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Episode 1231 · Jan 13, 2026

Managing the Voice Inside Your Head

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That voice following you around all day, the one second-guessing your decisions, feeding your self-doubt, and pulling your focus in ten directions at once, is something every person on the planet deals with. George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind, dedicates this episode to one of the most requested topics on the show: how to recognize that voice for what it is and develop real strategies to manage it.

George draws from two foundational books, Michael Singer's *The Untethered Soul* and Mary Lohr's *Managing Thought*, to give you a practical framework. The goal is not to silence your mind permanently but to stop letting it run you.

Why the Voice Inside Your Head Is Not You

Michael Singer makes this point central to his work: you are not the voice. You are the person hearing the voice. That distinction matters enormously. Most people spend their lives completely identified with their inner monologue, treating every thought as truth and every fear as fact.

Your brain is a tool. Its job is to observe, sense, store, and retrieve information, and to automate responses so you do not have to consciously process everything. The problem is when the tool starts running you instead of the other way around. As Eckhart Tolle put it:

"Thinking has become a disease. It's not so much that you use your mind wrong. You usually don't use it at all. It uses you. That is the disease. You believe that you are your mind."

Once you understand you are not your mind, you have a reason to do something about it.

The Three Keys to Managing Your Thoughts

Mary Lohr's *Managing Thought* outlines a clear framework that George returns to consistently. There are three keys to success when it comes to managing the voice inside your head:

1. Self-Awareness. Recognize that you are not your thoughts. This is the foundation. You cannot manage something you do not know is happening. 2. Self-Mastery. Learn strategies and tactics to deal with your thoughts when they spiral. Having awareness without tools leaves you stuck watching the chaos. 3. Being On Purpose. When you are passionate about what you are doing and feel genuinely fulfilled, you naturally operate from a place of inspiration rather than reaction. Purpose crowds out the noise.

These three keys work together. Self-awareness without self-mastery is frustrating. Self-mastery without purpose is hollow. When all three are active, you start creating results instead of just reacting to circumstances.

How Your Beliefs Drive Your Results

George references what he calls the belief cycle, a model that goes deeper than the common thought-feelings-actions-results equation. Your beliefs are upstream of your thoughts. What you truly believe shapes the thoughts you entertain, which drive the feelings you experience, which fuel the actions you take, which create the results you see.

This is why telling yourself you want something is not enough. If your actions do not reflect that desire, your beliefs are the variable to examine. You can say you want a different life, but if the belief that it is possible for you is not there, the actions will not follow with any consistency.

"We are what we think and that all we are arises from our thoughts. So with our thoughts, we remake the world."

Buddha's words point to the same truth. The present moment is the only place where you can actually influence your beliefs and your thoughts. Not at the next seminar, not after you finish the book. Right now.

What to Do When Your Mind Goes Wild

The average person has around 60,000 thoughts per day. When your mind is in overdrive, creativity disappears and productivity collapses. George is direct about this: when your thoughts are going crazy, you do not have the bandwidth for creative problem-solving.

The most effective thing you can do in those moments is stop. Literally interrupt the pattern. Go for a walk. Exercise. Meditate. Do whatever it takes to calm your mind and create separation between you and the noise. This shifts your processing from the reactive part of your brain toward the frontal cortex, the part responsible for solutions, planning, and intentional action.

This is not a one-time fix. It requires constant practice. Your brain is hardwired to protect you by generating fear and worry signals. The more you practice pausing and calming down, the easier it becomes to catch the spiral early and redirect.

Using Your Emotions as a Navigation Tool

Your feelings are not just noise. They are useful data. When a thought produces a bad feeling, that is a red flag that your thinking may be pulling you off course. When you feel aligned, energized, and purposeful, that is confirmation you are on the right track.

George encourages using positive emotions and affirmations as a way to stay in a productive state. There is a difference between saying "I want to be successful" and saying "I am successful." The latter puts you in a state of being rather than longing, and that state is where creativity and action actually happen.

Mary Lohr uses the analogy of pruning a tree. To grow a tree strong, you do not just plant it and walk away. You prune the dead branches so new growth can emerge. Managing your thoughts works the same way. You identify and remove what is pulling energy away from your best work and reinforce what supports it.

"To really grow a tree strong, you have to start with purpose, and then you have to prune that tree back so that it will grow."

Action Steps

  • Practice the pause. When your mind starts spiraling, stop what you are doing. Walk, breathe, or meditate until you feel the noise settle.
  • Separate yourself from your thoughts. Remind yourself daily: you are not your mind. You are the one observing the mind.
  • Use your emotions as indicators. When a thought produces anxiety or dread, treat it as a signal to examine what belief is behind it, not as evidence the fear is true.
  • Develop a daily ritual. Work on self-awareness and positive declarations every day, not just when things go wrong. Consistency builds the mental muscle.
  • Get the books. Michael Singer's *The Untethered Soul* and Mary Lohr's *Managing Thought* (especially chapters five and six) are worth your time.

