5 Steps To Tame Your Inner Critic

Negative thoughts impact us all but they don't have to control our lives. In this episode, Lisa A. Romano Life Coach and bestselling author will break it down into 5 easy steps to help us tame the inner critic.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

And so today I'm going to be talking about five ways that you can tame your inner critic.

And we have to understand that we have the ability to observe the mind.

All too often we are reactive and we are reacting to the mind.

We are reacting to other people and we do not understand that our personal power comes from the ability to observe what we think rather than simply react to what we think.

And very often times what we think is not what we think at all.

It's what we've been programmed and conditioned to think.

So the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to decide to observe rather than react.

We are going to observe our mind and get in the habit of observing our mind.

We are going to come out of reactive mode,

Literally Stephanie,

Into a different paradigm.

This is a mind shift,

Dear ones.

When you decide to wake up in the morning and to observe what's happening in your mind rather than react to what's happening in your mind,

This is a complete game changer.

When we are suffering from codependency,

We are reacting to trauma,

Although we don't know it.

And we are living off of what has been stored in the amygdala and hippocampus in terms of behavior,

But we don't know it.

If we have been taught that we are not worthy of love,

We don't know it sometimes.

And very often times we don't understand that our attachment to other people,

Our fawning,

Our people pleasing are shutting down,

Our ability to dissociate.

All of these things are ways that we're dealing with codependency unconsciously,

But what we don't understand is we're reacting and we're not observing.

So the first thing that we do is we wake up and we say,

Today is going to be the day that I observe the way I think rather than just mindlessly react to whatever thought comes into my head.

I am going to observe the thoughts that come into my head.

The second thing we're going to do is disidentify from those thoughts.

Huge mind shift.

You are not your thoughts.

Imagine that.

You are not your thoughts.

So you're also going to follow up observing what shows up in your mind with this idea that you must also disidentify from your thoughts.

You are not your thoughts.

So you are not your negative self-talk.

The words of the inner critic that you hear are not yours.

They are product of subconscious programming,

Childhood trauma,

And they are the narrative of the superego that was only trying to keep you safe in what was most likely a very unpredictable world.

But you must know,

Your brain must know,

That you are not your thoughts.

You are not this negative self-talk.

The third thing that we want to do is order your negative self-talk from zero to five.

Five being the most abusive.

So you're observing the negative self-talk.

You're disidentifying it.

You get a notebook.

You begin to write down what you observe,

And now the third step is you begin to order them zero to five.

So some of us will hear ourselves saying,

We're fat,

We're disgusting,

We're ugly.

That's why no one loves us.

We're never going to get ahead in life.

I'm never going to be happy.

What you would do is pay attention to how each of those phrases makes you feel.

The ones that feel like they are kicking you in the stomach the hardest when you read them,

That would be a number five.

You saying something like,

Or you hearing yourself say something like,

Oh,

You're so silly might be not too important.

Oh,

Oh,

You silly thing.

You just dropped that key again.

Maybe that didn't make your skin crawl.

Maybe it didn't make your chest feel like it was being constricted.

But some of us have some pretty horrible negative self-talk,

And you will know it by the way you feel in your stomach.

Your root chakra will feel constricted,

Or your heart space will feel constricted.

So begin labeling them.

The fourth thing that you can do is now that you know what phrases are the most crippling,

You now want to go in and rewrite the messages.

We want to reframe.

The brain can only play with the tools that are in the shed.

So if your brain has nothing different to say back to these negative phrases that you've decided to observe,

That you've just identified from,

And now that you've labeled and ordered,

Your brain now needs new data.

You have to put something in place of that.

So this is what I call reprogramming.

We have to reprogram.

We have to put into place something that replaces the negative self-talk.

And so if I wake up in the morning and I look in the mirror and I say,

You're so ugly.

You're getting so old.

Look at the wrinkles around your eyes.

And I've now identified this as pretty crippling.

And what I do now is I understand that these are not my thoughts.

I am observing them.

These are just thoughts.

