There’s that little voice in the back of your mind. It speaks softly to you when all is quiet and sometimes you listen. Other times you try very hard to tune it out. But it never quite goes away; the voice is always waiting for an opportune moment to talk to you.

I’m not sure where the voice comes from, but I suspect that the loudest one may originate in the ‘amygdala’, that little almond-shaped spot deep within our brain that generates a fear response to threats in our environment and plays host to other emotions. I’ll name it the lower voice for purposes of this conversation. When faced with a truly threatening situation, the lower voice kicks into high gear and generates an adrenalin-fueled response; in such moments, everything else is drowned out and we go into survival mode. Fortunately for most of us, that isn’t the case very often, certainly not as it was for our ancestors for whom their reaction determined whether or not they would enjoy another day.

When there aren’t immediate threats to confront, I imagine that the amygdala gets rather bored. And so it goes looking for trouble and chats with us about the results of its search. Insecurities and uncertainties are its friends and they happily encourage the lower voice in its subliminal conversation within us. Doubts are raised and we can become hesitant, which allows the lower voice a private audience. Hesitancy breeds worry and worry feeds anxiety.

In a very practical sense, this lower voice can carry on long enough to convince us that something is truly the matter and hold us back from pursuing our potential. It keeps hands down when a question should be asked and mouths shut when a good idea could be offered. It keeps the service person from serving well and holds the sales person back from selling. The follower may never become the potential leader, because it’s just too risky to confront the fear and step out in front.

Fortunately, we possess another, higher voice that can also speak to us; it lives in our cerebral cortex, but only engages in conversation when invited. When fear is busy talking, the higher voice goes silent. By offering our higher voice ideas, education, training and regular encouragement, however, it will speak up and challenge us to realize our potential. The small successes that come from trying and doing accumulate exponentially and gain power over our more primal thoughts. We discover that asking the question didn’t make us look bad after all, that extending ourselves for another person felt really good and that the ‘cold call’ isn’t so cold when you warm it up with a friendly and genuinely inquisitive nature.

Our higher voice creates a mindset that encourages connections, generates momentum and enables us to Maximize the Moment. It narrates our life story.

Tempus Maximize!