The voice in your head is not you, yet this is the one that you always listen to

I want to start this blog with a photograph.

It was taken years ago, during Macron’s first presidential campaign. I was in the room, with the 'right guy', wearing the right dress, looking like I belonged there. The picture is of me standing next to Macron, with his arm around me as we pose for the camera. We look nice.

And I remember thinking, very clearly, as if it was yesterday, that this picture would look good, and that I could show it to people, and to my parents. That was the whole thought. Not I am happy, or I am proud. Not even I am exactly where I want to be.

Just: this will look good.

And that was very often my concern back then. To look good. To look successful. Acceptable. Like I had my life together.

Even when it came at the expense of actually feeling good.

Because the truth was that, behind the picture, I was often feeling miserable. Insecure. Powerless.

One day, my mother said something that has stayed with me a long time:

"I don't understand what's wrong with you. You have everything, yet you never seem happy."

She was very spot on. The more I had, the less fulfilled I felt. And the honest answer to her question was that I had no idea who I was underneath all of it. I was living on autopilot. Doing what I thought I was supposed to do. Chasing what I thought would make me happy, respected, loved, safe.

I was following that voice in my head without realizing it. On autopilot. Never really listening to my gut. Never really listening to my body, even though both were screaming at me to stop. I just hadn't learned how to hear them yet.

I was deeply unaware of what was happening inside me. I didn't realise that an automatic pilot was making so many of my decisions for me.

Until I broke. And had no other choice but to stop. And listen.

What does it actually mean to be self-aware?

Self-awareness is not a concept. It is not something you put on your CV. Although I believe it may be one of the most valuable skills you can develop.

To me, self-awareness is simply being able to notice what is happening inside you while it is happening.

To catch the voice in your head mid-sentence. To hear the thought before you automatically believe it and react.

And then to pause long enough to ask:

Is this actually true? Is this actually me? Do I actually want to think, feel or behave this way?

When I hit rock bottom and finally had to stop, I heard that voice loudly for the first time in my life. And I realised something that changed everything: It had been talking for decades. And I had been agreeing with it the whole time.

Self-awareness is seeing clearly what is going on in your life, being brutally honest about it, and pausing long enough to decide what you want to do with it.

Easy to say. Almost nobody does it, because seeing it sometimes hurts and pausing and deciding what to do with it overwhelms and scares. It takes great courage to do that. But it is life changing.

Here is what you find when you finally stop and listen. There is an inner dialogue running all day long. It comments on your body. Your work. The way you spoke in that meeting. The message he didn't answer. What you should have said. What you should have done differently. It has an opinion about almost everything.

But if you listen closely, really listen, you may notice something interesting: It doesn't always sound like you.

Sometimes it sounds like your mother or your father on a bad day. A teacher you had when you were twelve who made you feel small. A boss who made you question yourself. A partner who disrespected you. A magazine that spent years telling you what a woman should look like, how she should behave, what she should want.

The voice may tell you that you are not good enough. That you are too much. That you should work harder. That you should be happy with what you have. That you cannot do it. That you will be rejected. That you will fail. The list goes on.

Over time, we absorb all these voices until they become one. And eventually, we start mistaking that voice for our own. So, it feels like you. It feels true. But it's not. It is just familiar. And familiar does not mean true.

It is just a voice. And the moment you begin to see it just as a voice, and not as the truth, something separates that creates a little bit of space between you and the thought. And in that gap, for the first time, there is room to choose.

Why this matters more for us

Every woman has a different story. But regardless of our individual stories, many of us were taught from a very young age, not only by our families, but also by society and culture, to behave in certain ways in order to be acceptable and accepted.

We often learned to think about what everyone else needs before we even asked ourselves what we need. Not necessarily because we wanted to. But because that is what women have been taught to do for a very long time. So we do it. And we keep doing it, even when we are unhappy. We give. We accommodate. We stay quiet. We make ourselves smaller. And then we become resentful. Bitter. Sometimes even victims of the very things we keep choosing. But we continue. Because when we don’t, that voice in our head gets louder.

By the time we are adults, that inner voice is not just critical. It is fluent. It speaks that language perfectly. It knows the rules, the instructions, the patterns, the habits and the things we are ‘supposed’ to do. And most of the time, we don’t even realise how much of our lives are being directed by something we never consciously chose.

