May 20, 2025 • 21 mins
What if the voice in your head that tells you you're too much—or not enough—isn’t the truth, but a frightened part of you trying to keep you safe?
In this episode, Lauri shines a compassionate light on the “Soul Suckers”—inner critics like the Nervous Nellies, the Controlling Stage Mothers, the Imposter Monsters, and the Below-the-Belt Bastards. With storytelling, warmth, and grounded wisdom, she guides you through recognizing their influence, reclaiming your voice, and using Soulful Speaking tools—Intend, Align, Invite—to let your soul speak instead.
Whether you’ve been holding back in meetings, onstage, or in life, this episode is a call to stop shrinking and start resounding. Because your voice isn’t broken—it’s just been drowned out.
TAKEAWAYS
1. The Soul Suckers all whisper the same core lie: “Not enough.”
2. Ignoring them doesn’t work—in fact, it makes them louder.
3. Soul Suckers convert you into the toy drum version of yourself; your soul was born to play the real drum.
4. Intend, Align, Invite is the antidote: intention clears the static, alignment opens the channel, and invitation allows us to touch others in the way only we can.
5. Each Soul Sucker has a kernel of truth—but it's distorted.
6. Being different is not a flaw. It’s your one-in-eight-billion superpower.
7. The Controlling Stage Mothers steal spontaneity; connection matters more than perfection.
8. Releasing the Soul Suckers doesn’t mean silencing them—it means choosing not to let them drive the bus.
9. When you honor your soul’s voice, cosmic shifts can happen.
Thank you so much for listening!
Take the free quiz and learn which Soul Sucker™ you need to release to free your voice: https://voice-matters.com/soul-sucker-quiz/
Follow me on:
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lauri (00:00):
Welcome back to Soulful Speaking.
Today's episode is for anybodywho has ever felt like an
invisible force, sometimes heldthem back from speaking up, or
showing up or shining asbrightly, as deep down they know
they're meant to.
I call these invisible forcesthe soul suckers.
(00:24):
We've talked about themthroughout this season and today
we're going to shine a light onthem.
The soul suckers are the forcepreventing the pure signal of
our soul's voice from comingthrough to the world.
(00:46):
They all have one core lie theywhisper not enough.
There's not enough money, time,energy or you.
Speaking soulfully is aboutdaring to let our true selves
come through, like really takingup space, being seen, sharing
(01:09):
what matters to us in our fullone in eight billion radiance.
That takes courage, and when wedare to do that, the soul
suckers show up.
They're the static.
They try to drown out our innerknowing.
In reality, they mean well, butthey are stuck in survival mode
(01:32):
.
They're not in thriving mode.
They're not in.
I'm here to fulfill my soul'scalling mode and they can, in
their attempt to protect us,unknowingly guide our choices
when we're not aware.
So today we're going to shine alight on them and set ourselves
free.
(01:53):
There's a quote from theAlchemist by Paulo Coelho Don't
give in to your fears.
If you do, you won't be able totalk to your heart.
So we are not giving in to ourfears.
Today we're shining the lighton them so that we can choose to
act and speak from a differentpart of ourselves.
(02:16):
In their attempts to protect us, the soul suckers convert us
into the toy drum version ofourselves.
Imagine a toy drum like tinny,higher pitched, when in reality
(02:37):
we were all born as the real,resounding drum version of
ourselves.
The soul suckers can only bangon the toy drum.
Our souls want to play the full, resonant drum that stirs
hearts and changes rooms andmakes people's arm hairs stand
(02:58):
up on end.
The soul suckers feed onscarcity.
The soul speaks from abundance.
Today we're going to meet them,or re-meet them, and learn how
Intend, align, invite helps usto release them.
And I'm going to start with astory of a time they almost got
(03:21):
me, of a time they almost got me.
For a few years, starting about10 years ago, I taught college
theater classes on high schoolcampuses in East Palo Alto.
Maybe it was 12 years ago, andI'll never forget.
One day I was driving downHighway 101 from my place in San
(03:41):
Mateo to East Palo Alto on myway to the first session of a
Latin American theater coursethat I was teaching on this high
school campus, and that morningthe soul suckers were loud in
my head.
