Silencing The Inner Critic
The Inner Critic is that pernicious little voice inside your head that constantly carps, complains and condemns. It is the voice that sows doubt – ‘Yes… but…. supposing. You’re rubbish at that, you know you are. It will all go wrong, it always does!’If you let thoughts such as these go unchallenged you give the Inner Critic the power to destroy your confidence and lower your self-esteem. You must learn to tell it to shut up, stop being silly and go away. Then change the thoughts to something positive.This is the second of the Four Steps, Thought Stopping. It can be used in any instant, and has an immediate effect. This way you may not prevent negative thoughts entering your mind, but you can render them powerless.
“Don’t be afraid of your negative thoughts: just knowthem for what they are – not the truth, just negativethoughts. Give them no house room in your consciousness and they will dissolve into what they are – false ideas,false concepts, with nothing to sustain them." Nona Coxhead
Sometimes All It Takes Is A Single Thought
Eileen Mulligan made a fortune in the beauty industry, then a back injury left her disabled and bedridden just as a serious dispute broke out which threatened to cripple her business.
She says, ‘It looked like I had to have spinal surgery,
and I wondered how I was going to survive the next six weeks. I realised I wasn’t going to naturally wake up full of happy thoughts, but I did think if I could change the way I feel without changing my circumstances, just my thought processes, what could I do when I was back on my feet? So I concentrated on this. And I did it.’
It made all the difference. Eileen quit the business rather than continue the battle, and became a personal development coach. She has been so successful that her book,
Life Coaching, is a bestseller and her clients include a number of well-known politicians and celebrities. The turning point? A change in her way of thinking!