Overcoming Your Inner Critic 🗣 

I polled LinkedIn this week:
"What's the main thing holding you back from feeling great?"

The #1 answer by a long shot? Mindset.

That level of awareness fired me up! 🔥

Because it all starts with how we think about ourselves.
Confidence, belief, self-love...

And our Inner Critic is typically the first line of defense preventing us from creating a bulletproof mindset.

If we're not on our own team, how can we expect to feel great?

When your inner critic is running the show, he...

He gets in the way of you experiencing true confidence in yourself.
He prevents you from doing the things you actually want in life.
He stops you from feeling great.

First, know that it's totally normal to have negative thoughts pop up.
You can't control which thoughts pop up, only how you respond to them (and this takes a lot of practice).

Just as fighting a heckler yelling at you for bombing your bit won't help.
Your power doesn't come from resisting or 'beating' the critic.
Instead, it comes from accepting it.

That doesn't mean you have to agree with him or believe everything he's saying.
Just listen, hear him out, and respectfully tell him to fuck off.

See, things like...
"I'm not enough, I'll never change, I'm going to be found out, Told you it wouldn't work."

Those aren't truths.
Those are stories you've made up about yourself and rationalized over time with things that may or may not have happened in your life.

But they aren't true.
And you're doing the best you can every day.

Look, your inner critic is a total dickhead. There's no other way to say it.
His job is to be right, play it safe, and keep you out of harm's way.

Don't worry about trying to stop him from speaking his mind, because he's going to keep doing his thing.

"Great, Tim. So what do I do?"

It starts with awareness.
Pay attention when that voice speaks, acknowledge it, and let him say his 2 cents.

Then consciously decide if you want to believe it or not.
That's in your power. That's your right.

THIS is where I love using journaling writing.
I'll write down the negative thought tracks and then TAKE HIS SIDE.

I'll write why those thoughts might be true.

Then...
I'll write against all of his points and why he's not seeing the whole picture.

Am I really a failure, Critic?
Or did that one person just not want to work with me. What about the other 20 that did?

Am I really never going to change?
What about the last 12 months? Funny how quickly you've forgotten where we were not long ago.

What you can do is choose to listen and then tell him to sit in the corner while you live the life you want.

Growth lies on the other side of discomfort and you'll have to do something you've never done in order to feel the way you've never felt.

You then have to take action and challenge the narrative of your inner critic.

👉  Determine your values. Start with 3 that mean a lot to you (ex deep friendships, health, adventure).
👉  Set a goal aligned with each value.
👉  What do you need to learn or do in order to achieve that goal?
👉  Plan the smallest daily action possible to help you learn what you need to.

By taking action, you're reprogramming yourself to believe in YOU.

When you show up and show love to yourself every day, you prove to yourself that you give a shit.

That belief slowly morphs into real, palpable confidence.

Confidence so strong that it drowns out the critics.

Tim 🖤

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