The Committee of One

There is a meeting happening in your head right now. It is happening at all hours, without an agenda, and everyone is talking at once. There is the ambitious version of you, the tired version of you, the version who wants to eat the whole tray of biscuits, the version who wants to be the sort of person who does not eat the whole tray of biscuits, the version who feels ten years old, the version who feels seventy, the anxious auntie, the boardroom lawyer, the inner critic in the corner clearing her throat every four minutes. This is your committee. It is not going anywhere. It is you.

Most self-help books try to sell you the idea that you can fire members of this committee. You cannot. They all have permanent seats. The best you can do is chair the meeting.

A good chair does three things. First, she lets everyone speak. If you refuse to hear from the tired version of you, the tired version of you will start slamming doors — usually at three o'clock in the afternoon during an important project. If you refuse to hear from the ten-year-old, the ten-year-old will hijack you at a wedding, or in traffic, or when a colleague uses that particular tone. Being heard is often all a member of the committee wants. Once heard, they are surprisingly willing to sit back down.

Second, a good chair keeps one loud member from running the whole meeting. The inner critic, especially, will try. She will speak first, she will speak last, she will interrupt everyone, and if you let her, she will call the vote before anyone else has finished making their case. The trick is not to fight her. The trick is to say, gently, 'Thank you, we have heard from you. Would anyone else like to speak?' You would be amazed at what the quiet ones say when there is space in the room.

Third, and this is where most of us fail, a good chair knows the difference between hearing a member and obeying them. The committee is advisory. The chair decides. When the frightened version of you says, 'Don't send that email,' you hear her. You thank her for being alert. And then, if the email needs sending, you send it — not because she was wrong to be frightened, but because sending it is what the chair, having heard from everyone, has decided.

This is the sane way to live with a mind. You are not one thing. You never were. Anyone who has ever tried to be one thing has been exhausted by the effort, because it takes enormous energy to hold the trapdoor shut on all the other selves. Let them into the room. Give them chairs. Chair the meeting. Serve tea. Take minutes if you like. The meeting will not end. But it will, over years, become less of a shouting match and more of a considered discussion, which is, honestly, the best any of us can hope for.

A small practical note. When the meeting gets loud — when three members are arguing at once and the ten-year-old is crying and the lawyer is banging her gavel — try, before doing anything, to write down what each of them is actually saying. Not what they are yelling. What they are saying underneath the yelling. You will often find that they are, in the end, asking for the same thing: to be safe, to be loved, to be allowed to rest. The chair, having heard this, can usually find a small motion that will pass unanimously.

You are a committee of one. You always will be. The good news is you have been elected chair for life. The better news is you can, starting today, hold a better meeting.