I was actually shaking, with myhands on my literal steering
(04:03):
wheel driving, shaking with myhands on my literal steering
wheel driving, and the impostermonster soul suckers were in my
head yelling things like whatare you doing?
Turn the car around and you'rea white girl from Burbank,
california.
Who are you to teach LatinAmerican theater to a bunch of
East Palo Alto teens?
It was a full body fight orflight moment.
(04:27):
And then I remembered this ispart of my work not avoiding
these moments, moving throughthem and, along the way, doing
it myself and teaching, helpingothers to do the same.
So I decided I committed topractice what I preach.
(04:51):
First I actually listened to thesoul suckers' concerns and then
I released them from the job ofbeing in charge.
You're not responsible forbeing in charge anymore.
Was there a kernel of truth inwhat they were saying?
Abso-freaking-lutely, I am awhite woman and I was teaching
(05:12):
Latin American theater in EastPalo Alto to high schoolers, but
instead of making that a reasonto shrink or run away.
I let it shape the way that Itaught.
I centered the course on thetheme of being an outsider
because one thing I learnedthrough doing it let's be real
(05:37):
almost everyone feels like anoutsider in high school.
Even the popular people I'velearned down underneath often
years later say they felt likean outsider too.
As I grounded into that andwalked onto the campus, I got an
image of a friend fromelementary school, this sweet
(05:59):
fellow, weirdo, ally fromchildhood, and at first I tried
to brush it off like reallythat's who you're sending to me,
thinking that I needed somelike wise elder to help me.
But something in me knew andpersisted she's exactly what I
need right now.
So I said yes to that intuition, even though it didn't make
(06:23):
sense then, and I walked intothe classroom with her by my
side, not literally, butenergetically, and right as I
stepped through the door I heardthis quiet voice inside say
cosmic shift.
The soul suckers, of course,muttered no pressure there, but
(06:44):
by then they'd really started tolose their grip.
It was like they were in thepassenger seat pouting a little.
That memory of my frienddropped me into empathy, into
presence, into remembering whatit felt like to be a teenager
and as I started teaching Ithought what would I have wanted
(07:07):
from a theater teacher at thatage?
And I taught from that place.
By the end of the class I couldalready feel the shift and I
could see it.
In the beginning there werestudents who were sort of all
folded up with their head turnedto the side, kind of peeking
out at me through their hair,testing the waters, and by the
(07:29):
end you could feel the energy inthe room had changed and those
very same students were lookingat me straight on, without their
hair blocking or creating aveil between us.
By the end of the semester we'dhad a whole lot more of those
shifts big ones, little ones,huge ones and that outsider
(07:51):
theme.
It ended up really being thedoorway in creating all of those
cosmic shifts for all of us.
The soul suckers can be sneakywhen it's inside our own heads.
They show up with control andself-doubt and whispering those
(08:13):
lies.
They aren't wrong abouteverything, but they do tend to
blow everything out ofproportion.
They disaster, trip about thefuture or blame us about the
past and look at it withwhatever the opposite of
rose-colored glasses is.
Our job is not to kill the soulsuckers as much as we sometimes
(08:37):
might want to.
It's actually to thank them fortheir service, thank them for
their input and gently take thesteering wheel back In the case
of my story, literally takingthe wheel back and driving it
toward the class rather than theother direction.
And inside of us, it's takingthe steering wheel back of where
(08:59):
we go, what we do when we speak, what we say, how we say it.
Why should we look at them?
Well, because of that, sayingwhat you resist persists.
Ignoring them does not makethem go away.
Trust me.
I have whole other storiesabout times that the soul
(09:20):
suckers were chattering in myear and my intuition was talking
to me at the same time and Itried to ignore all of it and
was not a very good teacher inthose moments.
Acknowledging them and thenreleasing them from control does
today.
(09:41):
When we intend to speaksoulfully, we create a beacon.
We tell the soul suckers thankyou for your concern, and I've
got this.
Setting an intention isfocusing on what our souls want
to create before the noise andthe static of the soul suckers
(10:03):
can fully take over.
