[00:00] Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Suddar here aka the focus b. And on this show, I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness, and leadership. So if you want to take your performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.
[00:36] You. One of the most fundamental practices in terms of self confidence and self belief is to look at how you talk to yourself. In other words, self talk. This is something that I remember I hadn't even realized or paid attention to until one day I was attending a session with a coach, and she mentioned how most of us speak really harshly towards ourselves, we're really hard on ourselves, and how that's detrimental to our well being, even our performance, and our overall happiness. And I remember during this session that my eyes started to fill up with tears, that I started to realize I was so hard on myself. And that was the first time I ever noticed. I'd never paid attention to that voice inside of my head, that inner critic, that voice that was always harsh and telling me that I wasn't doing well enough until that very day. So it's not uncommon to go through life without even realizing this. How can you be more aware? How can you notice this inner voice? First of all, start to pay attention about how you talk about yourself. What are you saying externally to the world? Are you telling them, I'm bad at this, or I'm terrible or I'm useless, or I'm stupid? Or that was so stupid of me, or Guy, I can be so stupid sometimes, or that was terrible. Oh, I'm really, really bad at whatever, any skill, any practice. If you're saying this externally, chances are you're probably saying it internally too. Not chances are 100% sure you're saying this internally. Instead, catch yourself when you're saying it externally. Take a deep breath. Reframe. You could say, I'm working on this skill, or this isn't something I've mastered yet, or this isn't one of my strengths. That's sort of objective, it's okay. It's not that harsh as I'm stupid or I'm terrible at this. Realize that you don't need to justify your imperfection by saying that you're stupid. We're all fully worthy, first of all, and we all have strengths and flaws and weaknesses that we're working on, and that's okay. And you don't need to say I'm stupid or I'm terrible at that to justify or excuse yourself. You might also start to notice when other people are using these terms and maybe tell them, no, you're not stupid, it's just that you forgot. Or maybe this is something you're working on because by acknowledging that other people aren't stupid or useless or worthless, then you're also empowering them. And it helps you to notice when you do it too. So that's externally, internally, pay attention to that inner voice. Maybe it's through journaling, maybe just when you're walking in nature, notice what comes up. How do you talk to yourself? What expressions do you use? And the more you pay attention to this, the easier it will be to shift and to change this inner talk. If you're not aware of it, you can't change it. It might be there in the background, in your subconscious the whole time, and you're not able to do anything because you're not aware of it. As you become more and more aware, as you start to notice and gradually pay more attention to it, then you can shift it. And you don't want to fall into that other pattern of habit, which is to then tell yourself off because you didn't speak to yourself in a kind way. This would look something like, oh, I'm really terrible at this. Oh, it annoys me so much. Why am I so terrible at this? Followed by oh, no, I'm supposed to be kind on myself. Oh, I'm really useless of being kind on myself. Why am I not working on being kind to myself? Why am I not better at self compassion? This is the downward spiral when this happens, when you catch yourself in a downward spiral of all the negative toxic, self deprecating or self opposite of self love, at least talks or self kindness. Pause when this is happening. Pause. Deep breath. Start again. Reformulate. This is something I'm working on. It'll get better if you can just breathe and tap into the moment around of you. Don't just focus too hard on your thoughts. That's also a good trick. Detach yourself a bit from your thoughts when it's getting really vicious inside. Realize they're just thoughts. They're just sentences that come and go. They don't matter that much. Even though we think they matter a lot, they don't. So allow them to be detach and know this isn't who you are. And you don't need to pay that close attention to all these thoughts. Just detach. The awareness will help the reshifting. Rephrasing will also help. Catching yourself on the outside and what you say externally, it'll be a great indicator of how you feel internally. And you can also work on building that self trust, because this is one of the fundamental pillars when it comes to self confidence, that self trust, that's linked to the self talk. Because if you tell yourself, I will meditate every day for a month and then you do, it makes it a lot easier for your self talk to be like, yes, I managed to hold that promise to myself. I can trust myself. On the other hand, if you don't, then the self talk might go something like, oh, you didn't hold your promise. I knew you wouldn't. You never managed to hold your promises. We said this was important, why didn't we do it again? Take a deep breath. Shift your self talk. There'll be so much easier to build that inner self trust, to build that inner confidence. When you're able to have