Inner Wisdom or Inner Critic?
You’re sitting in your office, staring at a blank screen, and waiting for the muse to hit. You’re hoping for some brilliant blog copy, a fun social media post, or a stellar program idea to miraculously appear in your consciousness.
On those days when the magic isn’t flowing, your mind is likely to start attacking you with the critical, pressure-filled, perfectionism voice. It brings out yucky old phrases like:
“You’re not a good enough _______ (writer, coach, etc.)”
“Who are you to make a program or write a post about _______; you don’t know enough.”
“So-and-so already writes/coaches about this; your ideas aren’t good enough.”
“You don’t have a clear enough niche; no one is going to read this post.”
And on and on and on.
It’s common in the coaching world to talk about limiting beliefs, negative thoughts, and self-judgment. The only problem is a lot of the techniques we try to use for these “don’t” thoughts don’t actually free us from them or stop the negative self-talk. Sure, they can help... but we still feel caught in those regular, reliable, inner critic rants.
Since this is absolutely no fun, and no one ever wants to hear these nasty attacks from their inner critic, I want to share my secret ninja mind-body trick with you so you too can escape the nasty voice in your head.
Here’s my mind-body-spirit secret for you:
Your mind is trying to translate inner wisdom for you, all day, every day. However, it’s been conditioned to “protect” you with inner critic thinking and also self-pressure thinking. (We’re taught that if we pressure ourselves, we will succeed.)
So, when a nice little inner wisdom message comes into your mind, often the critical or pressure-focused filter changes the message.
“Today isn’t the right day to write this blog post” turns into “You’re not a good enough writer.”
“If you study this topic with your passionate excited attitude, you’re going to have a breakthrough” turns into “You don’t know enough.”
Of course, those are just examples. Each instance of this mind-filter has a unique message, with a unique filter on top of it. There’s usually a little clue for you in the critical thought. That clue will lead you to inner wisdom. Your job is to sit with it and let your mind relax into the idea that this is actually your inner wisdom speaking.
The process goes like this:
- Notice critical thought.
- Sit back and ask your inner wisdom what it’s trying to tell you.
- Think about the elements of the critical thought, without the negative spin.
- Wait.
- Write down the inner wisdom message when you get it.
Sometimes the inner wisdom will take a few minutes to download, or even a few days. That’s normal. However, the more you practice, the quicker it will show up.
Our minds really are on our side. They’ve just been conditioned to try to protect us all the time, and that can really confuse the issue. Now you can stop negative self-talk quickly by accessing the fabulous wisdom underneath them.
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