Why are you so hard on yourself?

The inner critic and negative self-talk

Much has been researched and written about turning negative thinking into positive thinking. Whilst it is impossible to stop ‘negative thinking’ completely, it is possible to learn how to manage the amount of negative thoughts you have. To do this you need to understand and pay attention to how you listen to your inner critic and how hard you can be on yourself through your own negative ‘self-talk.’

Compassionate self-talk

To challenge your inner critic and negative self-talk, try practising ‘compassionate self-talk.’ For example, instead of thinking ‘I didn’t do very well during my presentation today,’ try standing back and thinking more positively with compassion towards yourself, e.g., ‘although I didn’t feel I covered all the areas of my presentation as well as I would have liked, I prepared well for it, the audience appeared engaged and there were lots of follow-up questions.’ Turning your thinking around in this way by using compassionate self-talk, challenges your inner critic and acknowledges the positive aspects of the situation, which can often go unnoticed when you are stuck in negative thinking.

Internal Dialogue

The average brain has around 25,000 and 50,000 thoughts a day, seventy per cent of which are believed to be negative. As these thoughts are a reflection of your emotions, attitudes and feelings, they have a direct effect upon how you deal with life and your performance in your job and career, more generally. It goes without saying that if most of this inner dialogue is made up of ‘negative thoughts,’ you are less likely to achieve as much as if they were ‘positive.’ In fact, as the majority us have more negative than positive thoughts, this highlights the importance of learning ways to change your negative thinking into positive thinking. To do this, you need to be kind to yourself and learn to practice ‘compassionate self-talk.’

Practising ‘compassionate self-talk’

We are often far too hard on ourselves. To illustrate this I want you to imagine that you have left the house and forgotten to take the car keys with you, only realising your mistake once you are at the car? Frustrated with yourself, you allow your inner critic to mutter: ‘you idiot, if you slowed down that wouldn’t have happened.’ Recognise a regular thought pattern and behaviour of yours here?

To stop being so hard on yourself, you need to catch yourself in the moment and practice compassionate self-talk to stop your inner critic talking to you so badly. After all, if someone you know were to speak to you in that way, you’re likely to not be too impressed and would probably be tempted to point out their unkindness. So why do we continue to allow our internal critic to speak to us, unchallenged, in this way?

Coaching can help you to become aware of this damaging internal rhetoric and practised for long enough, you will gradually start to use more and more positive compassionate self-talk, which will immediately have a positive effect on your thoughts, feelings, emotions, your self-belief and, most importantly, your confidence.

If you would like to learn more about how cognitive behavioural and positive psychology coaching can help you to challenge your inner critic, overcome negative self-talk and start to adopt a positive mindset, please don’t hesitate to contact me.