self trust, commitment to these goals, habits that you've put in place, ensuring that you're keeping your promises, will make it so much easier to build that self trust. And with that self trust in place, your self talk will be naturally more positive. Because if you said you're going to do all these things and then you do do them, a part of you will be happy. A part of you will be proud. And then it makes it so much easier for you to have that positive, empowering and great in a talk. We also fear that by changing our self talk we will become arrogant or conceited. If we think and we walk around feeling that we're great, then we become these horrible, pretentious people. That doesn't really happen because most arrogance comes actually from a lack of self confidence and a lack of self belief. People who have positive, empowering self talk don't go around saying I'm great, I'm great, I'm wonderful. They just go around without these lack of self belief, without this inner sort of conflict. This is how you'll know when you shift your self talk because it'll go from being disempowering and having this internal friction, a bit like when two people don't get on, there's a friction in the room, there's an internal friction when you don't have good self belief. And I'll go from that to inner harmony, inner peace, inner coherence, and to just feeling centered and calm. That's how you know your self talk has shifted. Not because you suddenly walk around saying how amazing you are. That's not what happens. It's just you go through life, you do your things and you don't have this annoying critical voice in the back of your mind constantly telling you you're not enough or you're failing or you're stupid or you're useless. That just goes away. That's it. That's the only difference. It doesn't get replaced with I'm the most amazing person in the world. And we don't need that either to build our self belief or self confidence. It's not about walking around telling ourselves that we're great. It's more around mastering that inner critic and mastering those inner naggering little thoughts that pester us and that don't really contribute to our well being or fulfillment in any way, shape or form. And another fear that people sometimes have is that they will decrease their performance if they don't have this voice constantly telling them you're not good enough, you should be better, why aren't you doing this? They feel if that voice goes away and that pressure goes away, suddenly they will underperform or won't do as well, or will be negligent or complacent. That also doesn't happen because you still have your drive, you're still motivated to progress in certain areas, in certain fields. And on the contrary, that small naggering voice holds you back because it discourages us on the moment. Maybe it gives you a bit of a boost, maybe it tells you, yes, I should do this more, and you force yourself a bit, maybe, but in the long run it's not sustainable. You burn out. And this is why there's so many issues nowadays with overwhelm and burnout. It's directly linked to this self respect and self compassion. Noticing when too much is too much, and not craving that external validation or internal validation, realizing that you're doing great. It's all okay, breathe. Have compassion for yourself on this journey. And from then on, you don't need to pay that much attention to that inner voice. You can detach a bit from it and maybe it'll just gradually fade away and it won't come to haunt you as much. Oh, that's the aim at least. And this is something I worked on a lot. So I've really seen the difference between when I had this harsh, harsh, critical voice, when I told you at the beginning of this episode about realizing during that coaching session that I spoke so harshly to myself when it was such a surprise. And nowadays I don't feel that that voice is there anymore. And if it is, it's just occasionally, it's not ongoing and it's very, very minor. And you do see a difference. I mean, I do feel this inner harmony and no longer this constant inner conflict somehow that goes on when we have a harsh self voice. So it's definitely possible. Practicing your meditation, gaining a bit of awareness, journaling, paying attention to the language you use to yourself outside, externally, when you talk about yourself and internally, and talking to yourself as you would to a friend. And when you catch yourself being harsh, just think, would I say this to my best friend? Or if I had a child. Or to my child, would I say this so important? It'll have a radical effect on your self belief, on your self confidence, on your performance. And it'll really support you to feel well and to feel good and also to help other people in the world. Because the more in harmony you are, the more ability you have to take on other people's struggles and challenges, because you're no longer just dealing with yours, because you're in a better place. Hope this episode was useful and inspiring for you. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend or family member. It helps other people to find out. Podcasts other people to learn about these messages. Hope you enjoyed today. Wishing you a wonderful, wonderful, fantastic day ahead.
[12:41] Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Be Show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback. So let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you, and feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member. Wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead.
[13:10] You close.