Align is choosing to stay inthe body, the breath and the
energy of our soul's frequency,instead of spiraling in fear.
Invite is listening to thenonverbal half of the
(10:25):
conversation with the peoplewe're in the room with looking
for signs of movement, like fromhair to now.
I will look at you without myhair.
That's our intention.
Coming to life right before oureyes.
Intention clears the staticbefore our eyes.
(10:48):
Intention clears the static.
Alignment holds the channelopen.
An invitation lets the music ofour soul touch others.
So let's shine that light onthe soul suckers that are
getting in the way.
First we've got the nervousNellies.
They try to keep us safe bykeeping us from speaking at all.
They'll tell us we're too tired, too busy, not enough money.
(11:14):
Stay silent, stay safe.
You don't have enough time, youdon't have enough energy, you
don't have enough time to takeon this speaking opportunity.
So say no.
And in a meeting when we mighthave something unique to
contribute, they might say youshouldn't speak because you'll
take up too much time andeveryone is dying to get out of
(11:37):
here.
Where do they show up for you?
Where do you notice the nervousNellies?
Next up, we have the controllingstage mothers.
The controlling stage mothersjoin in once we've made the
commitment to speak.
Like overbearing stage mothers,they try to help by controlling
(12:02):
everything, about everything.
They over-plan, over-rehearseand suck the life out of our
words and out of our presence.
They steal spontaneity,aliveness and soul.
They hide our one in eightbillion radiance beneath all
that striving for a phantomperfection.
(12:25):
Intention focuses us back onvalues like connection, not
control.
It brings the life and our onein eight billion radiance back
in.
(12:46):
The next soul suckers are theimposter monsters.
The imposter monsters tell usthat we are not enough.
For some specific reason.
We're not smart enough,important enough, accomplished
enough, thin enough, youngenough, old enough, pretty
enough.
You name it as everyone else.
(13:09):
They might stop us by or changehow we do things by saying,
since they all know more thanyou, you shouldn't speak because
what you have to say can'tpossibly compare.
Or if you do speak, you'dbetter put on your smart mask so
they won't notice that youaren't as good as they are.
(13:29):
You're an imposter.
If you speak up, everyone willknow you're an imposter.
When the imposter monsters takethe wheel, when we allow them
to be in charge, we can becomelike marionettes, letting
ourselves be controlled by whatwe think others might want.
(13:50):
You might be noticing aconnection between these
particular soul suckers and thespeaker alter ego masks that
I've also talked aboutthroughout this season.
The soul suckers are the partof us that convinces us to reach
for the not smart enough mask,aka the heady hipster mask, in
(14:13):
the first place.
They whisper you're differentand that difference is a flaw.
What we need to do is to flipit.
Your difference is your gift.
Own it.
More on that in a little bit.
I don't want to forget tomention the fourth soul sucker
(14:35):
the below the belt bastards.
They are the meanest, deepest,cruelest soul suckers, which is
why I named them below the belt.
They say things like you arenot enough, period.
No one wants to hear what youhave to say.
We might react to these bygiving up and holding our
(14:59):
tongues.
It's really tempting to choosesilence in the face of messages
like no one cares what you haveto say.
When I was writing my book yourVoice Matters A Guide to
Speaking Soulfully when itCounts, I was leading a workshop
on Zoom way before it waspopular.
(15:20):
This was like 2013, 2014,.
As I was finishing it up and Isaid there's no kernel of truth
to the soul suckers, to thebelow the belt bastards, and
someone said I beg to differ.
To the below the belt bastardsand someone said I beg to differ
.
They're saying no one wants tohear what you have to say.
The kernel is that somebodysomewhere doesn't or didn't want
(15:43):
to hear what you have to say.
I am really familiar with thebelow the belt bastards.
I used to call myself arecovering workhorse.
When we hear that soul sucker,especially if it says you're not
enough but your work or yourcalling might be so you need to
(16:04):
work a million times hard aseverybody else.
Drive me to speak with myderanged mannequin mask.
All of that effort and thatwork, the not enoughness plus
the passion meeting so muchextra work, turned me into a
deranged mannequin.
