Making Peace with Your Inner Critic

2020-09-16 ~ adminlife

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

The way you talk to yourself can build you up or tear you down. When your inner dialogue is harsh, it’s usually because you’re repeating things you heard from your parents or other authority figures when you were growing up.

If the criticism goes too far, it can discourage you from trying and take the joy out of your life.

Break free from the voices in your head. Take a look at a variety of techniques that prove that there’s more than one way to make peace with your inner critic.

Making Friends with Your Inner Critic

Your inner critic will sound less scary if you remember that it wants to protect you from failure and other possible dangers.

Learn how to put it to work for you instead of against you:

Increase awareness. You may be so used to your inner critic that you hardly think about what it’s saying. Start changing your relationship by trying to understand what it wants to tell you.
Look back. What’s your first memory of your inner critic? Does it sound like a particular person from your past? There may be family issues or other matters that you need to heal before you can move on.
Focus on growth. Maybe your inner voice says you’re bad at math because you failed a test in the third grade. In reality, you’re not stuck in your past. Adopt a growth mindset that enables you to become whatever you want as long as you’re willing to put in the work to get there.
Aim higher. You may also find your inner critic easier to deal with if you keep a deeper purpose in mind. When you’re working for something bigger than yourself, you can accept your self-doubts without being overcome by them.
Try meditation. Many adults find that meditation helps them to make their self-talk more comforting and motivating. Let go of judgements and connect with your inner goodness.

Silencing Your Inner Critic

On the other hand, there are times when you just need a break. If your self-talk is making you anxious and depressed, you can find relief.

Seek distractions. Shift your attention elsewhere. Take a walk or read a book. Spend some time doing anything that you enjoy.
Distance yourself. Turn down the volume by imagining that your inner critic is speaking to someone else instead of you. Take any statement and replace the personal pronouns with a funny name.
Identify triggers. Give yourself advance warning. Figure out the situations where your inner critic is likely to appear. You may be sensitive about first dates or criticism from your boss.
List your strengths. If you’re tired of hearing about your weaknesses, remember your strengths. Make a list of the things you’re good at from baking bread to writing code.
Correct exaggerations. Your house won’t be condemned because you were too busy to vacuum for a few days. Keep things in perspective by ensuring that your self-talk is accurate.
Use affirmations. Repeating positive affirmations can give you a boost when you’re feeling down. Browse online for ideas or invent your own wording.
Remember your worth. Being tough on yourself erodes your self-esteem. Shore it back up by telling yourself that you deserve to be happy and successful.
Build support. While you need to value yourself, it helps to have others in your corner too. Surround yourself with family and friends who make you feel positive about yourself and your opportunities.

Take control of your self-talk and your future. Treat yourself with compassion and keep striving to reach your full potential.

To your success

Michael

If you are looking to read more on motivation, you can find check out these three books:

Developing and Keeping Your Self-Motivation Strong

How to Harness the Power of Momentum for a More Successful Life

Keeping Your Motivation High to Get Things Done

A Foolproof Formula for Overcoming Fear

2020-06-092020-06-09 ~ adminlife

Do you allow your fears to impose limits on you? Maybe you stay in jobs and relationships that hold you back because you think you lack options. Maybe you have dreams that go unfulfilled because you doubt your abilities and hesitate to take risks.

You can break out of your comfort zone. Follow this 3-part formula for accepting your fears and dealing with them effectively.

Overcoming Fear Through Acceptance:

Increase your awareness. To figure out what you’re really afraid of, it’s important to confront your fears. Pay attention to physical signs like your heart beating faster or your voice shaking when your boss criticizes you or you’re preparing to speak in public.
Avoid judgements. Try to understand your fears instead of blaming yourself for having them. Speak to yourself in a gentle and reassuring way. Give yourself time to calm down.
Think rationally. Fear can make you exaggerate the consequences in any situation. If you have trouble being objective, imagine what you would think if the same events happened to someone else.
Choose deliberately. Remember that you’re in charge of your life even when you feel frightened. Keep your long-term interests in mind when you’re tempted to run away from circumstances that scare you.

Overcoming Fear Through Confidence:

Breathe deeply. Use your breath to relax your body and mind. Broaden your chest with each inhalation and release tension with each exhalation.
Remember your achievements. Visualize some past accomplishments that you’re proud of. If you can plan a wedding or buy a house, you can handle making small talk with strangers.
Keep practicing. Anxiety grows when you live in denial. On the other hand, your fears diminish each time you face them directly. Start out walking in the shallow end of the pool if you’re afraid of water. Once you complete enough swimming lessons, you’ll be ready to dive in with no hesitation.
Acquire skills. Genuine confidence is based on competence. Pursue the education and training you need to reach your goals. Use your leisure time to study foreign languages or master a new sport.