Your mind is one of the most powerful tools you have. The work is in learning to use it rather than letting it use you. Start today, in this moment, because the present is the only place where any of this actually happens. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. I'm glad you're here with me today. I want to talk with you a little bit about that friend you've got following you around, that voice that you have inside your head. This is one of the topics that comes up a lot on The Daily Mastermind because it's one that a lot of people struggle with. It's the idea of what's going on inside your head. You know, we've had all of these experiences in our life. We've had all of these opportunities to grow. And yet we have tagging right along with us, this voice inside our head. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that. And I know we've shared some ideas from Michael Singer, who wrote the book, The Untethered Soul, and he makes it a real priority in his life to help people to recognize that you are not the voice. You are the person that's hearing the voice. But if you have that voice, you know what I'm talking about. It's that voice that's telling you you can't do things. It's the voice that's criticizing you. It's the voice that's asking questions all the time, trying to get you to be distracted. And most of the time, that voice is being driven by your beliefs and things that you have in your life. But what I want to do today is I want to talk to you about the fact that we all need some strategies, right? We actually need strategies and tactics to deal with it because just like most things in personal development, we know what we need to do, but we're not doing it. And so when you have that voice come up inside your head, what you have to recognize is it's affecting your results in your life. And so I want to reference a book that I really like. It's by Mary Lohr and it's called Managing Thought. The subtitle is actually think differently, think powerfully and achieve new levels of success. So I think this book where Michael Singer really talks a lot about being untethered from that voice and recognizing that you are the one watching and listening, not the voice itself. I think Mary does a really good job of giving a lot of strategies and tactics. Her book talks about, you know, rethinking your path to success and refocusing your goals and your priorities and reframing your negative thoughts and revitalizing the energy you have and getting more peace of mind. And I think that those are all topics that will help you on your journey. And not only that, I think at the end of the day, we do need to have strategies. We've got to have ways for us to deal with this. So that book, which I'll recommend to you right now, chapters five and six are the ones that I like to reread on occasion because they really set up the argument that you are not your mind. but and like I said we talk about this a lot on the daily mastermind because the biggest thing working against you sometimes is you right but if you don't manage your thoughts what you have to recognize is that they will go wild if you are not managing training and developing strategies to manage that voice inside your head your results are going to be affected we've talked about that equation where your thoughts will create feelings which drive your actions which ultimately create results. But managing your thought is not just a topic for people that are doing personal development. I believe everyone should consciously be working on their thoughts because if you want to live a happy life a fulfilled life you got to be proactive on doing that self So I want to give you a reminder here The biggest first reminder I want to give you is that the now right now the present is the only reality that exists So to influence your life, you've got to be present and you've got to be working on these types of things here and now, not later on, not the seminar or the workshop you went to before, but on a day-to-day basis, hence the name, The Daily Mastermind. You know, Buddha said, we are what we think and that all we are arises from our thoughts. So with our thoughts, we remake the world. And you can only do that in the present moment. So what I like to do is if you go get that book, you'll notice that there are three keys to success. There are really three keys to success that Mary kind of talks about. I'm going to give you those keys right now. The first is self-awareness, self-awareness. The second is self-mastery. And the third is being on purpose. So the best way you can manage your thoughts is to first understand and be aware that you are not your thoughts, self-awareness. Number two, self-mastery, learn to manage, control, deal with strategies, and be prepared for tactics when your thoughts are going crazy. And third, being on purpose. I believe that when you're on purpose and you're passionate about what you're doing and you're feeling fulfilled, you are going to continue to be inspired. And we've been taught that our actions, whatever thing you do, will drive your results. But we know this is not true entirely. It's not entirely true. Your actions don't drive your results. I mentioned this before. Your beliefs are what create your thoughts that drive those feelings and actions. And I've talked not only about that kind of equation, your thoughts lead to feelings, lead to actions, lead to results, but there's another one I talk about, which is called the belief cycle. The belief cycle adds a little something extra to it. Whatever you believe will drive your actions and the resources you put into it to create your results. And I always say that a lot of times. People tell me all the time, I really want this. I really want this. I really want this. And I always ask them, if your beliefs, if your actions don't reflect that, then it's doubtful you really believe you can do it. And that's the point here is that you've got to learn to control and master and manage your thoughts because your thoughts are going to create everything in your life. That's why our results are truly driven by our thoughts and driven by our actions. So I love the idea, and I want you to listen to me here. I love the idea that when you're inspired, we achieve more results. You know, the happiness, the thankfulness, the vision, the purpose, and the wonder of possibility is what really drives your creativity, which can influence your beliefs and influence your thoughts. I really believe that. So I want to bring up this kind of critical point for you. I say critical point because I really want to get your focus on this. The question we really need to ask ourselves is whether we are driving our thoughts or we are being plagued by self-doubt and fear and worry and we're just being reactive in life with our thoughts. So let me ask that another way. Are you being reactive? Are you on autopilot with what you do every day in your thoughts or are you being proactive with your thoughts See Eckhart Tolle said thinking has become a disease It not so much that we use your mind wrong You usually don use it