The inner critic, commit to yourself & identity = behaviors
Getting your head in order
Strategy #1 – Get moving & befriend your inner critic
Get moving! This is one of the best ways to create momentum for yourself especially when you’re feeling stuck. When you’re feeling stuck, the “critical voice” in our heads can take center stage. The critical voice is the one that says:
“you’re not good enough as compared to such and such”,
“you’ll never get better”
“see I told you so, your just the like person you don’t want to be”
“Here we go again, your a bum and not good enough, you will fall off track and give up just like you always do”
The critical voice will also foresee the future and TRY to convince you that it knows (and it doesn’t, that’s delusional thinking). The irony is this voice serves an important part of our survival. It is just trying to protect us. However, if left unintended and unacknowledged it will fester, linger and start to be the dominating voice in our head because we are not giving it any attention. There is a reason this critical voice is being so damn stubborn and loud and it’s because we need to address it and do something about it. Strength training, cardio, just get moving is a way to raise our natural energy level, and start to build up the courage to challenge this critical voice and do something about it.
Strategy #2 – Under Commitment to yourself
Commitments are scary because we are holding ourselves accountable to an agreement or pact we have with ourselves or others. There is a pressure to keep our promise. If we don’t keep our promise we feel shame. Shame can make us feel low self esteem, sad, humiliated and foolish. All things we naturally want to avoid because of our hardwired desires to be accepted and seek pleasure and avoid pain. Once we understand these basics of human behavior we can start playing the game of following through with our commitments. Start with small commitments to yourself and be very careful with what you commit too. Over committing and not following through on those commitments is what will trigger Shame, low self esteem, humiliation and the whole host of painful feelings. So let’s try the inverse under commit. Just commit to 1 thing and prove to yourself on week in and week out basis that you can keep your promise. Try this strategy for 3 consecutive weeks and then re-evaluate.
Strategy #3 – Personality, Identity and adopting a growth mindset
Finding your identity is something we do all the time. If we are around people we will by default take notice of qualities in others, some we admire and some not so much. Either way we are subconsciously constructing our own personal identity. Our personality is a combination of our characteristics, traits, behaviors that shape who we are to ourselves and others. It’s what makes you. The question is if you believe this is set in stone or able to be changed. This is where adopting a “growth mindset” comes in. This concept made famous by American Psychologist, Carol Dweck.
“In her book, “Mindset,” psychologist Carol Dweck says that success comes from having the right mindset rather than intelligence, talent or education. People with a fixed mindset believe that they’re born with certain intelligence, skills and abilities that cannot change.”
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/dwecks-mindsets.htm