We chose unwittingly then, and we can consciously choose now, but generally we find we don't make that new choice. Something about what we learned from time and tribulation in our lives keeps us from the freedom of that choice, has become an obstacle to the power of choice itself.
Part of that obstacle, we can find in the way we speak to ourselves. When we listen to our inner negative inner dialogue, we find things that don't help and even sound quite odd. I makes for a turmoil we can often hear voiced. Many of my students talk to themselves out loud when they work. Many of us do. I do so myself. Often when I hear those voices, I hear their inner turmoil. Sometimes they express that inner turmoil to me. The person who tells me doesn't see or feel this as turmoil. In fact, students and others feel almost as if they accomplish something by their negative inner dialogue.
Revelations can arrive so swiftly and evidently that it seems as if we should have known that new understanding all along. Such a revelation arrived for me when a student said, "I'm disappointed in myself." I epiphanied: "What a remarkable thing to say." I asked the student if I could talk about that sentence, and she agreed even if somewhat confused as to why. I went to the little white board and wrote out the phrase, "I am disappointed in myself," and asked my students, "Who are these two guys?" They looked gazed at me. They saw no epiphany aside from possibility of the instructor having slipped a gear one more time. But there it was in dry erase marker. Who is that "I" who makes a judgment on the "self"? Our internal dialogue is full of such expressions, and none serve a very happy purpose. The "I" inevitably judges the "Self" in almost universal ways: "I am my own worst critic," "I am my own worst enemy," even to the extremes of, "I hate myself" or "I must change myself." Who is this “I” who doesn't seem to like the “Self” very much?[120]
In terms of this writing, the "I" represents the "I"dentity. Our identity always feels the need to prove something to the external world. It suffers from the shoulds previously defined. Making these sorts of internal demands, our identity can tell the world that our identity has a very high standard of accomplishment, and it can be very self-critical in order to achieve that standard. Of course, what we hear in this identity construction resonates with the punishing behavior we received from adult authorities to serve some higher purpose. As with those authorities, the structure of the relationship stays the same. All the effort and the work happens because the becoming self feels and acts on the motivation to accomplish something. In that effort, mistakes happen as a natural and almost inevitable part of the process. All this comes with the self saying "Yes" to the opportunity to make that effort and to learn from the process. Our identity acts solely as the non-participatory judge in the matter, and the judge always finds fault in the activity and the achievement of the self. Our identity somehow always finds the "No" in what the self does, and in that "No" our identity denies the value and denigrates the effort of the self in its attempt to choose a "Yes." This dialogue might remind some of us of expressions we heard before such as "Can't you get anything right?" "How many times do I have to repeat this?" "If you'd try harder, you'd get it." "You're not trying hard enough." "If your head wasn't screwed on, you'd lose it." "You are trying my patience."