When we do that, we tend tocome off as defensive,
(16:28):
aggressive or needy.
Our passion, our true passion,gets distorted and people only
see the effort and sometimes itmakes them want to run in the
other direction.
Imagine somebody pounding ashard as they possibly can on
that toy drum.
Would you want to move towardthe sound or in the other
(16:51):
direction?
The truth is you are enough andyou are not alone.
So let's talk about the kernelof truth.
Sometimes there's a kernel oftruth, but they wildly
(17:14):
exaggerate it.
They have a point, something tocontribute to the picture, but
that thing they have tocontribute is not the whole
picture.
As I mentioned, ignoring them,going la, la, la, la, la la and
trying to shove them in a closetdoesn't work.
The trick is to hear them andthen choose to act on a
(17:36):
different voice inside of us.
By shining the light on themand hearing them, we clear the
static.
We turn the volume down on thesoul suckers and up on the
resonant voice of our souls, andup on the resonant voice of our
(17:56):
souls At the core of theimposter monster's message
you're different.
The imposter monsters, the soulsuckers, think that being
different is a problem, so theyconvince us that we need to hide
(18:17):
our differences ASAP and theywant us to pretend to be like
everyone else or pretend we arewhat we think they want or need
us to be.
They're the part urging us toput on those speaker alter ego
masks like the heady hipster egomasks.
(18:39):
Like the heady hipster.
Being different is a gift.
Your differences are your onein eight billion gift.
Being different is alsoincredibly needed right now in
the world.
With our differences, we createharmony with those around us,
and life and music are both waymore interesting when harmony is
(19:00):
involved.
Imagine when the impostermonsters are talking.
What would happen if youreframed what they have to say
as a gift, like I have fresheyes or I see the things that no
one else can.
What if, instead of suppressingwhat makes you different, you
(19:25):
leaned into it with love?
We all have soul suckers.
You are not broken if you hearthem.
Your soul's voice is clear,simple, wise.
It may say what it's got to sayin this clear, simple, often
(19:48):
quiet way, that still smallvoice inside of us.
Way that still small voiceinside of us.
The soul suckers will try tochatter and drown it out because
you're stepping into somethingthat matters, but you do not
have to let them drive the bus.
The magic comes fromrecognizing them, thanking them
(20:09):
for their input and choosing tolisten to and act on your soul
instead.
If this touched you in some way,you can go even deeper with my
free soul sucker quiz.
If you haven't taken it already, if you have, maybe take it
again.
It could be different now Tofind out which of those four
(20:31):
soul suckers are driving the busof you when you don't want them
to, or grabbing at the wheel Totake the quiz.
Go to my website,voice-matterscom.
Hover over quizzes in the topmenu and select soul sucker from
the dropdown.
And, of course, as always,please spread the magic by
(20:54):
rating, reviewing or sharingthis episode with someone that
you know that you think wouldalso like.
What happens after they shinethe light on the soul suckers?
Welcome back to Soulful Speaking.
Today's episode is for anybodywho has ever felt like an
invisible force, sometimes heldthem back from speaking up, or
showing up or shining asbrightly, as deep down they know
they're meant to.
I call these invisible forcesthe soul suckers.
(00:24):
We've talked about themthroughout this season and today
we're going to shine a light onthem.
The soul suckers are the forcepreventing the pure signal of
our soul's voice from comingthrough to the world.
(00:46):
They all have one core lie theywhisper not enough.
There's not enough money, time,energy or you.
Speaking soulfully is aboutdaring to let our true selves
come through, like really takingup space, being seen, sharing
(01:09):
what matters to us in our fullone in eight billion radiance.
That takes courage, and when wedare to do that, the soul
suckers show up.
They're the static.
They try to drown out our innerknowing.
In reality, they mean well, butthey are stuck in survival mode
(01:32):
.
They're not in thriving mode.
They're not in.
I'm here to fulfill my soul'scalling mode and they can, in
their attempt to protect us,unknowingly guide our choices
when we're not aware.
So today we're going to shine alight on them and set ourselves
free.
(01:53):
There's a quote from theAlchemist by Paulo Coelho Don't
give in to your fears.
