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Whose voice lives inside your head?
14 Plays3 months ago
What if the voice that drives you every day isn’t even your own? Leaders often carry echoes—words from mentors, critics, or even childhood—that shape their inner dialogue. Today, we’ll explore how to recognise those borrowed voices and reframe them into a source of authentic strength.
At The Second Voice, we explore the inner conversations leaders rarely say out loud.
If this episode resonated, it is likely because the second voice is active in your leadership too.
Hosted by Luisa Hogan, leadership resilience strategist and founder of Vermelho Consulting.
Luisa works with founders, executives, and senior leaders who carry real responsibility and want to lead with steadiness, clarity, and self-trust under pressure.
Her work focuses on nervous system regulation, leadership identity, and the inner dialogue that shapes how leaders show up when things are hard.
Work With Luisa
If this episode sparked reflection, here are ways to go deeper:
• Leadership resilience workshops and advisory
• Keynotes and curated live experiences
• The Steady Leadership framework and private sessions
Learn more at: vermelho.com.au
A Note From Whisper & Thread
The Second Voice is proudly supported by Whisper & Thread.
Whisper & Thread creates intimate apparel embroidered with quiet, internal messages designed to interrupt negative self-talk.
Each piece carries a reminder on the inside. Not performative. Not loud. Just for you.
Because leadership self-talk does not start in the boardroom.
And confidence is built in the moments no one sees.
Explore Whisper & Thread at: whisperandthread.com
Stay Connected
Follow along and join the conversation:
• Instagram: @thesecondvoicepodcast
• Instagram: @vermelho_consulting
• Instagram: @whisperandthread
Subscribe, rate, and review The Second Voice to help more leaders find these conversations.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Luisa Hogan
Is the voice that is driving your leadership decisions really your own? Leaders often carry echoes of voices, either from past mentors, from critics, from childhood, and those voices shape their inner dialogue.
00:00:18
Luisa Hogan
And today we're going to be exploring how to recognize those borrowed voices and reframe them into a source of authentic strength. Welcome back to The Second Voice, where we uncover the conversations that leaders don't have out loud. I'm your host, Louisa Hogan, and today I'm in a solo episode of The Second Take, and i am going to explore those voices that we inherit that either limit us or empower us, and how to make a shift towards owning the voice that truly belongs to you.
00:00:48
Luisa Hogan
And I'm going to start with a little story. of a voice that I brought with me to adulthood from my childhood. It's a story that I've only shared once before and I'm going to share it here today.
00:01:01
Luisa Hogan
When I was younger, I was a drum majorette. I was born in South Africa and I became a drum but drum majorette or a dance out was a dance drill. And I started that when I was nine years old and I had a coach who was a champion coach. He'd won the national competition in primary schools and in high schools for many, many years. And he was an ex drill instructor.
00:01:26
Luisa Hogan
Now, because he was an ex army drill instructor, he tro treated us like drill cadets and he was very hard on us and he expected us to win. In fact, second best was a loss to him.
00:01:41
Luisa Hogan
There was no second. Second wasn't good enough. second Second was the first to lose is what he would say. And he would work us very hard. We trained three days a week after school until 6 PM.
00:01:53
Luisa Hogan
We competed every single Saturday and for the whole of my school career, I hardly had ever any school holidays. We would train from early morning, 9am until 6pm every single day during the school holidays so that we could get to the national competition at the end of the year and win that national competition.
00:02:12
Luisa Hogan
Now that was a wonderful opportunity for me because it taught me wonderful things like discipline, like working through, not being motivated, but turning up for practice and working hard.
00:02:25
Luisa Hogan
But it also taught me that Nothing was good enough other than perfection. And we knew when we had done a good job after doing our dance um or our routine at a competition, because Alan our coach would either stand up at the top and clap, or he would walk down with a very grumpy face and he would yell at us quite loudly if we had done a bad job and single out individuals in the team who had performed poorly. So we never wanted to be that.
00:02:55
Luisa Hogan
And so it drove us to be a very high performing team that worked very hard, but it also created a voice inside of me that I didn't know I had until much later in my career. And that voice was, you cannot fail.
00:03:11
Luisa Hogan
Now, I wasn't afraid of failing as such because there were days that we failed. I was afraid of failing in front of others. It was a shame. It was a fear of people seeing the failure.