at all It uses you. That is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. And I love that quote because I think it's so important. Once you recognize you're not your mind, then you know you have to do something about it. You have to understand that if you're not your mind, you've got to put some boundaries in place because our mind and our brains, they're tools. They're tools that observe and sense and store and retrieve info. And their whole job is to automate things so that you don't have to take all these thoughts you're getting and try to figure them out all the time. So the key is to be using that tool effectively and not having it use you. That's the key. When we stop and we become aware, you can shift your thoughts from that, you know, hypothalamus to the frontal cortex of the brain. This allows that CEO center of your mind to take over and start to create more solutions. But the thing that I struggled with all the time, I recognize, and I've read a lot of these books, and I've studied a lot of things, and I recognize that I am not my mind. But implementing it, I just couldn't quite figure out. I would get in that zone, and then I'd come back to it, and it'd happen again. And I'd get in that zone, and I'd come back to it, and it'd happen again. And what you have to realize is that the key to success with this is to constantly practice it. Constantly practice being aware. Because your brain is hardwired to protect you from your fears, your thoughts, your beliefs, and everything else. But if we can just stop, and this is a very, very important point. If we could just stop when this is happening, our minds going crazy, and calm our minds, we're going to be more productive. we know that the average daily person has like 60,000 I think thoughts a day and your creativity literally goes out the window when you're so overwhelmed with thoughts so that's why it's so difficult for you to get things done is when your mind's going crazy trust me when I say you don't have time for creativity so the biggest solution you can have when this happens is to literally stop what you're doing take a break go for a walk do exercise meditate whatever it is to calm your mind. Separate yourself from your mind. Now, I know from experience this is really hard to do, but when you're aware of it and you practice it, it will get easier and easier with frequency and repetition. So try to see how much more productive you can be when you actually get going really busy and you have all kinds of things going on and you just stop and calm your mind. Now, another key thing I like to remind myself of is that we're not our feelings because our minds, they play tricks on us and they try to convince us that we are our feelings and then we are caught up in the feelings, but it's just a reflection of things that are going on in our world. So I have to emphasize our feelings, they can be, by the way, even though that could be a real problem, they can be an incredible tool to help us manage our minds. Your feelings are a good indicator as to whether you're on purpose. Your feelings are a good indicator because when you have thoughts about yourself, for example, and they give you bad feelings, that's a great red flag to let you know that you're having the wrong kind of thoughts. So your feelings can be a good indicator of how to manage your mind, when your mind's going off track. And maybe we're not aligned with the best version of ourselves but we can constantly be working on that And so when this happens and your feelings get out of control or your thoughts are going crazy in addition to stopping and relaxing just take notice of your emotions Take notice of your emotions of where they going Because when you step back and analyze your emotions, it's a powerful way to take control of a situation. You know, we believe that our emotions are kind of like we get caught up in them. But when you can recognize too many thoughts and calm down, or when you recognize emotions or negative emotions, then you can learn to identify those as red flags to step back. Now, powerful, positive thoughts and emotions, they can be real catalysts for change, but they only happen when you're in a state of inspiration and creativity. When you're in a state, when you're in a powerful state, right? This is what we talk about when we talk about doing positive affirmations or declarations. This is a way that you can keep yourself in a powerful state because you're saying things that are going to help you stay in that positive zone, that positive emotional state, love, gratitude, forgiveness. They're far more powerful than anger, resentment, and blame. So saying things like, I am successful. I am loving. I am in a good situation. I'm grateful for this and that. When you say things like I should be, or I want to be, or I should be this, or should be that, that's not the same. It's not as powerful as saying I am. So that's why we talk about powerful, positive emotions and affirmations. Now, the book that I mentioned in the beginning here from Mary Lohr, this book on managing your mind, she gave a really good example that I think you can use as kind of an analogy. And she refers to the process of managing your thoughts like pruning a tree. So to really grow a tree strong, you know, you have to start with purpose, you have to have a tree, but then you have to prune that tree back so that it will grow. You have to be able to get rid of the negative thoughts, the branches and things so that it will grow. And the way to do this, you've got to have strategies to do it. So I recommend going through the book because in addition to recognizing the thoughts and clearing your mind, and in addition to noticing your emotions and using that as a way to identify what you can do differently, the book talks about all kinds of things. It talks about ways to eliminate time and money and energy, you know, sucking things from your life and how to get rid of your destructive thoughts, how to shape your thoughts, how to ask powerful questions, how to make powerful statements, daily rituals, how to manage your energy and all kinds of things. So I'm not going to cover that here in the episode today, but ultimately they're all examples. They're all things that we can do to work on our minds and manage our minds. Now, with that said, I want to once again, encourage you this week to just empower yourself to do some learning. And most importantly, become aware of your thoughts. Just the fact that you become aware of your thoughts and emotions constantly will help you. It's like what you focus on grows, what you measure will get better. And so that's the message I want to leave you with today. I hope you have an amazing week this week. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear what you're working on. And let me know what you're needing help with. That's what we're doing the daily mastermind for. You know, you're the average of the people you hang out with. And so I want to be that positive influence for you in your life. That's my message. I hope you have an amazing day. I'll talk with you soon.