The Inner Tug-of-War: Why You Feel Conflicted & What to Do About It

Wired by Advice, Rewired by Wisdom

Why is it that amazing advice for one situation is awful for another? That wisdom shared in one moment is a mistake or misstep in the next?

I was reading Just Because by Matthew McConaughey to my twin girls when it dawned on me that sometimes what I tell them is quite confusing and often contradictory. The book is about contradictions in life...just because we are/do one thing, doesn't mean we are/do another!

For example, one day, I might say…

• "Always be kind to others." The next day, telling them, "Don't talk to strangers." Leaving them confused wondering, "How can I be kind to strangers without talking to them?"
• "Believe in yourself—you can do anything!” The next telling them, “Don’t brag or act like you’re better than others.” Leaving them confused about their confidence. 
• "Never give up. Keep trying no matter what." The next telling them, “Listen to your body. It’s okay to take a break when you’re tired.” Leaving them unsure when to rest and when to push on. 

Noticing these contradictions, I began looking at some of my own inner messages. The integrated intelligences that guide my thoughts, feelings, and actions. 

I discovered many of the common patterns from my past, are currently creating an inner conflict causing confusion and chaos in the present.

• I want to be authentic, show up as my whole self, and apply my unique talents to my work. 
• But I’ve repeatedly been given guidance that I am “too much.” I talk too much, write too much, do too much, maximize too much in my life. One of my greatest strengths has also been repeatedly identified by others as a weakness, as something to fix or change.

I feel the dichotomy daily. The internal battle that wages on between what my inner intelligences are guiding me to think, feel, and do, and the history of advice and feedback telling me it’s wrong.

Tension of Competing Messages

My experience isn't unique. In fact, we've often received competing messages that create a continuous conflict internally. Here are a few common examples:

1. Speak Your Truth vs. Keep the Peace: “Use your voice. Don’t be afraid to speak up." and “Pick your battles. Don’t stir the pot." Do I advocate for what’s right—or stay quiet to maintain harmony?
2. Take Risks vs. Be Responsible: “Follow your dreams. Leap and the net will appear.” and “Be practical. Have a backup plan. Don’t risk your security." Do I take the leap—or stay grounded in what’s “safe”?
3. Love Yourself vs. Don’t Be Selfish: “Put yourself first. Self-care isn’t selfish.” and “Be generous. Think of others before yourself.” How do I balance self-care with care for others?
4. Work Hard vs. Rest Is Productive: “Success takes hustle, grit, and discipline.” and “Rest is essential. You can’t pour from an empty cup.” Is it okay to slow down—or am I falling behind?
5. Be Authentic vs. Be Professional: “Be real. Be yourself.” and “Know your audience. Don’t overshare. Be polished.” Where’s the line between authenticity and TMI?
6. Trust Your Gut vs. Think It Through: “Be rational. Make data-driven decisions.” and “Tune into your intuition. You already know.” Should I follow my instincts—or wait for certainty?
7. Let Go vs. Don’t Give Up: “Surrender. What’s meant for you won’t miss you.” and “Keep pushing. Persistence is everything.” When do I release—and when do I keep trying?
8. Stay Informed vs. Protect Your Peace: “Stay engaged. Don’t be ignorant of what’s going on.” and “Turn it off. Don’t let the news steal your sanity.” How do I stay informed without burning out?

Reflect: How many of these or others like them are you currently experiencing an inner tug of war between?

To understand how this inner conflict takes root in our systems, let’s look at how our wiring actually works.

An Analogy

Let's use an analogy to help us understand how this battle comes into our being. The neural connections in our body are like wires running in a machine. Each time we have an experience, a neural connection forms and a wire (neural pathway) is created and installed into our system. 

Every bit of advice, interaction, relationship, and environment in our lives either installs new wires or reinforces connections already in place. But sometimes we experience something that causes us to wire our system suboptimally. 

• Mixed messages from caregivers or teachers
• Punishment for expressing emotions
• Praise that is conditional
• Witnessing or experiencing conflict
• Being told to ignore instincts
• Receiving "advice" that contradicts your inner knowing
• Overexposure to criticism or shame
• Societal messaging and stereotypes
• Early success followed by harsh failure
• Chronic stress or overwhelm 

Our system is not wired incorrectly, but rather suboptimally. The experiences that cause our wiring to get incorrectly installed or crisscrossed in ways that cause our systems to get stuck are inevitable. 

Our system cannot be incorrectly wired because it would be impossible to create a life of experiences that led to perfectly created neural networks and connections in the human body. 

Just by living our lives, we will begin wiring in ways that support our survival even if they cause pathways that create resistance. 

