Almost everything I said was a falsehood of some form or another. It was either I was using language instrumentally in order to win arguments, or to attain dominance, or to indicate that I was intelligent or to use it for victory; for narrow, local, personal victory. And I realised that when I was in my early twenties, because in some sense a voice started in my head, and it basically continually informed me that the things I was saying weren’t, in some fundamental sense, weren’t true. And it was very disquieting because the voice that was commenting on what I was saying was making comments of that sort… I wouldn’t call them disparaging voices, it was more just a matter-of-fact commentary, but it was saying it about 95 percent of what I was saying and I thought ‘well that’s a strange conundrum’ because now I don’t know if I’m the voice that’s criticising what I’m saying or if I’m the thing that’s saying what’s being criticised - how do you figure that out?
But I decided I would take a chance and assume that the part that was suggesting I wasn’t saying things truthfully was accurate, and I started to practise only saying things that that voice wouldn’t object to. And I think that’s also equivalent, to some degree, to trying to say only those things that make you strong, instead of weak; or that do not fill you with a post speech sense of shame and regret.
Jordan Peterson (via jordanpetersonquotes)
