How's your inner coach doing? Is your inner coaching voice strong,
supportive, reliable,
or is it totally overwhelmed by that inner critic? So,
today I'm going to share with you three tips for strengthening the inner coach.
For those of you who are new to my channel,
my name is Barbara Heffernan and I am a life coach.
I have been a psychotherapist for 20 years and I started this channel
awaken joy to help bring tools for living a more joyful life to people
worldwide. So welcome to the channel and you probably know the drill,
but if you like this video, please share it, please like it.
And please subscribe to the channel. All of that helps a lot.
So let's get into the topic. So in my experience,
helping people live more joyful lives,
feeling better about themselves, having more authentic confidence,
one of the main hurdles is that inner critic
that develops probably very young in life and can be a very
persistent voice in our heads.
So one tool to counteract the inner critic is to develop a
strong inner coach.
So let's talk about the qualities of the inner critic for a moment and the
qualities of the inner coach.
So you probably know your inner critic pretty well.
So your inner critic is generally judgmental, negative,
and then your inner critic uses a lot of cognitive distortions.
So I talk about cognitive distortions in one of my videos,
CBT unhelpful thinking styles, which I'll link right here,
but the inner critic tends to label. I'm stupid.
You're so dumb. How could you do that? You're a horrible person.
It labels. Labeling is one of the cognitive distortions.
Another thing the inner critic does is it catastrophizes,
which is also a cognitive distortion. So catastrophizing is like,
OMG, I can't believe you did that. Do you know what's going to happen?
And then it projects into the future, the worst possible outcome.
A third cognitive distortion that is a favorite of most people's inner critic
is to talk in absolutes.
That inner critic in our head uses "always" "never" "You're
always a failure." You're never good at math.
You're never good at whatever. Playing the piano, performing,
meeting people, talking to people, you are always a failure.
So it uses absolutes and absolutes are also cognitive
distortions.
And I always like to remind people that if you can identify some of your
thinking patterns as a cognitive distortion, you know, it's a distortion,
a distortion, it's not true. It's a distortion of reality.
So that's just a little bit of an aside just to remind you.
But those are three of the cognitive distortions that are favorites of our inner
critics. The inner critic also focuses on shame and guilt.
Now this focus on shame and guilt is very demeaning. Like,
very often people talk to themselves really in horrible ways,
in ways you probably would never talk to anybody else.
And then the focus on failure is very demotivating.
Focusing on failure,
leads you to feel kind of hopeless and de-motivated.
So we just ran through all the qualities of the inner critic.
And if you are like most people,
you're probably pretty familiar with your inner critic voice.
You may not be as much in touch with an inner coaching voice.
So I'd like to talk through some of the qualities of an, of a good coach,
because the process of developing that inner coaching voice
is a conscious effort. And we need to know what we're aiming for.
So right now you can just bring to mind,
if you have had a positive coach in your life,
maybe a teacher who encouraged you,
a teacher who really thought you had talent,
a music teacher, a sports coach,
could be a parent or grandparent or an aunt or uncle,
someone who really was able to embody the
positive qualities that I'm going to list here. So, as we're talking about this,
just sort of scan, see if you've had somebody in your life, who's like this.
It could even be someone you've worked for as an adult.
So one of the main qualities of a good coach is to be encouraging
and supportive.
So do you have an inner coaching voice that encourages you and supports you?
Good coaches are also patient, validating.
They validate what you're going through. They understand,
and they're goal-focused.
So a good coach can both validate the difficulty
and keep you focused on a goal.
So if you have an inner coaching voice that can help you do that,
that is awesome.
And then that goal focus is focused on what you can control,
what effort you put in.
So when we can focus in our goal setting on the effort we're putting in and the
piece of the project that we can control,
there are so many things outside of our control, but we can do our best.
So a coach can keep you focused on that.
So other qualities of a good coach include being observant,
curious, observing what's going on, curious,
open to finding new solutions, and positive. Alright,
so at this point you're probably saying, okay,
this is all well and good Barbara, but how do I do this?
How do I strengthen this inner coaching voice?
So I'm going to give you three tips. The first one I've already alluded to,
which is that this is conscious effort,
consciously becoming aware of how you speak to yourself and consciously
attempting to change it.
So I do have a video on conquering your critical inner voice,
but I use that phrase because people Google that a lot.
Yet the real key is that that voice needs healing.
But I'm going to let you take a look at that because we're focusing more on the
coach in this video,
but that inner critic needs some healing and the
coach needs some conscious strengthening.
So one way to do that is to actually write out some phrases for yourself.
Something that encourages you, something that motivates you.
It could just be as simple as "you can do this." "You've got some great
qualities." "You're wonderful in this area," whatever
those positive statements that you can say about yourself,
that you truly believe, we need some that you really believe. Write them out,
post them on your wall, post them on your computer practice,
consciously practice,
bringing those positive statements to mind.
So that's tip number one,
make this a conscious effort to really focus.