That is why I believe self-awareness is so powerful for women.

Because when a woman becomes aware of what is actually happening inside her, she starts to see the conditioning that has been operating for years, in her family, in her relationships, in her work, in society and in the world around her. She starts to see the story she has been living and she has been telling herself.

And once she sees it, she can no longer unsee it. She can question the old instructions, take back the pen and rewrite the story.

And perhaps even more importantly, she can stop handing the same old handbook to the next generation of women.

Because this is bigger than changing one woman’s life. When we become more aware, we don’t just reclaim our own power. We change what we pass on. We stop automatically following the script. We start writing our own.

And perhaps, together, we start writing a different one for us all and for the women who come after us.

The part nobody wants to hear

Now let us talk about the uncomfortable part, and the reason I am writing this article first rather than one about confidence or purpose or morning new routines (all of those things matter too).

Before we can change anything, we have to be willing to look.

Most of us, at some point, have played the victim in our own lives. I know we don’t like hearing that, I certainly didn’t. But for much of my life, I was doing exactly that. Not dramatically. Quietly. And perhaps that is why I could not see it. I was working hard, I was taking charge, I was making decisions in my life, in my relationships and at work.

But at the same time, I was staying in situations that were not good for me, and that did not make me happy.

For most of my life, I did not set boundaries. And I blamed everyone else for crossing them.

I did not fully respect myself and I blamed everyone for not respecting me.

What I eventually had to admit, and it was not comfortable, was that I had never once clearly said no. I had complained, to myself, my friends or my therapist, I had felt resentful, deeply sad or angry. But I hadn’t actually spoken up. I had accepted the situation and then held the world responsible for something I was allowing.

I was complaining about things I was continuing to accept, I was blaming others for circumstances I was also choosing.

In other words, I was consenting to the very things I was constantly blaming and complaining about.

I was not taking responsibility for my own happiness. And that is a hard pill to swallow.

It is a difficult thing to admit but once I did, it was incredibly liberating.

Because taking responsibility meant that I was no longer powerless. Once you can see the pattern, you can change it.

Taking responsibility does not mean blaming yourself

Let us be precise, because this is where people get it wrong and where I got it wrong for a long time. Taking responsibility is often misunderstood.

Taking responsibility does not mean everything that happened to you was your fault or you were responsible for it. Not at all. If someone harassed you, betrayed you, lied to you, that is on them. I am not asking you to carry what belongs to someone else.

What I am saying is that there may be a pattern that allowed you to remain in that situation, or that kept repeating itself in your life. And I am inviting you to look at it, and to ask yourself:

Why do I keep staying in situations that are obviously hurting me? What do I tell myself to make staying possible while knowing it is not good to me? What is familiar about it?

Those questions belong to you, and answering them honestly is the most powerful thing you will ever do. It did not come straight and easy to me, but it made me understand that the pattern is my responsibility.

The moment you see and own the pattern, you can break it. And change your life.

As long as it is happening to you, you are stuck waiting for the world to change. There is nothing to change but yourself.

That is the shift. From victim to the person who has agency in her own life: the identity that chooses, that responds instead of reacting, that takes responsibility and ownership of her life, including her shortcomings, especially her shortcomings, because that is where the leverage is.

What happens next

Self-awareness is not a destination. It is the beginning of a new way of living.

Once you start hearing the voice in your head, you can stop automatically obeying it. You can question your thoughts. Redirect them. Choose a different response.

You can stop asking: Why is this happening to me?

And start asking: What am I going to do with this?

You reclaim your true identity from the autopilot, and you discover, slowly and then all at once, that the real you is much bolder, much greater, much more capable, much more alive, and much kinder than the voice ever allowed you to be.

I am not writing this from the other side of some finish line. I am writing it as a woman who still catches the voice, most days. The difference is that I hear it now. And I don’t believe everything it says. I can listen to it and question it and then choose. That, to me, is self-awareness.

And that, to me, is what it means to be empowered from the inside out. Because when you change what is happening within you, your outer world starts to change too.

That is what Women in Sight is about. Not a place to become someone else or to fix yourself. But a transformational space to stop, to look inside, to see what is going on and to finally meet yourself, clearly, honestly, and with enough courage to stay.

And, from that place, to decide what you want to do with your life.