One of the most common questions I’m asked as a mental toughness coach is “how can I stop that ever present negative inner voice”. This article by fellow Mental Toughness Coach Paul Lyons, gives you some great insights.
Unfortunately, once your negative voice takes hold it can easily negatively frame the way you see the world which in turn can limit opportunities and outcomes.
So, how can you turn that negative inner voice around and replace it with a consistently more positive commentary .
Have you ever found yourself facing a new challenge and suddenly a thought emerges in your head–“I can’t do this,” “I’m going to fail”? These negative thoughts can be very powerful and overwhelming, preventing you from being able to pursue new opportunities. So, how do you turn off this negative mental chatter?
“Your brain’s primary purpose is to protect you,” says executive coach and behaviour psychologist Marcia Reynolds, author of Outsmart Your Brain. The first thing your brain says to you when faced with a situation where there’s any doubt is “don’t do that,” “you’ll be humiliated,” “you’ll be hurt.”
1) Recognize Your Thoughts
From an evolutionary perspective, the brain’s reason for existence is not to be creative and brilliant, but to prevent you from being in harmful situations. That doesn’t bode well if you want to take risks and create new things. Reynolds says in order to get over the brain’s instinct to protect you, you need to say, “thank you brain, but I really don’t need that message right now.”
Instead of saying “I’m having a negative thought, I must be a negative person,” recognize the thought and say, “Oh, that’s interesting, look at what my brain is doing.” Once you recognize that the thought you’re having is your brain trying to protect you, you can take a step back and ask yourself what you need to do now to shift your thoughts.
2) Look for the Truths
When your mind jumps to the negative, ask yourself whether those thoughts have any truth behind them. If you are up for a promotion and your mind starts to say, “you’re over your head, you’re going to fail,” ask yourself what truths make this real. Then look for the evidence that refutes that thought. Think about all the times when you felt out of your comfort zone but succeeded.
3) Train Your Brain to Recognise the Positive
Reynolds says we can train our brain to be more positive by engaging in a morning visualization exercise. Ask yourself “What is it that I want to achieve today?”, “how am I going to show up today?” Visualize what your day will look like when you’re at your best, then at the end of the day, ask yourself what you did during the day to achieve those things that you visualized in the morning.
Rather than going over what went wrong during the day, write down what went well, even if it was small. “You need to give your brain evidence that you can be successful,” says Reynolds. Making this ritual a mental habit can help to shift your perspective and avoid the negative mental chatter that can otherwise hold you back.
4) Focus on the Emotion
To train your brain to deal with negative thoughts, Reynolds outlines a technique used by sports psychologists to help professional athletes stay in the zone. Exhale, releasing the negative thought, and clear your head. Next, place your awareness in the centre of your body, the spot just below your navel. This helps you to stay grounded.
Finally, focus on how you want to feel. “Emotions affect our thoughts and behaviour,” says Reynolds. If you want to feel confident, recall a time when you were confident and remember what your body felt like in that state. Perhaps your shoulders were pulled back and you felt taller. Recall and focus on that feeling. This exercise can trick your mind to silence that negative nonsense that’s going on in your brain.
Want to know more about training your inner voice? You can contact me via michelle@bakjacconsulting.com or by calling 0412047590.
Michelle Bakjac is an experienced Psychologist, Organisational Consultant, Coach, Speaker and Facilitator. As Director of Bakjac Consulting, she is a credentialed Coach with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a member of Mental Toughness Partners and an MTQ48 accredited Mental Toughness practitioner. Michelle assists individuals and organisations to develop their Mental Toughness to improve performance, leadership, behaviour and wellbeing.
