Writing on living a deliberate life, focused on building businesses rather than cabins by ponds. Content about strategy, life, and philosophy all building to being more deliberate and living a more amazing life.

That voice isn’t you. It’s just trying to protect you — badly.

Hey there,

It’s Saturday — the day I like to step back and look at things through a philosophical lens.

Here’s what I’ve learned: sometimes you need to step outside the medicine bottle to read the label. You may not get all the way out, but philosophy helps. It gives you distance, a wider angle, a way of seeing beyond today’s noise.

Philosophy is humanity’s long-running conversation with itself — thousands of years of people asking: What’s real? How do we live? We each add a line or two, but most of the wisdom is already there if we stop to listen.

And one of the clearest lessons I’ve picked up is this:

The voice in your head isn’t you.

You know the one.

The nonstop commentator. The critic. The anxious life coach with zero qualifications who never sleeps.

You know that talking in your head right now?

That’s the voice that isn’ you.

It took me decades to realize that voice wasn’t “me.” I thought my doubts, worries, and worst-case scenarios were just who I was.

But the voice never shuts up.

It’s often wrong.

And it rarely says anything useful.

That voice has a name:

The Two Faces of the Ego

The Protector

This is the part that shields you from embarrassment, failure, or rejection. It whispers:

It’s the feeling I get before stepping on stage: nausea, dread, the urge to run. But I’ve learned not to listen. Once I start speaking, the fear dissolves.

The Aggressor

I thought ego was only the protector. But Ryan Holiday’s Ego Is the Enemy opened my eyes to the other face: the overconfident, invincible voice that says, You’ve got this. You don’t need help. You’re smarter than everyone else.

That voice is why one guy ran at the saber-tooth tiger with a spear instead of running away. Sometimes it works. Usually, it doesn’t.

You may find yourself paralyzed by fear, or acting with overconfidence, you may feel one more than the other, you may piing-pong between them.

Regardless:

the ego isn’t you.

The Ego Lives in the Wrong Time Zone

The ego is built from past failures and future expectations. It tries to interpret today using yesterday’s scars and tomorrow’s worries.

Alan Watts explained it with the image of a boat:

Behind you is the wake (the past).
In front of you is calm, untouched water (the future).
But neither drives the boat. Only the engine, the present moment, has that power.

Your ego lives in the wake and the water ahead, never in the moment. So if you leave it in control, you’ll never go where you want.

Taking Back the Wheel

So how do you take charge?

Pause.

Breathe.

Step back from the endless commentary.

Find a place — quiet, unhurried — where you can put down what you owe and are owed. Leave behind the “shoulds.” Even for a few minutes.

It’s not easy. It’s practice. But with practice, you begin to hear something else under the noise: the stillness of your Self.

And that’s where happiness lives.

Not in the wake. Not in the calm water ahead.

But right here, in the now.

We’ll talk about mangos, monks, and perception. And why the world isn’t what it seems.

(Also: what dogs, hummingbirds, and Plato have in common.)

A question for you: is the protector or the aggressor the stronger part of your ego? In my life it is definitely the protector with small manic bursts of the aggressor.

Subscribe to SeekNorth

By Jeff Loehr · Launched 2 years ago

Writing on living a deliberate life, focused on building businesses rather than cabins by ponds. Content about strategy, life, and philosophy all building to being more deliberate and living a more amazing life.

Home

You Are Not the Voice in Your Head