The Ultimate Guide to Talking Nicer to Yourself!
Uncategorized
Jan 14, 2023
Keep reading to eavesdrop a bit on what my clients and I do during our coaching calls! And then immediately put what you learned into practice!
Recently, one of my clients had a major breakthrough around the way she talked to herself in her head!
She was DOING all the right self-care tasks thinking that should help her feel better but all along the voice in her head was CONSTANTLY criticizing her, judging her, and bringing her down.
SIDE NOTE: NO AMOUNT OF SELF-CARE TASKS CAN MAKE UP FOR A CONSTANT BARRAGE OF NEGATIVE SELF-TALK!
So we got to work on rewriting her inner dialogue.
Here’s how we worked on this:
- Start with MINDFULNESS (of course 😉). Pay attention to all of the inner messages you get throughout the day.
- Do you hear an actual voice?
- Is it your voice?
- Is it a parent’s voice (this is common)?
- Any themes you pick up on?
- Name your inner critic (ex: sassy Louise, bratty Patty, judge Judy 😝).
- This will create a bit of separation to highlight the fact that this mean voice is NOT ACTUALLY YOU!
- Write out (on paper) a list of the most common inner messages you are getting. Leave a few spaces below each one.
- ex: "Ugh, If you can't do it perfectly why bother at all?"
- Under each of those messages write out a better, more loving, more true, more uplifting, more expansive reframe.
- ex: "It's totally fine to try something, even if I'm not great at it right away! Practice makes progress!"
- Now we start with a practice called “Catch + Correct”
- Every time you hear a message you don’t like come from your inner dialogue, pause, take a breath, imagine catching that negative thought and then state (outloud if you can!) the more loving reframe.
- ex: You hear "DANG! You are a hot mess this morning! The rest of the day is doomed!" You replace it with "Wow. That was a rough morning! I'm ready to turn it around this afternoon Watch me!!"
- Consider giving your more loving self a name too or just use your own actual name!
- Practice this for the rest of your life. lol. It took many years for you to develop that inner mean girl... it's going to take some repetition to replace her!
Take it a step further:
Get into the habit of regularly asking yourself "what do I need right now?” And then giving yourself exactly that!
Let us know in the comments if you try these practices out! I'd love to hear how it goes!
