You’re such an idiot.

What made you think you could do this? You’re some kind of loser. You’re the worst. Worthless. Your mind is defective. Your body is weak. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll never get there. That’s not for you. You suck.

Can you think of a time that someone has said any of these types of things to you? Maybe worse? Think harder. What does the voice sound like? Was it someone close to you? Was it you?

I didn’t want to extend that section too much longer. Because even writing out the words makes me feel some kind of way, a little quake in my belly. And yet, how many times do you spiral into your own mind to beat yourself up for something common to all of us. A mistake. An accidental hurtful word. A thoughtless choice that ended up hurting someone or messing something up. How many times do you criticize yourself for being human? How many times a week? A day?

When you dare to have a goal, however big or small it may be, you want to do the right thing to bring it into reach. To realize your dreams. And often, when another day goes by, you end up beating yourself up because you’re looking back on a day of distraction after distraction, focus pulled in several different directions in order to put out the fires at work or at home. You might be tempted to tell the story that the goal itself is impossible, or worse, that you are not worthy enough to achieve it. If you can change what you tell yourself in those times, you may find that your core beliefs change, too.

This is one place where my college education in English and Poetry comes in handy. I tend to notice certain words and ways of speaking. Certain patterns and flow in language. I pick up on words that people might use to describe themselves, limit themselves, excuse themselves for making less effective choices than they want to be making.

I hear people talk about themselves in ways that they would never speak about someone that they love. If you do that, does it mean you don’t love yourself? No. It doesn’t. It just might mean that the way you learned to love yourself might not have been the most supportive or self-honoring way. Maybe there was someone thoughtless and hurtful in your past whose voice is the one berating you from your mind in the present. Maybe you felt an external pressure to perform a certain way or achieve a certain type of success. Maybe you always felt like you could never live up to someone else’s dream, a dream that maybe they put onto their expectations of you. Wherever this voice came from, it’s stuck in your head now. How can you teach it to speak to you differently?

The first step is to pay attention. You get to become aware of how you’re speaking to yourself. If you find that the voice in your head is being a negative Nelly, ask yourself if you would let someone talk to your best friend that way? To your spouse? To your son or daughter? If you struggle with an inner critic like the one that started this post (or worse), odds are that you wouldn’t want that voice to be the one talking to someone you love. 

The next step is to get curious about that voice. If it sounds like someone you know now or a person that you knew in the past, see if you can identify it. You might learn something about yourself if you can. You might learn how you’ve been conditioned by your experiences to expect a certain level of criticism with each portion of praise. If there is severe trauma there, make sure you have or seek professional support to unpack those experiences. You don’t need to do this kind of work alone.

The final step is to invite yourself to change your language. Practice on someone else to start. Find what you like about them and say it out loud directly to their face, write them a note, send a text message or post on their social media. Who doesn’t like getting called out for being awesome? Good leaders do this. They highlight and focus on the things that are working and working well so that the team feels inspired and excited to keep going in that direction. Good leaders get excited about the efforts even if the result falls flat. They praise the behavior they want so that they get more. This happens in our own thoughts, too. Once you become more proficient at finding and sharing the good you see in others, begin to try it out on yourself. 

Instead of focusing on “not talking bad about yourself,” try to find something you like about yourself or what you’ve done in the last 24 hours. Start small. Do you like your laugh? Are your teeth white? Did you give a really good hug today? Are you proud that you can type so fast that Facebook thinks you're using bot software? There’s something you did well today or something you are proud of about who you are, how you look or how you act. Recognize it. Draw attention to it. Show it off a little bit.

And if you catch yourself slipping back into “critic mode,” just breathe. Ask yourself if what the voice in your head is telling you is really true. Start to make a shift. If the voice is telling you that you’re an idiot for messing something up, get curious. Did you mess something up? Does that really mean you’re an idiot or does it mean that you’re trying something new that’s challenging? How can you either fix the mistake or avoid it in the future? Congratulations, you are beginning to take your power back.

You can choose to listen to the bully in your brain, or you can choose to shine the light on it instead. To engage it and wonder about it. And now that you have a new awareness of it, you can start to invite it to change its tone and watch its language.

This has been a game-changer for me. I’ve struggled with fear in the form of perfectionism and performance anxiety my whole life. And since I’ve intentionally explored my inner dialogue, I’ve been able to choose peace, inspiration and joy, even when under stress from outside sources, external conditions or the consequences of my own behaviors.

If you’re looking for more balance in your life, more peace and quiet in your mind, I would love to see how I might support you to make that shift. Let’s connect and see if it might make sense for us to work together.