What usually stands between you and the success you desire is that inner critic which negatively impacts your self confidence and the quality life you deserve. Today I share how to overcome your inner critic and your negative self talk, so you can confidently be that person to create the life of your dreams.
What is the inner critic?
The inner critic is that voice, the self-talk, you hear inside that points out what you did wrong or failed to do right based on a past event. Before you can overcome your inner critic you need to understand the source and purpose of that inner critic.
The inner critic stems from our past experiences and our own tendency to be self-critical.
Much, if not most of our inner critic, stems from our early shapers. Shapers are those people in our early forming years that had the role of teaching and mentoring us. They used both positive and negative reinforcing methods to teach us lessons based on our actions with the intention of helping us develop those skills and behaviors to ultimately live a good, productive, successful life and be socially accepted. Shapers can also include peers and environment.
While the underlying purpose or intention of the critique or correction may have been positive, the delivery of that message may have been negative or we may have latched on to the express negative message and not the intention.
For example, your parent may have told you when you were a child that you were bad after you ran into the street without looking, almost getting hit by a car. Of course your parent didn’t mean that you are a totally bad child, but that you need to be more careful about your safety so that you can live a long happy life.
I know that as a parent, many times I didn’t take the time to explain my commands to my son because by the end of a tough, long work day I was tired and fatigued with little to no patience or energy to explain things. It’s not an excuse and I wish I could change it. But being a parent did help me better understand my own parents’ shortcomings.
The rest of our inner critic comes from our innate desire to excel, become better people and improve our ourselves so we can have a better life and better relationships.
Transform Your Inner Critic To Your Inner Coach
Your inner critic just wants a job. It’s better to have an inner coach that uses positivity to guide and help you. So how do you turn your inner critic into an inner coach?
The Job Of Your Inner Critic
Your inner critic focuses on the past. It points out your faults, what you did wrong and your weaknesses that are holding you back. It’s judging your for what you already did. The intentions of your inner critic is to protect you and to help you.
To overcome your inner critic you need to tap into the good intention behind the critique. Access the positive energy behind the critic and then teach the inner critic how to talk to you so that you have the benefit of the positivity instead of focusing on the negativity, called criticism.
The Job Of Your Inner Coach
The inner coach lives in the present. Your inner coach embraces and applauds your successes and encourages your efforts toward becoming your best self and achieving your higher goals.
You can’t change the past. What you can do is, in the present moment, change your focus and what you are doing presently to produce a more effective and fulfilling future. When you purposefully call yourself to the present moment, this allows you to call upon and tap into your inner coach.
New Job For Your Inner Critic
Remember that what you focus on is what you will get more of. When you hear the inner critic, quickly acknowledge that you hear the warning then immediately change your focus to the present moment. Instead of beating you up in the past, teach your inner critic to point out and acknowledge what you did and are doing RIGHT that align with your higher goals and ambitions.
Build Your Confidence: Daily Affirmations
One of the best ways to build your confidence and quiet the inner critic is to acknowledge and rehearse your strengths and accomplishments.
If I were to ask you to list 10 things that you like about yourself, if you’re like most people, you would more easily identify 10 weaknesses or failures than 10 strengths or successes.
To build your confidence and empower your full potential you need to make specific, positive statements about your desired attributes of your higher self, your desired impact on others for good and your desired lifestyle as though you were experiencing these things in the present moment. This is called an affirmation.
Affirmations enable you to harness the power of positive thinking. They replace self-sabotaging, negative thoughts with positive, empowering thoughts and statements which have been shown to manifest those thoughts and statements into reality. The key is that you must state those affirmations each morning and night consistently until your desired affirmation has become a reality.
In my life, creating and stating affirmations everyday has given me the confidence and drive to create a more fulfilling purposeful life. I face each day with endless optimism and purpose knowing that I am that person of infinite worth and potential living a life of abundance.
If you apply these principles I have shared you too can have a life full of happiness, love and fulfillment.
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Alycia Skousen
Email: Alycia@alyciaskousen.com
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Twitter: @alyciaskousen
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PS: Do you need help overcoming your inner critic, effortlessly? If you’ve tried but just can’t shake that negative self-sabotaging inner voice, you MUST CHECK THIS OUT and CLICK HERE!
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