If you do, you won't be able totalk to your heart.
So we are not giving in to ourfears.
Today we're shining the lighton them so that we can choose to
act and speak from a differentpart of ourselves.
(02:16):
In their attempts to protect us, the soul suckers convert us
into the toy drum version ofourselves.
Imagine a toy drum like tinny,higher pitched, when in reality
(02:37):
we were all born as the real,resounding drum version of
ourselves.
The soul suckers can only bangon the toy drum.
Our souls want to play the full, resonant drum that stirs
hearts and changes rooms andmakes people's arm hairs stand
(02:58):
up on end.
The soul suckers feed onscarcity.
The soul speaks from abundance.
Today we're going to meet them,or re-meet them, and learn how
Intend, align, invite helps usto release them.
And I'm going to start with astory of a time they almost got
(03:21):
me, of a time they almost got me.
For a few years, starting about10 years ago, I taught college
theater classes on high schoolcampuses in East Palo Alto.
Maybe it was 12 years ago, andI'll never forget.
One day I was driving downHighway 101 from my place in San
(03:41):
Mateo to East Palo Alto on myway to the first session of a
Latin American theater coursethat I was teaching on this high
school campus, and that morningthe soul suckers were loud in
my head.
I was actually shaking, with myhands on my literal steering
(04:03):
wheel driving, shaking with myhands on my literal steering
wheel driving, and the impostermonster soul suckers were in my
head yelling things like whatare you doing?
Turn the car around and you'rea white girl from Burbank,
california.
Who are you to teach LatinAmerican theater to a bunch of
East Palo Alto teens?
It was a full body fight orflight moment.
(04:27):
And then I remembered this ispart of my work not avoiding
these moments, moving throughthem and, along the way, doing
it myself and teaching, helpingothers to do the same.
So I decided I committed topractice what I preach.
(04:51):
First I actually listened to thesoul suckers' concerns and then
I released them from the job ofbeing in charge.
You're not responsible forbeing in charge anymore.
Was there a kernel of truth inwhat they were saying?
Abso-freaking-lutely, I am awhite woman and I was teaching
(05:12):
Latin American theater in EastPalo Alto to high schoolers, but
instead of making that a reasonto shrink or run away.
I let it shape the way that Itaught.
I centered the course on thetheme of being an outsider
because one thing I learnedthrough doing it let's be real
(05:37):
almost everyone feels like anoutsider in high school.
Even the popular people I'velearned down underneath often
years later say they felt likean outsider too.
As I grounded into that andwalked onto the campus, I got an
image of a friend fromelementary school, this sweet
(05:59):
fellow, weirdo, ally fromchildhood, and at first I tried
to brush it off like reallythat's who you're sending to me,
thinking that I needed somelike wise elder to help me.
But something in me knew andpersisted she's exactly what I
need right now.
So I said yes to that intuition, even though it didn't make
(06:23):
sense then, and I walked intothe classroom with her by my
side, not literally, butenergetically, and right as I
stepped through the door I heardthis quiet voice inside say
cosmic shift.
The soul suckers, of course,muttered no pressure there, but
(06:44):
by then they'd really started tolose their grip.
It was like they were in thepassenger seat pouting a little.
That memory of my frienddropped me into empathy, into
presence, into remembering whatit felt like to be a teenager
and as I started teaching Ithought what would I have wanted
(07:07):
from a theater teacher at thatage?
And I taught from that place.
By the end of the class I couldalready feel the shift and I
could see it.
In the beginning there werestudents who were sort of all
folded up with their head turnedto the side, kind of peeking
out at me through their hair,testing the waters, and by the
(07:29):
end you could feel the energy inthe room had changed and those
very same students were lookingat me straight on, without their
hair blocking or creating aveil between us.
By the end of the semester we'dhad a whole lot more of those
shifts big ones, little ones,huge ones and that outsider
(07:51):
theme.
It ended up really being thedoorway in creating all of those
cosmic shifts for all of us.
The soul suckers can be sneakywhen it's inside our own heads.
They show up with control andself-doubt and whispering those
(08:13):
lies.