• Praise for Performance: We will respond to instances where prioritizing our performance produces praise, by performing in ways that will earn us more praise. 🧠This wires in my worth is based on what I produce or accomplish.
• Safety in Suppression: We will respond to experiences where showing emotion leads to shame, by learning to shut down and stay stoic. 🧠This wires in it's not safe to feel or express emotions.
• Hiding and Holding It In: We will respond to environments filled with unpredictable conflict by becoming hypervigilant and emotionally guarded to avoid harm. 🧠 This wires in survival-mode alertness, mistrust, and chronic stress.
• Shamed into Striving: We will respond to ongoing criticism by becoming perfectionistic or hyper-independent to avoid being judged again. 🧠 This wires in self-criticism and fear of vulnerability or collaboration.
• Overdrive to Override: We will respond to years of pushing through without rest by normalizing survival mode and over-functioning as our baseline.🧠 This wires in dysregulation, exhaustion, and difficulty accessing joy or creativity.

The next example is one that hits right at the heart of my own inner conflict that causes me confusion and chaos in my life. 

We will respond to being praised one day for being bold and expressive, and punished the next for being “too much,” by learning to constantly self-edit and shrink to stay safe. 🧠 This wires in chronic second-guessing and fear of being fully seen.

The wires were formed wisely by our bodies to keep us safe and ensure our needs were met. That we received care and connection from our communities. That we could avoid the pain of blame and shame. That we could prevent the pain caused by rejection and judgment.

While these wires weren't wrong, they can also cause our systems to freeze, overheat, and shut down. We no longer need that customized and suboptimal wiring to protect us, but we have to be willing to re-install and re-wire what is no longer serving us. 

Before we look at how to rewire these incorrectly installed or crossed wires in our systems, let’s first better understand the difference between wisdom and advice.

Advice vs. Wisdom: What to Keep & What to Question

Too often we use these two words, wisdom and advice, interchangeably. But the truth is, there is a massive difference between them that is critical to understanding how they impact us and ultimately, what to do with each of them.

• Wisdom: is the ability to apply knowledge, experience, insight, and good judgment in a way that is discerning, compassionate, and context sensitive. It often involves seeing the deeper truth of a situation and choosing the best path forward—not just for oneself, but often in service of a greater good.
• Advice: is a suggestion or recommendation offered to someone about what they should do in a specific situation. It may or may not be rooted in deep experience or understanding and is often shaped by the giver’s own perspective or preferences.

Wisdom is like a floodlight that shines bright so others can see and choose their own path. While advice is like a flashlight pointing towards one path showing someone exactly where to go.

How Advice & Wisdom Get Wired Within Us

Whatever we are told by people in positions of authority or importance in our lives becomes guidance we encode into our neural pathways.

We create a connection that allows its messages to move across it. Each time we receive a similar message, the connection strengthens, and the pathway becomes more embedded. Imagine a footpath in the grass. The more worn it becomes, the more likely we are to take it rather than walk a new path.

As children, we don't yet have the capacity to discern the difference between wisdom and advice. However, before receiving contradictory messages or bad advice, children can be incredibly wise on their own. The saying “out of the mouths of babes” from the Bible isn’t an accident; it’s true! 

Children have the capacity to unconsciously, and even unintentionally, offer profound insights, observations, and wisdom far beyond their years of experiences.

But, when children are repeatedly exposed to or given bad advice, it causes them to wire in a way that is about surviving, not thriving. As a result, they develop patterns of following these pathways even when they are no longer serving them well. 

Why isn't age a requirement for wisdom?

Wisdom is not the result of age. 

Wisdom is accessing one’s innate inner intelligence to identify the wisest path in a particular moment. It’s our most natural way of thinking, feeling, and behaving before the world of advice and opinions gets in our way.

But the opinions and advice of others does get in the way because everyone believes they have the best advice or that their perspective provides the perfect answer. 

When combined with the insecurity that comes from mistakes and missteps along the way, our internal desire for external guidance and advice grows.

The more we seek it, the more we receive it. The more we receive, the more we wire conflicting and confusing messages into our systems.

We internalize information from others that is based on their lives and their perspectives, not our own. Then, without discernment, we create patterns in our neural pathways that send mixed messages about what we should think, feel, or do in different situations.

These inner conflicts become programs running in the background; causing repetitive thought loops, negative emotional reactions, and unhelpful habits. They frustrate us, confuse us, and slow our progress as we navigate through incorrectly wired neural systems.

Our systems weren’t designed only by our wise minds through discernment and inner intelligence, but by the advice offered by the minds of others.

This isn’t to say that others cannot or do not offer us wisdom that we need or can benefit from. When others offer their innate inner wisdom from a place of presence and coherence and we receive it wisely, it can be a catalyst for growth. 

When we filter it through our inner coherent intelligences, we can wisely receive incredible insights, meaningful messages, and grounded guidance from what others share with us.

Almost daily, I share struggles and reflections with my best friend. When I do, she consciously responds not with what she “thinks” I "should" think, do, or feel, but rather with the wisdom she accesses within. 

