Silence Your Inner Critic To Reduce Your Stress Levels

When you react to a demand or a situation which you perceive as challenging the body moves into a state of fight or flight.

This state in the body is reflective of what's going on in the mind because what goes on in the mind is reflected in the body. Therefore, if you perceive yourself as not being able to cope with a challenge or a situation in front of you, the mind will perceive the situation as threatening and the body will react by moving into a state of fight regardless of the size of the challenge in front of you.

While it is great to take the physical steps like breathing exercises, meditation, or exercise to calm the body down, ultimately if you do not work on what's going on in your mind i.e., the story that is driving your stress levels, then what very often happens is the symptoms in the body will continue to come back over and over again every time you perceive a threat.

What do I mean by the story going on in your head? Well quite simply it's the ‘I'm not good enough’, ‘I'll never be able to’ or ‘I can't do it, I haven't got what it takes’.

What very often happens then, is that you spend your valuable time ruminating over mistakes you perceive yourself to have made, or criticism you think will receive. You spend hours perfecting, checking, re checking, perfecting something simple, for fear of failure or fear of judgment. And all of that ruminating all of that perfecting, all of that thinking and overthinking is eating into your valuable time but more than that, it is triggering your stress reaction sending you into state of fight or flight, where your breathing becomes shallow, heart rate goes up and muscles tighten and become painful. This is negatively impacting on your ability to perform as well as reducing your productivity but more important than all of that it is having a negative impact on your health and wellbeing.

If these stories are beginning to sound familiar to you or are resonating in any way, you are not alone. I have yet to have a client in my coaching practice that did not have an inner critic screaming at them in one area of their life or another.

Now that you have identified the inner critic, what exactly can you do to silence the inner critic.

Here are a couple of simple steps you can take.

Firstly since what you resist persists, it is probably time to acknowledge that now is a good time to address it.

As the thoughts are coming into your head write them down.

Now call them out.

Listen to how ridiculous and awful they sound.

Ask yourself if you would speak to anybody else like this? If not, well why do you speak to yourself like this?

This is where coaching can really help you. It provides you with a confidential space where you can unload all of these unhelpful thoughts, to call out these stories, to address them one by one and put them to rest. Many of these thoughts and stories have probably been ruminating in your head for years, holding you back, coming form deep rooted insecurities which you have been carrying around with you since childhood, like a bag or rocks, weighing you down, stopping you from achieving.

Ask yourself another question:

What would your life be like if you could turn down the volume on your inner critic? Who would you be? What would you be doing if you had the tools and support to overrule your inner critic and overcome your self-doubt

Let’s face it, the inner critic always manages to get to top volume at the most inopportune time, when we most want to silence it.

If this is resonating with you and you would like to have a chat to discuss how a coaching program could help you silence your inner critic and grow your confidence to achieve your goals, why not contact me for a confidential complementary 20 minute discovery call.