Week
31

Transform Your Inner Critic into an Inner Coach

AFFIRMATIONS

for

Meditation and Reflection

I am only allowing thoughts that serve me in creating greater success and happiness in my life.

I am joyfully looking for the good in myself and others, which makes me feel more appreciative and optimistic.

I am training my inner critic to act as a supportive inner coach by filling my thoughts and self-talk with encouragement and confidence.

A man is literally what he thinks.

—JAMES ALLEN
Author of As a Man Thinketh

Research indicates that you talk to yourself about 50,000 times a day. That’s a lot of chatter going on in your head! But that research also indicates that about 80% of these internal lectures are negative: I’m always late . . . Oh great, another bad hair day . . . I shouldn’t have said that . . . I’ll never lose this weight. Learning to quiet your inner critic and replace that negative internal dialog with positive self-talk will help you stay in a better, more successful frame of mind.

After all, we know that our thoughts have a powerful effect on our attitude, motivation, physiology, and even our biochemistry. Since our thoughts actually control our behavior, negative thoughts can make us anxious, scared, sweat, spill things, forget our lines, and more. Consider polygraph tests—your body reacts to your thoughts, which are responding to the questions being asked. Your hands get colder, your blood pressure rises, and other physiological responses occur. Similarly, your body responds to positive stimuli, too—you feel relaxed, centered, and cheerful. Reinforce that response experience through positive self-talk—you have thousands of opportunities every day to practice until it becomes a habit!

I am only allowing thoughts that serve me in creating greater success and happiness in my life.

Y
ou are in charge of your own thoughts and self-talk, and you can choose what to believe. Be aware of these types of negative thinking so you can avoid them:

• Always-or-Never. If you think that something will always happen or you’ll never get what you want, that’s self-sabotage. Stop using words like always, never and every time.
• Focusing on the Negative. Choose to focus on the positive.
  You’ll become more appreciative and optimistic, which will attract more good to you.
• Catastrophic Predicting. Do you create the worst possible scenario in your mind, which you accept as a certainty?
• Mind Reading. Unless you’re a psychic, you can’t read anyone else’s mind. You don’t know what another person is thinking unless he or she tells you. Don’t do it.
• Guilt-Tripping. Words such as should, must, ought to, and have to will lead to guilt, which is never productive. Guilt is an emotional barrier to success.
• Labeling. By labeling yourself or someone else with a derogatory term like jerk, idiot, or arrogant, you can’t see the uniqueness of the person or situation.
• Personalizing. Things happen every day that aren’t directed at you personally, so don’t assign a personal meaning to a neutral event. There are hundreds of explanations for other people’s actions other than what your negative thoughts conjure up.

I am joyfully looking for the good in myself and others, which makes me feel more appreciative and optimistic.

What if you could transform your inner critic into an inner coach who supports and encourages you and gives you confidence? With a little awareness, attention, and focus, you can do it.

Even though it chastises and judges you, your inner critic actually has your best interests in mind—it wants you to benefit from better behavior—only you have to train it to start telling you the whole truth. Let’s say you need to lose 20 pounds and you haven’t been to the gym in several months. Your inner critic may be angry at you for not taking better care of yourself, and it may even call you a lazy slob for not having enough self-discipline. But its underlying emotion is actually, I love you and I want you to be healthy so you are around for a long time; I want you to look good, have lots of energy, and be happy.

Sounds like a completely different message, doesn’t it?

Redirecting the judgmental voice of your inner critic to the supportive, corrective voice of your inner coach takes awareness and persistence. Once you start the process and have some experience making the transition, the conversation will switch to a non-emotional discussion of opportunities for improvement, instead of criticism. It’s like having a life coach in your head—for free!

I am training my inner critic to act as a supportive inner coach by filling my thoughts and self-talk with encouragement and confidence.