Her wisely shared perspective almost always ignites something within me that shifts my being and becoming on the inside. As a result, the wisdom I most need is also unlocked within me and I can receive it with ease.

While wisdom offered can ignite and unlock our own, advice can become a roadblock. Where wisdom is an invitation to explore more deeply, advice is a directive to take a particular path.

Where Advice Often Comes From

But how do we end up so tangled in other people’s paths to begin with?

To better understand why our internal systems become so conflicted, we need to examine the origins of the advice that shaped them. While often well-meaning, most advice is filtered through someone else’s lens—rooted not in your context, but in theirs. And when we internalize it without discernment, we risk wiring in responses that are mismatched, limiting, or even harmful over time.

So where does advice actually come from?

1. Personal Experience: “This worked for me, so it should work for you.” Advice is frequently based on what someone has lived through, but what worked in their context may not apply to yours.
2. Cultural Norms or Social Conditioning: “This is what people are supposed to do.” Advice can reflect collective beliefs, traditions, or societal “rules”—even when those may no longer serve us.
3. Fear or Protection Instincts: “Don’t take that risk.” Sometimes advice comes from someone’s desire to keep you safe, even if that safety is rooted in their fears or limitations.
4. Unconscious Bias or Projection: “You should do this because... I wish I had/didn’t/could." People may give advice that reflects their own regrets, hopes, or insecurities rather than your needs.
5. Ego or Control: “If I tell you what to do, I feel important or needed.” Giving advice can sometimes be about feeling in control or avoiding the discomfort of sitting in someone else’s uncertainty.
6. Love and Care “I want what’s best for you.” Even when misguided or mismatched, advice is often offered from a genuine desire to help or support.

What We Need, When We Need It!

We’ve established that advice, while well-meaning and occasionally helpful is unlikely to offer what’s truly needed. Instead, what we need is wisdom. What wisdom we need is specific to that one particular moment in time, not all the time or even another time.

Receiving wisdom requires us to recognize that it's dependent on the specific person, time, and context.

Wisdom is unique to the very moment you are accessing it given the current state of your body, being, and the world around you. It’s discerning what’s wisest for you in that very moment in time with all its context inside and out.

As a result, our wisdom often changes over time. What was wise in one situation, may not be in another situation, even a similar one. We are constantly changing and ever-evolving beings with shifting needs for wisdom to guide our being and becoming.

As our neural connections wire and rewire themselves into forever-changing pathways with new patterns, they continue to create new possibilities.

Rewiring With Wisdom 

Imagine what is required to upgrade and update your computer's operating system. You can't install new code on an outdated system; it needs an upgrade first. Likewise, we need to upgrade our system before we can support new code or wiring. 

But before the upgrade can begin, we must first dismantle our defenses, the ones that were once necessary to protect it. We've built internal security systems to protect us, but they are now preventing us from progressing.

Our security system with the survival states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn was designed to keep us safe and help us to survive. But now, these same systems often block us from growing, evolving, and expanding. 

When those survival states get activated, we're not thriving, we're often barely surviving. 

Just as we have to bypass, shutdown, or disengage the security system to upgrade our computers, we must also address our nervous system's survival states. 

To rewire with wisdom, we must first pause and regulate our nervous system, bringing our body and being back into balance. Only from a coherent state, with our head, heart, and gut intelligences aligned, can we safely and successfully begin the upgrade. 

And once we do, once our system is grounded, open, and receptive—we can begin to install entirely new neural codes. Codes that rewire how we think, feel, and behave. Codes that expand our capacity in ways we never imagined possible.

Take Time to Reflect

1. What pieces of advice from your past shaped who you believed you had to be?
2. Where in your life do you feel a tug-of-war between conflicting internal messages?
3. When was a time you ignored your inner wisdom—and what happened?
4. Which “wires” in your system feel outdated or misaligned with who you are becoming?
5. Who in your life shares wisdom in a way that helps you access your own?

Conclusion

Every wire in your system was placed for a particular reason. They helped you survive, adapt, and succeed in the environments you were living in. 

But you are no longer the child trying to decode the world through secondhand stories. You are now the author, the architect, the rewirer.

Advice will continue to echo around you, but wisdom? Wisdom arises from within. 

It flows when you pause to discern not just what’s been said, but what is right for you. Right here, now, in this body, in this moment.

So, the question is no longer, “What should I do?” But rather, “What is the wisest choice for me, right now?”

It’s not about erasing or ignoring all your past advice or wisdom, it’s about recognizing that you have the power to choose a new path. One paved not by pressure or programming, but by presence, coherence, and your own deep inner knowing.

Because the truth is: you are not broken, you are brilliantly wired for survival. Now, with awareness and wisdom, you can begin rewiring for expansion. Not just to perform or protect, but to fully live, lead, and become who you were always meant to be.