Is your private voice yours?  Are you sure about that? To help determine this, and whether your private voice is working for or against you, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1.  What is the general tone of your inner voice?  Harsh, bitter and critical? Or supportive, kind and encouraging?
2. Estimate how much of the time your inner voice is a constructive force in your life, and how much a destructive one. To what extent does it instill you with confidence and hope? To what extent does it terrorize you with stories of inadequacy, incompetence and regret?
3. Ever feel that your inner voice is not really you speaking? If it does not feel like you, whose voice might it be? Consider both content and tone.
4. To help you achieve real happiness and to leave the legacy you desire for those you care about most, what changes would you make in the content and tone of your private voice?
5. To what extent is your private voice aligned with your ultimate mission in life? What seems to be the driving force behind your private voice? Where is it taking you?

The stories we tell and hear embed themselves more deeply in our subconsciousness the more they are repeated.

In the end though, it is only the one voice that truly matters. Because your inner voice is telling you your story all the time, you are rarely even conscious that you have been telling a story. Indeed it is hard to imagine what it would feel like if suddenly you stopped telling yourself your story, or even just changed this one.