Hearing Your Authentic Voice: What We Want vs. What’s Expected of Us

People who grew up in households that value education are typically socialized to pursue meaningful careers, interesting projects, and academic credentials. But who gets to decide what makes a career meaningful or what makes a project worth pursuing?  Is it us, or our social conditioning?

Join Mariya Hoffman for this insightful discussion, and bring your own dilemmas!

We absorb what people in our in-group deem valuable. If you grew up in a family of doctors, for example, medicine and science is probably held up as something more valuable than becoming a travel blogger.

How do we disentangle our own, genuine intuition about what we want to pursue and opinions that have been passed down to us by our social environment?

Psychologist Peter Afford might have an answer. He proposes that we essentially have two minds: our logical mind and our intuitive mind. The logical mind is, roughly speaking, situated in the left hemisphere of our brain, and the intuitive side is situated in the right hemisphere. The logical mind talks “at” us through a linguistic train of thought ⁠— reminding us of all our obligations, how we need to be, and how to act. The intuitive mind, on the other hand, is not as great at language (except poetic language), and speaks to us in subtler ways ⁠— through a feeling in the body, a mysterious ache, imagery, etc. This is why it’s so much harder to hear our own authentic voice.  The voice of how we should be is much louder and clear than our own, subtle intuition.

This salon will start with a brief presentation on the neuroscience of intuition, followed by a discussion. 

Some questions might include:

• What are some of the “shoulds” in your life?
• Where did the messages of how you should live your life come from?
• How do we get better at hearing our own authentic voice?
• Is it always better to follow our intuition?
• What is the rightful place of obligation to family and society?

Reading: 

• Peter Afford’s Paper, “Focusing in an Age of Neuroscience“

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