Join us as we go deeper into the mindset work you need to heal your inner critic. And in case you missed it, make sure to check out last week’s blog detailing the six juicy steps to turn your inner critic into your biggest cheerleader! We’ll talk about how to reprogram your subconscious, take control of negative thought patterns and limiting beliefs, why it’s important to shift into an abundance mindset, and how to use a technique we call empowered thinking!

Doing the Inner Work

It’s critical to remap your mindset and stop the patterns of excessive negative self talk to heal your inner critic. Think of this as your foundation so that all the other stuff will work even better!

How to Reprogram Your Subconscious

3 Steps to Reprogram Your Thoughts

We’re going to follow a 3 step process to examine our thoughts and beliefs on a conscious and subconscious level, and begin to reprogram them. Realizing you have the power to do this comes first! It’s also helpful to think about having a relationship with your thoughts and beliefs, and seeing it from that perspective.

1 – Awareness

The first part of this process is raising your awareness about your thoughts and beliefs. Take an inventory  and ask yourself the following questions.

• What are the things you regularly think about? 
• Thoughts you commonly have? 
• What do you believe about yourself? 
• How long have you been thinking some of these thoughts? 
• Where did they come from? 
• Are they beliefs that started a long time ago, maybe even in childhood? 
• Are they things that someone in your family used to repeat over and over? 
• Are they things you’ve just been used to hearing?

2 – Connection

Next, it’s time to connect the dots. Let’s go deeper and see how your thoughts and beliefs affect your current reality. Take your time with this. See what insights you have that maybe you weren’t expecting.

• What effect do these thoughts and beliefs have on you? 
• How do they impact your life? 
• How might they affect your emotions? 
• What effects do they have on your actions, or inactions?

3 – Choice

Your thoughts don’t define who you are as a person. Some of them may feel supportive to who you are and want to be, while you can recognize that others definitely do not. What you might also notice is that some of your thoughts you’re carrying from others, and maybe you’ve been carrying them for a long time.

• Which thoughts and beliefs will help you keep going? 
• What would it feel like to choose the thoughts you want to keep around? 
• And let go of the ones you don’t want any longer?

Feel free to take some time with this exercise. You may want to journal it out and just let your thoughts flow. This is a great way to tap into your subconscious thoughts that you may not be aware of and see the impact they’re having.

Take Control of Negative Thought Patterns and Beliefs

It may feel impossible, but we promise you that it’s not! We have helped many clients through this process, and we can tell you that it’s possible for you too! If you’d like to read an in-depth case study, check out this one from one of our clients.

You can speak to this voice and get to know yourself on a deeper level. These thoughts don’t have to be gone, but YOU can choose whether you allow them to stick around, or influence your decision making.

The first thing to keep in mind is that changing your thoughts and beliefs is like changing any other habit. And why is that? Because thoughts themselves are habits! So if you believe that you can change your body by what you eat and how you move, let it sink in that changing your thoughts gets to be the same. Neuroscience also tells us that even as adults, you can still rewire your brain!

Remember, this is a choice. You *can* choose your thoughts. Do this by focusing on what you do want, not what you don’t.

Shift From a Scarcity to Abundance Mindset

Scarcity mindset aka Your Inner Critic Is Loud and in Charge

If you’re in this mindset, your thinking is primarily negative, you’re focused on all the things that you don’t have or what can or has gone wrong. You catastrophize, you expect the worst case scenario, and emotions like fear, shame, and self judgment are the primary drivers of your behavior. You’re “in your head” too much, and you feel disconnected.

This is also called a “fixed” or “victim” mindset because in this mindset you tend to believe that things are the way they are and there’s little you can do to change them.

When you’re in this mindset, you avoid change and any risk, even if it’s a healthy risk. You’re more concerned with a loss of any kind, even when there’s the possibility of a much larger gain. You feel like whatever you have is not enough, and that there are limited quantities of everything, for example time, money, opportunity.

Abundance mindset aka Your Inner Cheerleader is Running the Show

If you’re in this mindset, your thinking primarily positive, you’re focused on all the things that you do have and what can go right! You expect the best case scenario, and experience emotions like happiness, love, and trust. You can tap into your creativity. You feel whole and connected, and a sense of balance between your thinking and the cues you receive from your body.

This is also called a “growth” mindset because in this mindset you tend to believe in possibility and change.

When you’re in this mindset, you notice opportunities and take healthy risks. You’re focused on the good and the good gets better! You live in self belief and have a sense of personal power and responsibility. You know that there’s always more.

Shift Your Mindset with Empowered Thinking

Now that you’re aware of your thoughts as a whole and you’ve begun the process of choosing which to keep and what relationship you want to have, let’s talk about what to do when the negative thoughts pop back up. We can call this empowered thinking – a combination of curiosity and thought replacement.

Since you’ve raised your awareness, now when a negative thought comes up, you’ll be primed to notice it more quickly. When you notice it, first remember that you have a choice to let it stick around or not. You can acknowledge it, and then decide that it doesn’t need to be there. Next, you can choose to replace it with a neutral or positive thought instead.

What’s next?

Sign up for our free email newsletter, Your Well and Whole Week! Each week we share a theme, a question, and a simple wellness practice for your week. When you sign up at this link you’ll also get our free resource to create your own digital vision board!

Looking for more personalized support on this journey?

As we always say, it may be called “the inner work,” but that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. We would be honored to be your guides! Book a complimentary session with either of us here. You’ll get tons of value, insight into yourself, and honestly, it might just change your life! You’ll also have an opportunity to learn more about our special program where we do *all the things* we talked about above, The Self Love Kick Start. We can’t wait to support you!