Transform Your Inner Critic Into An Inner Coach

Jack Canfield's Success Principle #32

The average person has 50,000 thoughts per day. Most of that talk is about ourselves. And believe it or not, 80% of it is negative. Jack teaches that our self-talk can be so destructive, it can kill us. Even lie detector tests prove that our heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate increase when we think anxious thoughts.

ANTs are Automatic Negative Thoughts That We Don't Need.
Dr. Daniel Amen is a psychiatrist and writer who named negative thoughts ANTs: Automatic Negative Thoughts. He has identified seven types of negative thinking and provided methods for getting rid of them. He suggests a three-step approach:

1) Become aware of negative thoughts as soon as they occur;
2) Shake off the ANTs and stomp on them with challenging messages; and
3) Replace ANTs with positive thoughts.

Identify the seven types of ANTs.

1) always or never thinking
When we tell ourselves that we always do the wrong thing, that we'll never get ahead or that we are forever doomed; we're setting ourselves up for failure. We must replace these thoughts with positive ones.

2) focusing on the negative
ANTs cause us to automatically look for the bad in every situation. To combat this, we must start looking for the good. Jack recommends spending 7 minutes every morning writing down a list of things we appreciate.

3) catastrophic predicting
These ANTs make us think the worst about every possible outcome. The sad truth is, we actually attract what we think about. So, if we expect the worst, that's what we get. We must become optimistic about all outcomes if we want to find success.

4) mind-reading
With these ANTs, we imagine people's responses to us and expect them to be negative. I used to do this a lot, but now I know how to stomp on these ANTs. I can simply talk to the person I imagine is disappointed in me and ask them if what I'm imagining is true. I've actually tried this lately, and I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that my imaginings were all wrong.

5) guilt tripping
These ANTs tell us that we should do something. They use guilt to try to shame us into eating less, being neater, excercising more, and so on. The problem is, guilt generally results in our resisting whatever we're thinking about.

6) labeling
These ANTs are based on messages that we received as children and are now re-wording in our self talk. "You're stupid" is now "I'm not smart enough."

7) personalizing
Investing a neutral event with some personal meaning makes these ANTs ever more powerful. They tell us that people are mad at us, because they haven't called us, visited, or responded to our emails. In truth, the people we think are angry may simply be busy with other responsibilities and aren't even thinking of us.

Stomp Out ANTs.
ANTs actually have an important message to tell us, but they only give us part of it. Usually, our negative self-talk only includes anger. We must re-program our thoughts to include anger, fear, specific requests, and love.

For example, when we were kids, our parents may have yelled at us for running into the street. The message we got was: "What's wrong with you? Were you born without a brain? You know better than to run out into the street in front of those cars. You're grounded for the next hour. Go to your room and think about what you just did." This message included only their anger and will later become negative self-talk about how brainless we are.

By contrast, total truth from our parents should have looked like this: "When you ran into the street, it made me angry. I'm afraid you might get hit by a car if you do that. I love you. I don't want you to get hit by a car. I want you to stay around so that I can enjoy watching you grow up into a happy and healthy adult. Look both ways before you cross the street next time." This message includes the anger, our parent's fears, a specific request, and love.

Silence your perfomance critic.
Our performance critic is the voice from within that always tells us about our failures. Remember, it is operating out of love for us, but it's only giving us part of the message.

From now on, we must tell our inner critic that we will only listen to specific recommendations that can help us to do it better next time. So, after completing a task, we can ask our critic to tell us specifically what we might do better. By doing this, we can transform our inner critic into our inner coach. We can stop the voice of judgment and create improvement opportunities. Take note that it's important to write down those specific bits of feedback so that we can later apply them.

Today's Challenge
Make a list of all the negative things you tell yourself you should do. Your list should include thoughts such as, "You don't exercise enough; you're a fat slob; you're lazy; and you're irresponsible."

Practice Jack's four steps--expressing anger, fear, requests, and love--on each of your negative thoughts. For example, we can replace the negative self-talk, "You don't exercise enough," with the following:

(Anger)I am angry at you for not taking better care of your body.
(Fear) If you don't change, I'm afraid you're going to have a heart attack.
(Requests) I want you to cut out one hour of TV and exercise during that time every day.
(Love) I love you. I want you to live a long and successful life.


Jack Canfield, America's #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com