They aren't wrong abouteverything, but they do tend to
blow everything out ofproportion.
They disaster, trip about thefuture or blame us about the
past and look at it withwhatever the opposite of
rose-colored glasses is.
Our job is not to kill the soulsuckers as much as we sometimes
(08:37):
might want to.
It's actually to thank them fortheir service, thank them for
their input and gently take thesteering wheel back In the case
of my story, literally takingthe wheel back and driving it
toward the class rather than theother direction.
And inside of us, it's takingthe steering wheel back of where
(08:59):
we go, what we do when we speak, what we say, how we say it.
Why should we look at them?
Well, because of that, sayingwhat you resist persists.
Ignoring them does not makethem go away.
Trust me.
I have whole other storiesabout times that the soul
(09:20):
suckers were chattering in myear and my intuition was talking
to me at the same time and Itried to ignore all of it and
was not a very good teacher inthose moments.
Acknowledging them and thenreleasing them from control does
today.
(09:41):
When we intend to speaksoulfully, we create a beacon.
We tell the soul suckers thankyou for your concern, and I've
got this.
Setting an intention isfocusing on what our souls want
to create before the noise andthe static of the soul suckers
(10:03):
can fully take over.
Align is choosing to stay inthe body, the breath and the
energy of our soul's frequency,instead of spiraling in fear.
Invite is listening to thenonverbal half of the
(10:25):
conversation with the peoplewe're in the room with looking
for signs of movement, like fromhair to now.
I will look at you without myhair.
That's our intention.
Coming to life right before oureyes.
Intention clears the staticbefore our eyes.
(10:48):
Intention clears the static.
Alignment holds the channelopen.
An invitation lets the music ofour soul touch others.
So let's shine that light onthe soul suckers that are
getting in the way.
First we've got the nervousNellies.
They try to keep us safe bykeeping us from speaking at all.
They'll tell us we're too tired, too busy, not enough money.
(11:14):
Stay silent, stay safe.
You don't have enough time, youdon't have enough energy, you
don't have enough time to takeon this speaking opportunity.
So say no.
And in a meeting when we mighthave something unique to
contribute, they might say youshouldn't speak because you'll
take up too much time andeveryone is dying to get out of
(11:37):
here.
Where do they show up for you?
Where do you notice the nervousNellies?
Next up, we have the controllingstage mothers.
The controlling stage mothersjoin in once we've made the
commitment to speak.
Like overbearing stage mothers,they try to help by controlling
(12:02):
everything, about everything.
They over-plan, over-rehearseand suck the life out of our
words and out of our presence.
They steal spontaneity,aliveness and soul.
They hide our one in eightbillion radiance beneath all
that striving for a phantomperfection.
(12:25):
Intention focuses us back onvalues like connection, not
control.
It brings the life and our onein eight billion radiance back
in.
(12:46):
The next soul suckers are theimposter monsters.
The imposter monsters tell usthat we are not enough.
For some specific reason.
We're not smart enough,important enough, accomplished
enough, thin enough, youngenough, old enough, pretty
enough.
You name it as everyone else.
(13:09):
They might stop us by or changehow we do things by saying,
since they all know more thanyou, you shouldn't speak because
what you have to say can'tpossibly compare.
Or if you do speak, you'dbetter put on your smart mask so
they won't notice that youaren't as good as they are.
(13:29):
You're an imposter.
If you speak up, everyone willknow you're an imposter.
When the imposter monsters takethe wheel, when we allow them
to be in charge, we can becomelike marionettes, letting
ourselves be controlled by whatwe think others might want.
(13:50):
You might be noticing aconnection between these
particular soul suckers and thespeaker alter ego masks that
I've also talked aboutthroughout this season.
The soul suckers are the partof us that convinces us to reach
for the not smart enough mask,aka the heady hipster mask, in
(14:13):
the first place.
They whisper you're differentand that difference is a flaw.
What we need to do is to flipit.
Your difference is your gift.
Own it.
More on that in a little bit.
I don't want to forget tomention the fourth soul sucker
(14:35):
the below the belt bastards.
They are the meanest, deepest,cruelest soul suckers, which is
why I named them below the belt.
