You know that nasty voice you have in your head? The one that’s constantly telling you how sh!tty you are? How foolish your choices are, and how you always f$@k things up?
I work on this voice a lot, with myself and in my Life Coaching practice. One of my clients calls this voice her “gremlin”. Another calls it her “inner hater”.
What’s the deal with this inner hater?
Why do our brains do this to us?
Here’s what you need to know:
YOUR BRAIN IS EVOLVED TO WORK LIKE THIS.
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature!
Mostly below the veil of conscious thought,
your brain is constantly generating and testing
a stream of predictions about
what happened in your past,
what’s happening right now, and
what’s going to happen in the future.
It is constantly evaluating the relationships
between people, ideas, objects, events.
/// And so it is constantly evaluating YOU. ///
Everything about you; the actions you take,
how you look, what you’re thinking, how you relate to others.
Yep, the very thing that makes you human—
your ability to think symbolically, abstractly, relationally—creates this constant churn of negative self-comparisons.
It can be a bummer to learn that your punishing inner voice is a feature, not a bug, of human brains!
But here’s the good news—
while you can’t delete that painful mental bullsh!t, you can EVOLVE it. Evolve it so that your inner voice is SUPPORTING your dreams, not sabotaging them.
The first step on that road is learning and practicing METACOGNITION. Stay with me here, because this boring word packs a lot of punch!
Metacognition is thinking ABOUT your thoughts. The very act of //noticing// and //naming// your thoughts changes them. For example, “I notice that I’m thinking that I’m a bad person” shows up very differently on a functional MRI of the brain than just “I’m a bad person.”
This is just one example of the tools we use and skills we practice in coaching, that help my clients create happier, more meaningful lives.
As you get more skilled at noticing what you’re thinking, you also get more skilled at //choosing// which thoughts you want to lean into, and which thoughts are not serving you.
The thing is, your human brain will never stop being a human brain. Those negative thoughts never go away. There’s no delete button or back button on brain function.
But what you can do is
// start noticing your habitual patterns. //
That’s the first step toward
creating new neural networks
that // support // your ability
to align your actions
with your deepest, truest values.
Which essentially means:
thought by thought,
choice by choice,
action by action,
you can create a life that is
MEANINGFUL, EMPOWERED, and JOYFUL.
Like my other clients this year. They’re finding new jos, releasing one-way relationships, getting promotions, prioritizing their pleasure, shifting to new roles that they love, slowly but surely redesigning their lives.
// You can do this too! //
So that when you look back
over the past year,
or the past decade,
or the span of your entire life,
you feel satisfied, content, and fulfilled.
All because one day—
it could even be today!
—you started noticing your thoughts.
This is the work we do together in Radical Realignment, my 9-month coaching package. In it, you’ll get:
🕊 A better relationship with your inner voice, so that you can stop the endless mental chatter telling you that you suck, and be at peace with yourself
🌈 Better boundaries, so that you can live a life that is meaningful on your terms, free of the expectations put on you by your culture, your parents, your boss, or society at large
🦄 Clarity about what YOU actually want, so that you’re living a life that is tailor-made to your preferences, not an empty unsatisfying version of somebody else’s life
🛤 A breakthrough in your pattern of not prioritizing yourself, so that you can move forward confidently in the direction of your dreams
🌅 Deep knowing that you, as you are, are already worthy, so you can stop trying to justify yourself and create a life that reflects your most deeply held values
💞 A stronger practice of self-care so that you can be present in the moment with the ones you love for years to come
If you’re ready to create a life you can delight in and be proud of, let’s talk.
Book a Free Discovery Call with me!