We get wrapped up in justifying or proving why we are feeling a certain way. So when we pull back kindly, we are giving ourselves lots of love and wisdom. Pulling back kindly and being open to all the options allows us to move beyond the traps of the Monger and find solutions that will move us forward.
This last step is where the Biggest Fan shows her kindness and wisdom. So what does this look like, you might be wondering? Here are some signs:
Our Biggest Fan doesn’t use shame and belittling when looking at options. There is no “should” or “other people do it” in her vocabulary.
She always has our best interests at heart. She is kind, not judgmental, and she doesn’t lead us down a path that will hurt us eventually (like our BFF might).
This final step in the process is what separates the voice of the Biggest Fan from the Monger and BFF. Because our Monger keeps us stuck in a tunnel of absolute thinking, we have blinders on to any other options. The first two steps, A. Acknowledge what you are feeling and B. Slow down and get into your body, allow us to give ourselves empathy and get into our bodies long enough so we can pull those blinders off and do the final step. During this final step, we can look around and see all we have missed. We can see all the choices and options we have. If we jump to this step immediately, we might not have our blinders completely removed. We might still be blinded by the Monger, so the options and choices we brainstorm won’t be as varied.
Make it a game. See how many options you can brainstorm. As you limit the judgments in your head, you will be amazed at how many ways you can solve a problem.
Again, the three steps of ASK:
Acknowledge what you are feeling: When the Monger tries to shame and belittle you, the Biggest Fan acknowledges what you are feeling (e.g., you must be tired, scared, angry, sad, etc.). She labels your feelings and normalizes whatever your experience is.
Slow down and get into your body: When the Monger tries to speed you up and make everything more intense, your Biggest Fan allows you to slow everything down, encouraging you to take a break, pause, and breathe.
Kindly pull back to see the big picture: When the Monger just sees doom and gloom and engages in black-and-white thinking, the Biggest Fan sees lots of colors. She encourages you to think of different solutions, brainstorm, and see the other colors. We tend to be harsh on ourselves when we are looking for new solutions. As we shift from black-and-white to color, the Monger might step in more. That’s why doing it kindly is the key.
Sometimes we need an outside perspective to help us hear/see our Monger. Ask someone you love and trust—your spouse, your best friend, a sibling—to lovingly remind you when you are engaging in one of your myths, or you are being exceptionally harsh on yourself. This can be hard, so prepare yourself for lots of do-overs.
Having that outside help can make the process easier. I made a lot more progress when my husband lovingly mirrored how often I was trying to “do it right.” The more he pointed it out to me, the easier it was for me to see the habit, and the more frequently I could access my Biggest Fan.
Spend more time on accessing your Biggest Fan rather than listening for your Monger. Randomly throughout the day, do something physical, get into your body, and tap into your feelings.
For so many years, our Monger has convinced us she knows better, so initially, working with our Biggest Fan is going to take some trust. Being open to the idea that kindness can be motivating and shaming ourselves makes us more stressed and miserable is key.
Pretend that your whole life, you were told spinach was bad for you. Your mom hated spinach and didn’t want it in the house, so she told you that spinach was bad for you and never bothered to tell you differently. And then suddenly in your 20s, you hear spinach is good for you, and you are like, “What!?!” you can’t believe it. You do a lot of research, and everything you read says spinach is healthy. But when you first start eating spinach, it feels like you are going to die because your brain is telling you this is bad for you, even though you have done all the research and you know it might be different. But you have to go against your brain and trust it is good.
That is a tongue-in-cheek example, but it illustrates the point that our Biggest Fan is good for us, but we don’t trust her at first. Our Monger tends to be the first responder. She is always the loudest and quickest. One of my favorite mantras has become “First thought wrong.” When I hear my Monger chatting at me, I will say to myself, okay, first thought wrong! Then I will ASK to hear from my Biggest Fan.
Finally, go easy on yourself. You have spent your life being an overachiever, so your tendency is to overachieve on quieting your Monger as well. Remember, you are a work in process. The process just takes time.
Scenario: You binge-watch the Crown rather than working in the yard as you had planned.
Monger: You are such a loser. On top of being lazy, you can’t keep your word. You said you were going to do yard work. You already have the worst-looking yard in the neighborhood, and now you wasted yet another day doing nothing.
BFF: You work so hard during the week. You deserve to do nothing. Screw the neighbors—they don’t have lives anyway. All they do is take care of their yards. You have a life, and you know that there is more to the world than just keeping a pristine yard. Enjoy your day of nothing.
Biggest Fan: (A. Acknowledge what you are feeling) It is okay to be conflicted. On the one hand, you must have needed a day of nothing, and you did say you would take care of the yard. (S. Slow down and get into your body) Stand up and stretch, take some deep breaths. (K. Kindly pull back to see the big picture) The truth is, you love this show and being able to binge-watch is a special treat. Soak it up and enjoy! And the lawn does need to be mowed. You love driving past the house and seeing the yard look nice, so maybe tomorrow after lunch, you can just do some quick cleanup.
If you don’t do it, who will? If you’re not hustling, pushing, and keeping it all together yourself, nothing will get done.
Look, you don’t need me to tell you that. You tell yourself every day. There’s that voice inside your head constantly pushing you to do more, be more, and get closer to perfect.
And there are all the people--your family, friends, and random people on the street--who congratulate you on how productive you are.
Mixed messages, am I right?
I know I’m right because I’ve dealt with high-functioning anxiety too. I know what it’s like to relish the accolades that come your way one minute and shame yourself for being so tired and overwhelmed the next.
And, I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger. The Happier Approach makes a great gift.
Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Audible, or Barnes & Noble!