This is society perhaps.

We have to understand that there are mass consciousnesses in terms of how,

For instance,

How women see themselves,

Especially aging.

We are taught in large ways and in small ways and subtle ways and overt ways that aging is bad.

Getting old is bad.

Actually aging is awesome.

If you live to a ripe old age,

That's an amazing thing.

One of my best friends died at 37.

Didn't have a wrinkle on her face.

Trust me.

She wishes that she was alive today.

Or imagine that she would wish she was alive today watching her children graduate from college,

Start their careers and so on.

But the messages that we receive are negative about aging.

So once we've noticed that we have this negative inner critic,

We've identified this phrase,

Now we want to reframe that phrase or completely write over it.

A new phrase could be,

It's good that we're aging.

It's wonderful to be alive today.

I'm so thankful that I'm alive today.

Every wrinkle may represent a laugh.

Every wrinkle represents a year.

I want many years.

May my face fill with many wrinkles.

The more wrinkles,

The older I've lived,

The more that I've experienced.

So now when I look in the mirror tomorrow and I hear this negative self-talk,

I can recall the new positive self-talk,

The affirmation to help me rewire this pattern I have of looking into the mirror and hearing my inner critic and hearing this dialogue that has come from my father,

That has come from society,

That has come from narcissistic others,

That's come from people I've known,

That's come from my mother and the negative way that she spoke about herself and her wrinkles.

So now I have some meat on the bone.

Now I can actually rewire this negative self-talk.

The fifth thing that you want to do is ask yourself if this negative self-talk is any way that you would talk to a best friend.

Would you repeat these negative phrases to a child?

Would you want someone you love to have to struggle with those types of negative phrases?

It's important that you hear yourself,

Have that conversation so that you can acknowledge the pain that those phrases would have if you were speaking them to somebody who is innocent,

Like a child.

It's important that you identify with the pain and you recognize that negative self-talk is painful because when your negative self-talk is happening,

You're feeling the pain of it but that translates to shame.

And it's not the same thing when you're observing a negative phrase happening to someone else.

This is why so many of us that have been bullied in life can't tolerate when someone else gets bullied and many people who have been bullied have become activists or just feel it necessary to protect other people because when we observe the bullying happening to someone else,

Then we identify,

Hey,

That's poor behavior.

But when we are experiencing the negative self-talk from within,

What happens is shame and shame is crippling.

And what happens is when we are shamed,

We become the shame and we're not able to harness the power of being able to observe the shame happening to someone else because we actually identify with the shame,

We become one with the shame.

So spending some time repeating these negative phrases and imagining and asking yourself,

Would I repeat these phrases to someone I loved?

Would I repeat these phrases to a child?

Would I say this to anyone?

So oftentimes the things that we've said to ourselves,

We would never say to anyone else.

When we attach pain to these phrases,

Then the pain versus pleasure principle in our brain begins to go to work for us.

When the brain understands,

Wait a minute,

This phrase is negative and this phrase is painful,

The brain will automatically not want to continue using that phrase on you because the brain wishes to avoid pain and it wishes to seek pleasure.

What we're trying to do is get your brain to associate pain with this negative self-talk in a healthy way so that you can harness pleasurable self-talk.

So your brain can associate pleasure with positive self-talk.

And if you stick to this,

If you do this consistently every single day,

Your life must improve.

Thank you so much for being here and thank you for participating in this short podcast that was just simply aimed at helping you learn to tame the inner critic within you in five easy steps.

If you'd like to learn more about me,

You can go to www.

Lisaaromano.

Com.

Namaste until next time.

Reviews

This was uplifting and educational and well worth listening to

Lisa says things in a way that I can understand and easily apply to myself.

brilliant a guide to help address and overcome the monster of self-negative talk. Thank you!

Wow. Everyone should listen to this! So powerful

I really needed that talk! Thank you Lisa 🙏🏻 the explanation and steps will be helpful to chance negative self talk.

Such insight, thank you, really powerful. Love and blessings 💜 x