It’s a given that you should not have to put up with put-downs.
“You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re pathetic” are words nobody should ever hear, but so many of us are happy to say that to ourselves on a daily basis.
It often surfaces just when you least want it to. At those times when being confident is crucial – you know the sort of thing: the second interview for a job you really want, getting up to give the most important presentation of your life or sitting that final key exam – it pops up to tell you that you don’t deserve success.
Every one of us suffers with self-doubt at some point in our lives, but for some people the inner critic can turn into the inner bully and undermine everything they want to achieve. If left unchallenged, it becomes the worst kind of fortune teller; the self-fulfilling prophecy.
The first step in tuning out your negative self-talk is to catch yourself doing it. If you’re someone who tends to think a negative situation is far worse than it is or when anyone gives you a compliment and you refute it instantly, then you are likely to be a negative talker.
The key to change is understanding that your inner voice is not speaking the truth, but actually reflecting internalised negative thoughts about yourself that you may be carrying from your past.
Once you’ve caught yourself criticising, there are some exercises you can do to help you turn down the volume.
Writing down your thoughts helps to free them from the confines of your mind and allows you to be visually confronted by the negativity.
At this point you can reframe it. Moderate it and temper the impact by identifying the negative and exchanging it for a positive.
If your first thought when confronted with something is "I can’t" or "It’s impossible", swap these out with the question "how can I…?" and try to chunk up the problem by taking smaller steps towards a solution.
Shouting down your inner bully can also help. Every time you catch it talking to you and trying to make you doubt yourself, speak to it as if you were speaking to a child who was behaving badly. Even if you feel a bit silly doing this at first, after practicing for a while it will become second nature and you’ll put your harsh critic in its place.
Of course if you can make yourself feel bad with negative thoughts, the good news is that once you begin to reverse it you will start to feel far more positive. So be kind to yourself, because each small act of kindness ripples out a long way.
