Listening To Your Voice

Hi,

This is Brooks and thank you for joining me.

It's good to be here with you.

Today we're gonna talk about your voice and how great your voice is.

I truly believe that.

I've been helping people clutter bust for over 20 years,

Helping get rid of clutter,

And that whole job is about getting people to hear their own voice.

At first it's a little hard because we're so used to going to other people's voices to find out what's the thing,

What we should do,

How we should be,

How we should think.

That makes sense.

We're taught,

We have teachers as we're growing up,

Elementary school and high school and maybe college,

So we're used to getting information from other people,

Even from our parents.

And the problem is we become adjusted to getting information that way and we're not listening to ourselves.

And this whole talk about today is really about listening to yourself because that's where it's at.

That's where the juice is.

That's how to listen to your nature.

Your nature is your you-ness,

Your particular you-ness.

We're unique in our own ways due to our genes and our conditioning.

So your you-ness is all those things combined.

And so when you start to listen to yourself,

You start to hear that sound of you.

And it's a goldmine.

You can't go wrong when you listen to yourself.

And I'll repeat that a lot today because yes,

You have to hear it more than once.

We have to hear it because our habit is to go back to reading what other people say or listening to what other people say,

The pundits,

The experts.

But there's no better expert of you than you.

And so today I'm basically asking you to consider that.

Consider your voice.

And let's take a moment.

Let's take a moment right now.

Put your hand on your heart.

Your heart's a good place to listen to yourself.

That's where you reside is in your heart.

Your mind is really good for figuring things out,

Sorting things out,

Discriminating between things.

But your heart is where you live.

So when you put your hand on your heart,

You start to focus from that place.

It's like putting glasses on your heart.

You can start to see from your heart.

And you can feel your breath come in and the breath go out.

You can feel your chest rise up as the air comes in,

The chest goes down,

The air goes out.

Feel that natural breath come in,

Come out through the heart.

And the heart and the lungs are right next to each other,

So it's a pretty good combination.

And take a moment,

A curious moment of looking at your heart,

Experiencing your heart,

Feeling it,

And see what you see.

You It's a pretty fascinating place,

Isn't it?

Your heart,

Your your unis.

Whenever I'm working with anyone and I ask them questions,

You know,

Because basically that's what clutter busting is,

You know.

It's looking at something and asking,

Do I like and use this or not?

Because you're going to yourself when you ask that and you're going to your heart just like we're doing right now.

And it's a great exercise you can do at any time.

You know,

You could be in the midst of an activity.

You can put your hand on your heart or you can just think about your heart and ask like,

What I'm doing right now.

Do I enjoy doing this?

Does this make me feel good?

Is this giving energy or not?

Is it making me tired?

Do I dislike it?

Do I feel resentment?

You know,

It's either a yes or no.

But basically it's,

It doesn't matter what answer comes up.

It's like,

What do you think?

What do you feel?

That's your voice.

Everybody in the world could say this is the,

Whatever it is,

Is the greatest product,

Activity,

Whatever.

You got to do this,

You know.

But then you go to yourself like,

How does this feel to me?

Do I like this?

Do I not like this?

Imagine I gave you a plate of food and you took a bite.

And I ask you,

Do you want to keep eating this or not?

And it's always a yes or no.

It's like,

Oh yeah,

I love this.

This is great.

It's delicious.

Or no,

It's not for me.

That's listening to your heart.

That's listening to your voice.

Other people have their opinions.

Some people are very persuasive.

Some people are very charismatic.

We feel,

We feel drawn to them.

Drawn to follow them to like,

Oh yeah,

Their word is God,

You know.

But then we come back to ourselves.

How do I feel?

And this can come up spontaneously at any time.

It can be in the middle of doing something or interacting with something or someone and asking,

Am I enjoying this?

Do I like this or not?

And you get to say,

No,

I don't like something when you don't like it.

Because that's our job,

To listen to ourselves and take care of ourselves.

Like if you're out for a walk and you discover a stone in your shoe,

You could be walking next to somebody and,

And you know,

This is uncomfortable.

It hurts to walk with a stone in your shoe.

So you stop.

You say,

I gotta stop.

I gotta take this stone out of my shoe.

And you take your shoe off and you turn it upside down and the stone falls out.

And let's say the stone's a diamond.

So the person who's with you says,

Oh my god,

You can't,

You can't,

You got to put that back in your shoe.

It's a diamond.

It's valuable.

And you could listen to them and put it back on and put the shoe on with the,

With the diamond and then keep walking in a hurts or you could say it hurts.

I'm not gonna do that.

That's listening to yourself,

Listening to your own voice.

And the more you do it,

The easier it becomes.

And,

And it's not something that you do once and then you just,

It's there.

It's something you learn how to do.

So there's a kindness in this.

You know,

It's,

It's,

We're kind of ourselves in this process of listening to our voice because that's part of listening to our voice is being kind.

So I wish you the best in listening to your voice.

You can't go wrong.

It's the source of,

It's the source of happiness.

So take care,

It was good spending time with you.

Bye.