Overcoming Fear Through Courage:

Care for yourself. It’s easier to feel brave when your body and mind are strong. Cultivate healthy habits like eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and sleeping well.
Seek support. Surround yourself with family, friends, and colleagues who provide encouragement and assistance. Ask for help when you need it and welcome honest feedback.
Repeat affirmations. Affirmations are a simple tool for changing your mindset and focusing your efforts. Tell yourself that you are brave, and you refuse to let your fears rob you of success.
Focus on gains. Motivate yourself to try new approaches by thinking about the rewards. If you’ve been procrastinating about asking your boss for a raise, imagine how the extra money would help your family. Whatever the outcome, you’ll also gain experience with advocating for yourself and negotiating.
Practice your faith. Many believers rely on their spiritual faith when they feel threatened. Your trust in God or your own personal principles may sustain you when you’re going through a divorce or lose your job.
Consider therapy. If you need additional help with overcoming your fears, you may want to see a counselor. Cognitive behavioral therapy and other techniques can be very effective. You may discover that your fears are connected to past events that you still need to resolve.

Fear can be your teacher and friend rather than an obstacle. Accept yourself for who you are and develop the courage and confidence to tackle challenges head on.

How I Conquered Fear And You Can Too!

2020-02-182020-02-18 ~ adminlife

Getting out of your comfort zone for most is challenging, to say the least. It’s been my experience that the missing element is psychological. Too many times I’ve said to myself, ‘I don’t know HOW to do this’ and self sabotaged my brain into believing I could not do it. What I’ve come to know is this; it’s not the ‘how’ that is so important but rather the ‘why’ behind it! Get a big enough WHY and the HOW will follow!

It’s the old 80/20 rule – 80% is psychology and the remaining 20% is the mechanics. We all tend to get what we HAVE to have. It boils down to what YOU believe YOU MUST do and chose to not settle for anything less!! Turning your ‘should’s’ into ‘must’s’ and making the decision to move forward in spite of the fear.

Feel the fear and do it anyway! If you truly want to get the edge, you will need to get over your fear. Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of whatever – it’s okay to make a mistake, just make sure you learn from it and avoid the same pit falls next time around.

Choose to live life on your own terms. The quality of life is the quality of your emotions on a daily basis. Control your emotions and take control of your destiny! Consider this, it’s not how long I live but rather, how I live! It’s not about your ability; it’s about why you must succeed!!

Two things to help you control your emotions, deal with your BODY and what you FOCUS on at any given moment.

1 – Body, the psychology that we are ‘in’ is driven by the physiology that we are ‘in’. Specifically, when we change our MOTION we change our EMOTION and therefore experience a change of ‘state’. It’s these ‘states’ (or emotions), that will determine our action towards any given target.

2 – Focus, what you focus on and moreover, ‘how’ you focus, plays a vital roll in your achievements (or lack thereof). We must remember, what’s wrong is always available to us but so is, what’s right! Understand that ‘problems’ are a sign of life. Want to see someone who doesn’t have any more problems? Drop by your nearest cemetery, they’re done! No more problems – and no more life!! Direct your focus, whatever you focus on you moves you towards that object or experience. There isn’t a ‘try’ – only do or not do!

I’ve noticed several things about myself that I can’t help but believe others must share in similar experiences or situations. The difference for me now, is how I choose to ‘control’ or ‘focus’ myself as situations arise. This is a broad range of things from attending a party and ‘experiencing’ my emotions, to simply taking a shower and getting ready for the day. It’s truly how I manage my ‘state’ during the situation that defines my experience!

To be more clear, it’s what I choose to focus on while showering or while at the party. If while showering I’m having thoughts of – oh no, it’s Monday again, I hate the first day of each workweek! I hate Monday’s!! I wish I could just stay home and sleep in. I have to fight the stinking traffic everyday. I wish I had another car, a bigger more fancy car.

On and on it goes and before you finish your morning shower – presto, you’re in a bad mood and ready to bite your partners head off! You’re having emotions of agitation and experiencing anxiety about going to work, all before you even get dressed to go.

I suggest and submit to you it all begins with your THOUGHTS. It’s these thoughts that begin to effect our emotions (or states) and once we LEARN how to control them, we then have a much more powerful position that will determine our actions.

Use MOTION to create EMOTION and control your results. Back to the shower scene – sing, shout, clap your hands, pretend the soap bottle (or bar) is your microphone, move briskly, breath deeply and think about good things. (Remember, you get to choose what you think about – it’s your personal power)! Wouldn’t you rather get dressed feeling good about the day ahead of you, as opposed to dreading the very next moment? Sure you would, and you get to pick your experience. It may take some practice or ‘conditioning’ on your part but it will become a ‘habit’ once you focus on training your brain and body to do so.

