Your inner Mean Girl
I’ve been thinking a lot about my inner critic and how much she gets in the way of my bravery, confidence and general happiness. Her negative chatter can be incessant and detrimental to our general well being. When you don’t understand that you are already worthy, you work really hard to chase after it.
I was thinking… I can’t be the only one and just because I am a coach, it doesn’t mean that I’ve been completely liberated so I’ve been researching and learning about this mean girl of mine and wanted to share some things with you.
Studies that I’ve read, consistently show that women have much more negative chatter than men. Studies also show that all topics are on the table, the top 5 subjects are weight, appearance, career, finances, and relationships but we both know the list goes on.
On average it is said that women have self critical thoughts at least 8 times a day, but I would challenge that number. We have over 60K thoughts a day rolling around in our brains, 85% are negative and are on an unconscious thought loop, so there are way more than 8 mixed up in there.
There are different kinds of critics too, do you see yourself in any of these?
1. The Perfectionist - she tries to do everything perfectly, but does NOT want to be judged and struggles to take constructive feedback because anything less than perfect is a fail.
2. The Task Master - she pushes you VERY HARD to accomplish a lot - being “lazy” is not an option!
3. The Conformist - she is forever asking “What will people think?” She doesn’t have any room for expressing herself or individualism.
4. The Controller - she is always trying to control your behavior but also highly critical when you slip up. She will shame you with reminders like this. “You did it again!” “You have NO willpower!”
5. The Underminer - this girl is very uncomfortable with risk and she undermines your self esteem and wants you to play small to avoid failing, getting hurt, or feeling rejection.
6. The Guilt Tripper - this mean girl is stuck in the past and isn’t gonna forget, forgive or feel free from any past mistakes you’ve made.
7. The Destroyer - she is detrimental to your self worth and her weapon of choice is the shaming that makes you feel worthless and inherently flawed.
Yep, I sure do… sometimes that mean girl crosses over several of these in one day!
But let me offer you this, you are already worthy, you can’t earn it when it already belongs to you. You’re worthy already because you’re here. This mean girl chatter has been picked up along the way, you weren’t born with it. So you can challenge it, and change it if you want to. You may need to revisit or discover your personal core values to measure those thoughts against, and that may take some coaching. Once you’ve had time to explore and weed out beliefs that landed there by an off comment or parents that may not have been equipped or societal/cultural/religious norms that are not compatible with your soul, you can change the chatter in your brain. Don’t let your inner mean girl go unchallenged and keep you from confidence, resilience and bravery to grow in this life.
If you need to talk about it send me an email or use the Contact Me page on my website and send me a message, you’re not alone.
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Have a great week my friends!
Chris
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