00:03:25
Luisa Hogan
i don't i don't mind, I didn't mind failing or learning the lessons from failing and working hard through that failure and coming back and picking myself up. That wasn't a problem. It was shame around people seeing me fail.
00:03:37
Luisa Hogan
And that voice I carried with me right up until my second CEO role, when I was faced with winding up an organization that I had inherited, this failing organization, and now i was going to go through a very visible failure in front of others that appeared to be my fault.
00:03:56
Luisa Hogan
and that people were going to see as my fault and that I had to be the CEO of an organization that had to be closed down. And it was then that I started realizing where does this voice come from? Where is this inner voice from where I i feel so much shame to fail in front of others and I cannot let people see the shame.
00:04:15
Luisa Hogan
Now, I know that Every single leader has voices that they have borrowed from others inside of them. I know people who have voices from school teachers when they were told at a very young age that they would never amount to anything and that they would be a disappointment to their families or to themselves. And you hear movie stars who have teachers who have said that to them. And they either listen to that voice or use that voice as a source of encouragement to prove to that person that they will not be a failure.
00:04:49
Luisa Hogan
But a lot of people do take on that voice and take it on very hard and allow that voice to control their decisions because they will be a failure. Others will get criticized early on in their career about something and take it so badly that they carry that voice of doubt throughout their leadership all the time.
00:05:11
Luisa Hogan
And that encouragement and criticism from others is that internalized voice and they can drive us or they can demotivate us.
00:05:24
Luisa Hogan
Now, of course, we've also had lots of instances where people have given us a compliment or given us positive feedback that have really lifted us. But I always find it so fascinating how we are so quick and easy to internalize the negative voices and allow those voices to shape who we are and shape our decision making.
00:05:44
Luisa Hogan
And so how do you know if the voice pushing you is actually yours or if it's somebody else's? And I must admit, I didn't realize that I had Alan in my head encouraging me to not fail in front of others so much until I was 32 years old. And it took me a long time to recognize who that voice was. But there's a trick that I use now personally.
00:06:06
Luisa Hogan
that allows me to determine if the the voice that I'm hearing is a voice that is mine or a voice that is others. And the voice and the trick that I use is, there love in this voice?
00:06:20
Luisa Hogan
Is there love in this voice? Because I can guarantee you, If there is no love in the voice, if that voice is highly critical, if that voice is extremely hard on you, if that voice only tells you that you are a failure that you're making the wrong decision or that this is wrong or any of the number of things that your voice will tell you in moments of self-doubt.
00:06:43
Luisa Hogan
and there's no love and encouragement in it, then it is probably not your voice. It is a borrowed voice. And even if it feels like your voice, because you might say, well, I am hard on myself, you're going to find that that being hard on yourself has come is a borrowed voice from somebody else in your life.
00:07:05
Luisa Hogan
And it could be recent or a long time ago, but if there's no love in it and no encouragement in it, it's probably not yours. And if you are the kind of person who is very hard on yourself in your leadership and in your business journey, and there is no love in that, how can you find the love and start having a little bit more compassion and empathy for yourself so that your second voice is kinder to you?
00:07:32
Luisa Hogan
And the way I do it is if I find this voice has no love and I know, okay, that's now a borrowed voice. don't necessarily have to analyze where it comes from, but now I ask, how can I have this voice with a lot more compassion? How can I have more compassion for myself in this moment? And when I shift that thinking to a little bit more compassion, a little bit more kindness, I'm able to make a much more grounded decision and a decision that is a lot less dysregulating for myself so that I am not just tearing myself down And I'm just taking the next more loving step towards myself.
00:08:15
Luisa Hogan
If we let those borrowed voices dominate our decisions, even though they feel like our voices, you are always going to be moving from self-doubt to self-doubt to self-doubt.
00:08:29
Luisa Hogan
You're always going to be fixing something. It's never going to be good enough. you're always going to be pushing yourself to a higher standard. And when you can shift that dialogue to something more grounded and more truly you, you stop listening to other people's voices and you start listening to your intuition more and you start trusting in your intuition more.