When you find yourself overwhelmed by that inner critical voice,
consciously make the effort. What would I say to a friend?
What can I say to encourage myself here? What other voice can I pull in?
And that's going to lead us to tip number two.
So tip number two is to channel a positive person in your life.
If you have had somebody who's acted as a good coach for you
in your life, bring them to mind on a daily basis,
what would they say to you?
And if it was like your grandmother who's passed away and isn't there anymore to
encourage you, that's okay. Bring her to mind.
She would want you to do that, right? Bring her to mind.
How would she feel about you? What would she say?
If you had a teacher who really encouraged you, visualize them,
bring them to mind, what would they say to you right now?
So really visualizing a positive coach.
And for people who might say to me,
don't really have somebody I can pull on who played that role for me? Well,
I'm truly sorry. That is very difficult.
And when I've had clients who are in that place,
we've used two different things.
So one of them is to pull somebody from TV,
pull an imaginary character.
Let's create a voice in your head that reflects
an imaginary character that you relate to, just someone that you know,
or admire or could bring in that could bring a
voice to you that you can emulate.
I'm going to make a little bit of an aside here because the voices,
the different ways that we talk to ourselves are generally emulations
of what an attachment figure has said to us in our lives
or how an attachment figure feels about themselves.
So kids can absorb a lot of negative self-talk virtually by osmosis.
If they have a parent who had a lot of negative self-talk,
so it doesn't even have to be that somebody criticized you directly.
You may just have grown up in a household where your main attachment figure
criticizes themselves all the time. And then you absorb that voice.
You are taught how to think.
And in the worst case where you are attacked or criticized constantly as a
child,
you internalize that voice in order to stay attached to the
attachment parent. And that's a topic for a completely different video,
but we bring in those parenting voices, right?
So developing this inner coach voice is part of reparenting ourselves.
And I'm going to do a video in a couple of weeks on Reparenting.
So make sure you subscribe and you'll be notified when that video comes out,
but this is a process of developing a way to speak to
ourselves that helps us achieve what we want,
function how we want and feel good about ourselves.
So if right now you need to bring an imaginary person in for this that's okay.
Let's do it. If you can imagine that person,
even if you can imagine the person and you're taking
from a character, but you're imagining what they say to you.
If you can imagine that, then you have that voice. Does that make sense?
When you pull in a character to be that voice for you?
That is your voice. Okay. I hope that makes sense. You can always comment below.
Let me know if that piece made sense.
So tip number two was to bring in a positive coach that you've
experienced in your life and strengthen their voice within your
head. And if you don't have that positive coach, you can pull on,
you can create one, or we're going to go to tip number three,
because sometimes your inner coaching voice will need
a good coach, will need an outside person.
It could be a therapist that you develop a relationship with.
It could be a life coach. I have had many,
many clients say to me, oh, Barbara, you were in my head. I, you know,
such and such was happening, I began to talk to myself negatively.
And then I brought to mind what you would say to me in that situation.
So I,
as a therapist have become an inner coaching voice for clients who
didn't have access to one. So I know this sounds a little bit odd,
but it's really normal. So sometimes, often actually,
often we need an outside influence to
help us to fill up that inner coaching voice. Yet,
I also will encourage you that if you work with a coach or a therapist that you
make a conscious effort to bring in their encouraging
voice, into your day-to-day life, what would they say to you in this situation?
How would they encourage you through this? How would they validate?
Maybe just simply even validate what you're going through.
So just on this point, I recently became an affiliate with Betterhelp,
which is an online counseling system, because with my videos right now,
and an international viewership,
I'm contacted by people all over the world who don't have access
to good therapy.
And so I was looking for what solution could I find to
recommend to people who contact me?
And I really resonate with betterhelp's mission to make professional counseling,
accessible, affordable, convenient.
So anyone who struggles with life's challenges can get help anytime,
anywhere.
And I so support that mission because I'm trying to do something similar with my
YouTube channel, but this is just informational. This is not direct counseling.
This is not individualized advice and self-help does
not always cut it. And I do think self-help has a role,
but sometimes it is really helpful to have a trained
professional who can really help you rewire some of those thinking
patterns. So I do have a link below for betterhelp,
which gives you 10% off your first month. I'm an affiliate.
This channel will earn a small commission. If you join through my link,
which is very helpful to the channel, but just wanted to mention that.
And then also there are other ways to go about it. There is life coaching.
There are all sorts of people out there who can help you
strengthen that positive voice that you can then use
some of these tools to bring in on a daily basis.
And I really encourage you to do this because rewiring your brain is
possible.
And I do have a free webinar on rewiring your brain for joy and confidence.
That will also be linked in the notes under this YouTube video.
I encourage you, if you haven't watched it, join me.
Many people are finding it useful.
We can rewire how our brains work.
We can lower our anxiety, lower anxious thinking,
lower our self-critical voice and live happier lives.
So I'm wishing you health and healing,
and let's strengthen that inner coach.