You can control your fear and use it as leverage to compel you towards your goals. It the courage behind the fear that builds the faith within us that makes us stronger. Esteem comes from forcing yourself to do difficult things. Therefore, causing us to broaden our comfort zones while strengthening our faith.

Can you see faith? I submit to you, we are able to see the evidence of faith. No one has ever seen the wind but it evidence is everywhere to be seen. Faith unused wanes!

The Success Brain Course

As we are all trying to be more successful in our lives, both personal and business, we need to have a success mindset. It is hard to be successful when your own self-talk is against you and your mind is not aligned with your goals.

If you want to be more successful and live the life you deserve, then you need to have a Success Brain.

While this may sound easy, unless you know what you need to accomplish, you could end up wasting your time and energy.

This course “The Success Brain” can help you to understand those areas of your own mind that are holding you back while helping you to develop a truly success brain and mindset that will guide you in your life to really become more successful.

Develop the Growth Mindset Habit

2020-01-142020-01-13 ~ adminlife

When deciding what new habit to pursue, it’s easy to look at all the things we shouldn’t do as a place to begin. We want to stop smoking or stress eating. We want to learn how to say ‘no’ or to quit spending so much time on social media.

Have you ever considered the flipside of all that by building a habit that’s positive? What if the habit you formed was one of growth and personal development?

Having a growth mindset positively impacts your life in multiple ways, so it’s a great healthy habit to build into your life. What are the benefits of developing a growth mindset?

1. You keep learning. Learning is important as you not only discover new ways to do things, but by making a practice of constantly learning, you develop new ways of thinking, and new ideas. Learning connects you with more of the world and helps you see things with a deeper significance than you ever thought possible. But more than that, people who stop learning very quickly stagnate. Studies have shown that the practice of learning new things when you are older helps ward off problems related to dementia. In short, learning is good for your brain!

2. You learn perseverance. As we learn new things, we adapt and change how we think. That gives us the ability to see other solutions to problems that would have frustrated us in the past. By challenging yourself to grow, you learn how to push through obstacles and find new paths.

3. You learn how to embrace challenges. Growth can be challenging. But by pushing yourself to grow, that means you’re also pushing yourself to look at challenges differently. An obstacle now becomes an opportunity to learn something new and to do things in a way you haven’t before.

4. You learn how to embrace failure. When you’re interested in growing as an individual, you start to see failure differently. Everything becomes a potential lesson in a way that you didn’t think would work.

5. You become more open to criticism. By being willing to grow, you start to see that the input of other people has significance. You see their words not so much as something negative, but something you can use to develop as a person and learn something about yourself. You might not always like the lesson, but that’s part of growing too.

By embracing personal growth, you find the best version of yourself. You’re able to become more than you ever thought possible, and then you turn that around by finding out that you can become more still. You’ll find that the furthest edges of yourself are far beyond what you thought you ever could be.

Steps you Need to Take Before Taking Massive Action

2019-02-242019-02-24 ~ adminlife

Many people get an idea and then immediately start taking action. The problem is, a lot of these folks never finish what they start. They have a great many unfinished projects, but not the staying power to make their goals happen in the real world. To ensure you don’t end up as one of these people, there are certain things you should do before you start taking massive action. While taking these steps won’t guarantee that you will make your dream a reality, they certainly give you a much better chance of success!

Make a commitment

No goal will ever be reached without a firm commitment. Know going in that there will be tough times, setbacks and sacrifices you need to make to reach your goal through massive action steps. Decide if it’s worth the hard work it will take before you get started.

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Do your research

Many things you want to tackle are going to need some research before you can determine a plan or strategy. Stay focused as you do the research necessary, but do allow a few tangents if you feel they would be valuable in helping you determine how to best go about taking massive action to meet your goal. You may need to have a time frame in mind of how long you will research, however. It can feel safe to stay in this phase instead of stepping outside of your comfort zone and taking action. Many people never get past this stage, so keep that firmly in mind as you begin.

Make a plan

Once you’ve done your homework, it’s time to create a plan of attack. What should you do first? What’s a reasonable timeline for completing your goal? Will going about it this way or that be better for you. Definitely take the advice of others who have come before you, but remember that just because you do it differently than they did doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong. Use your instinct to plan out your strategy since only you can decide what’s best for your life.

Write down your goals and objectives

It’s fine to think about your goals and objectives–I mean, you have to start somewhere. But don’t stop there. Write down your goals and objectives in as much detail as possible and keep the paper handy. You will need to refer to it before making decisions about future actions or when you get off track and need to remind yourself of why you started the project to begin with.

To your success

Michael W

P.S. If you are looking for a confidence program that can help you with your self development. Send me an email at michael@youaresuccesslifecoach.com to request a copy of my “Maximum Confidence Transformation Package”. Afterwards we can arrange a discovery telephone call to discuss the package and how you can benefit further from developing your confidence level.

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