They say things like you arenot enough, period.
No one wants to hear what youhave to say.
We might react to these bygiving up and holding our
(14:59):
tongues.
It's really tempting to choosesilence in the face of messages
like no one cares what you haveto say.
When I was writing my book yourVoice Matters A Guide to
Speaking Soulfully when itCounts, I was leading a workshop
on Zoom way before it waspopular.
(15:20):
This was like 2013, 2014,.
As I was finishing it up and Isaid there's no kernel of truth
to the soul suckers, to thebelow the belt bastards, and
someone said I beg to differ.
To the below the belt bastardsand someone said I beg to differ
.
They're saying no one wants tohear what you have to say.
The kernel is that somebodysomewhere doesn't or didn't want
(15:43):
to hear what you have to say.
I am really familiar with thebelow the belt bastards.
I used to call myself arecovering workhorse.
When we hear that soul sucker,especially if it says you're not
enough but your work or yourcalling might be so you need to
(16:04):
work a million times hard aseverybody else.
Drive me to speak with myderanged mannequin mask.
All of that effort and thatwork, the not enoughness plus
the passion meeting so muchextra work, turned me into a
deranged mannequin.
When we do that, we tend tocome off as defensive,
(16:28):
aggressive or needy.
Our passion, our true passion,gets distorted and people only
see the effort and sometimes itmakes them want to run in the
other direction.
Imagine somebody pounding ashard as they possibly can on
that toy drum.
Would you want to move towardthe sound or in the other
(16:51):
direction?
The truth is you are enough andyou are not alone.
So let's talk about the kernelof truth.
Sometimes there's a kernel oftruth, but they wildly
(17:14):
exaggerate it.
They have a point, something tocontribute to the picture, but
that thing they have tocontribute is not the whole
picture.
As I mentioned, ignoring them,going la, la, la, la, la la and
trying to shove them in a closetdoesn't work.
The trick is to hear them andthen choose to act on a
(17:36):
different voice inside of us.
By shining the light on themand hearing them, we clear the
static.
We turn the volume down on thesoul suckers and up on the
resonant voice of our souls, andup on the resonant voice of our
(17:56):
souls At the core of theimposter monster's message
you're different.
The imposter monsters, the soulsuckers, think that being
different is a problem, so theyconvince us that we need to hide
(18:17):
our differences ASAP and theywant us to pretend to be like
everyone else or pretend we arewhat we think they want or need
us to be.
They're the part urging us toput on those speaker alter ego
masks like the heady hipster egomasks.
(18:39):
Like the heady hipster.
Being different is a gift.
Your differences are your onein eight billion gift.
Being different is alsoincredibly needed right now in
the world.
With our differences, we createharmony with those around us,
and life and music are both waymore interesting when harmony is
(19:00):
involved.
Imagine when the impostermonsters are talking.
What would happen if youreframed what they have to say
as a gift, like I have fresheyes or I see the things that no
one else can.
What if, instead of suppressingwhat makes you different, you
(19:25):
leaned into it with love?
We all have soul suckers.
You are not broken if you hearthem.
Your soul's voice is clear,simple, wise.
It may say what it's got to sayin this clear, simple, often
(19:48):
quiet way, that still smallvoice inside of us.
Way that still small voiceinside of us.
The soul suckers will try tochatter and drown it out because
you're stepping into somethingthat matters, but you do not
have to let them drive the bus.
The magic comes fromrecognizing them, thanking them
(20:09):
for their input and choosing tolisten to and act on your soul
instead.
If this touched you in some way,you can go even deeper with my
free soul sucker quiz.
If you haven't taken it already, if you have, maybe take it
again.
It could be different now Tofind out which of those four
(20:31):
soul suckers are driving the busof you when you don't want them
to, or grabbing at the wheel Totake the quiz.
Go to my website,voice-matterscom.
Hover over quizzes in the topmenu and select soul sucker from
the dropdown.
And, of course, as always,please spread the magic by
(20:54):
rating, reviewing or sharingthis episode with someone that
you know that you think wouldalso like.
What happens after they shinethe light on the soul suckers?
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