00:08:52
Luisa Hogan
And then that doesn't mean that, okay, well, you know, if you have so many of these negative experiences that might be shaping or but becoming the borrowed voice inside of you, The other reframe that you can do is you can use that voice to fuel you for authentic growth rather than to tear you down.
00:09:15
Luisa Hogan
And it's actually a simple reframe of how can I use this to show myself that that voice is wrong.
00:09:26
Luisa Hogan
And that is something that I have done. So instead of thinking, I'm afraid of failure, I now tell myself, what was the loving person say to me in this situation? That failure is okay.
00:09:42
Luisa Hogan
That failure is data. That failure is information that allows me to come back stronger. And that the failure is okay and it's okay if people see it because that might inspire somebody else. And so I use that voice now to fuel me into taking the next brave step and loving step forward.
00:10:06
Luisa Hogan
So finding strength in your own voice can certainly change the way you lead and the way you lead others. Because can you imagine if you have that more loving voice inside of you, how you will start to have a more loving voice towards others.
00:10:21
Luisa Hogan
I know personally, when I started reframing the, it's okay to fail, I became so much more forgiving to my team and to others for their failures. I didn't see their failures as weak. I didn't see their failures as something shameful, even though I never said it to them, I would think it because that's what I was doing to myself.
00:10:41
Luisa Hogan
So in, in allowing myself to let that go, I suddenly became so much more forgiving to them and it gave everybody else around me permission to fail to and learn and grow and become a more authentic leader themselves. One of the wonderful gift to give people.
00:10:58
Luisa Hogan
doesn't mean that everyone was suddenly free to just fail all the time and make mistakes all the time, but it created a safety around myself and everybody else to have the ability to fail without being shamed or feeling shameful.
00:11:16
Luisa Hogan
So i challenge you to look through and listen to that inner voice that you have inside of you that may be a borrowed voice.
00:11:27
Luisa Hogan
Ask it, have a conversation with herself one day, just with compassion and curiosity. Be curious, where does this voice come from? Who was the first person who said this to me?
00:11:40
Luisa Hogan
I've even found that that I've had borrowed voices that have come for two or three people that have just reinforced the idea in my mind when actually it's not the idea that resonates with me and with my values authentically. But those three people, have one by one by one added proof that that voice was the correct one, when in actual fact, it really, really wasn't. And they themselves had borrowed voices that they were bringing into the conversation and telling me and giving me criticism or driving me to be a different person in that way. So have curiosity.
00:12:16
Luisa Hogan
Where is your inner voice coming from? Who said that to you first? Whose voice are you borrowing? And how can you start to hear the authentic voice inside of you that is not as loud, it is not as persistent, it's just there.
00:12:34
Luisa Hogan
And the other thing in your curiosity is to recognize that sometimes those borrowed voices are there to try and keep you safe. You own them to keep you safe. Because if I continue, for me, for example, if I continue to fear failing in front of others, it means that I won't fail in front of of others, which means I won't need to feel the shame of failing in front of others.
00:13:00
Luisa Hogan
Can you see? It was there to keep me safe. And if you can have that curiosity to your voice, you will determine what it is that you are trying to keep safe within you.
00:13:12
Luisa Hogan
And then you can speak to that person inside of you and say, you are safe. It is okay here. And I tell myself that it is okay to fail. You are safe. Nobody is going to shout at you like Alan did for making a mistake.
00:13:29
Luisa Hogan
Nobody is going to tell you that second best is the first to lose. Nobody in my life tells me that now. And if they do, they're really not part of my life. So while I am grateful for my experiences and for all the wins that I had, I represented my country in the world championships, wonderful, wonderful opportunities that shaped who I am and my leadership and gave me so many wonderful experiences. I also can choose not to own some of those voices that I inherited from that experience.
00:14:01
Luisa Hogan
So tell me, put in the comments today, What voice have you borrowed from somebody else that you are willing to let go of today? Because the voices we carry may not be all of ours, but choosing which one to amplify is the key to authentic leadership.
00:14:18
Luisa Hogan
So until next time, remember your strongest leadership voice is the one that belongs to you Find it, be curious about the voices inside of you, amplify the soft voices that are much more loving and kind because those are you not the voices that you've borrowed to be unkind to you.
00:14:35
Luisa Hogan
Until next time, take care.