Steven Pressfield, author of the powerful kick-in-your-pants The War of Art, believes in two powerful voices in the world:

• A negative, dark voice that will stop at nothing to keep you from doing the things you believe are most worth doing. Pressfield calls this the Resistance. This voice is absolutely real. It is deadly. And it means business.
• An equally powerful positive voice. The ancients called it the Muse. Others might call it the Spirit or the Divine Light or Inspiration. (Interesting: the verb “to inspire” can be literally translated “breathe into.” When we are inspired, we are breathed into.) This voice is also absolutely real, and it is on your side.

If we want to accomplish the best of what we have for ourselves and others, the trick is to listen to the right voice and stop listening to the other. But how? Five ideas:

1. Be intentional about your stimuli. As you look at what you want to accomplish in the next three months or three years, what books, blogs, podcasts, and videos would help you get there? How can you use technology to make engaging these stimuli easier? When will you take in these stimuli? Should you schedule doing so?
2. Notice what inspires you. If being inspired means being breathed into, and if inspiration is the stuff of this real, positive force that can take us where we want to go, then it behooves us to notice what inspires us. What’s inspiring you these days? Notice this, talk with your friends about it, take notes.
3. Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird encourages writers to imagine all the voices of criticism—you could think of these as the voices of Resistance—in a jar with a volume knob attached to it. These voices include your internal, never-stops-chattering editor; your overbearing mother; your inner (needy) child. You get the idea. Place all these voices in a jar and then turn the volume up. Turn it up and keep it there. Hear them? They’re shouting. They’re angry. They don’t much like you. Now, quickly, turn the volume knob down until you can’t hear them at all. Now place the imaginary jar out of sight.
4. Peter Bregman, author of a terrific time-management book 18 Minutes, says, “Don’t give up in the moments when you’re most vulnerable.” For me, it’s at night. I get sucked in by those naughty late-night sirens David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, and then I’m too tired to wake up early the next morning, which is when I exercise and write. So here’s the deal I’ve made with myself. I don’t have to work hard all the time. Just at night—actually, for one half hour, from 9:30pm to 10:00pm. Every day I live 48 half-hours, and for 47 of them I can take it easy, more or less. But for this one half hour, I need to put on the helmet, grab the machine gun, and push through. If I do, I’m well on my way to doing the things that are most important to me.
5. This one is perhaps the most important. Find or create a group that will support you. Every month I gather with a group of five to seven other creatives. We time ourselves, go around the circle, and ask three questions: What’s inspiring you? What are you working on? What would you like prompting on? We got the idea from Todd Henry’s book, The Accidental Creative, which has been a true game changer for me.

Don’t focus so much on not hearing the negative voice. Try instead to think of ways to nurture the good voice. Make it your goal to be so busy listening to the right voice that you just don’t have time to hear the other.

How about it? How do you practice listening to the right voice? I would love to hear your thoughts.