Blog

Video 7: How To Boost Self-Confidence

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching  //  Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Video 7 of my free 8-day Video Series leading up to the launch of my Inner Critic to Inner Coach eCourse. Every day I’ll be talking about an area of significance to your life, and how negative self-talk either causes or perpetuates that problem. And then importantly, a quick-and-dirty instant solution that you can use right away to make a difference to yourself. In this case a distinction and a tool to help you boost your self-confidence.

I just love this topic of self-confidence, because this is a huge part of what the Inner Critic to Inner Coach© Process is about! I make the distinction between self-confidence and the self-esteem in the earlier self-esteem post.

I want to make another distinction: between inside-confidence and outside-confidence. Let me tell you a brief story. When I was growing up as a teen and a young adult, when I still lived in England, I had a lot of outside-confidence. I was loud and said what I thought. I was brave and did scary things. I was socially competent and funny. To all I seemed a very ‘confident’ person. Once I moved in New Zealand and started my – what was going to be a never-ending, but in a good way! – self-development journey, I did so much healing. Because on the inside I didn’t feel confident, almost at all. I was highly insecure and needy; I doubted myself incessantly; I hated my body and appearance; my self-worth was in the toilet most of the time; I didn’t believe in an ounce of my own intelligence and I had no proper aspirations for myself. Yes, I put myself out there, but because it was the only way I knew how to get approval from others and keep them liking me, something I desperately needed to stay afloat in my life.

Once I’d done about 3 years of intense inner-work, I finally felt like I’d ‘bridged the gap’ between the outside and the inside. I felt so much more whole, and more self-confident in a very genuine way. I went back to London for a visit, and asked my friends if they’d noticed any differences in me. The overall answer was – ‘no’!  I guess that’s the thing with outside-confidence – it’s extremely convincing. However I felt the difference on the inside, which is the point.

Of course all the issues with self-confidence I’ve described can be solved by putting a stop to the constant Inner Critic and learning how to fundamentally talk to ourselves and therefore treat ourselves differently. So here’s a tip. See if you can begin to distinguish between inside and outside confidence. I’ll give you a clue – the more outside-confidence you have, the less inside-confidence there currently is. You can tell if it’s of the outside kind as your motivation will be about others, rather than you.

A quick way to begin boosting your inside-confidence is by finding real TRUTHS about yourself that you believe in 100% – specifically your abilities, competence or capacity to do something. Something you know about yourself. It could be as simple as: I know that I’m really organised, and this benefits me and the people I live with. Do a brainstorm of these small things that you absolutely believe about your competence and keep this list somewhere. When you need to cultivate that inside-confidence, you have a start.

This is such an important concept that’s explored in much more depth in the training.  For now, try it, and tell me how well it works for you!

And get in touch if you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Charlotte x

Video 6: Getting Out Of A Funk

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching  //  Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Video 6 of my free 8-day Video Series leading up to the launch of my Inner Critic to Inner Coach eCourse. Every day I’ll be talking about an area of significance to your life, and how negative self-talk either causes or perpetuates that problem. And then importantly, a quick-and-dirty instant solution that you can use right away to make a difference to yourself. In this case, changing the questions you’re asking yourself to get out of a ‘funk’.

So, what do I mean by a funk? My way of thinking about it is a negative ‘state’ – a state of mind and body that is undesirable to you and unpleasant. For example, worried, distressed, anxious, etc., and also an unhelpful situation that you’re in, which feeds into the bad state.

As we’ve been learning, your internal dialogue and the way you feel are infinitely connected. One feeds into the other. And your self-talk makes bad feelings worse by talking to you or asking you questions which are not helpful and simply take you further down a spiral.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you are in a lot of debt, and don’t have much money. When you look at your bank accounts online, and see your negative balance, you will feel bad. What you may not realise, is that in the back of your mind there will be a little guiding question, and it will be structured in a way that only looks for negative answers. For example in this case it’s likely to be some variation of:

How did I get into this mess?

How the hell am I going to get out of this?  

Why is this happening to me? 

This is what we call a Key Question.

These key questions pop up very quickly and are of course spoken to you by your own self-talk inside your own head only. They can be very quiet so you hardly notice them. However, they are powerful, and the nature of them are very unhelpful – inherently focusing on the past and on the negative and not moving you forward at all.

The solution to getting out of these types of funks is to pay attention to your key question in the back of your head, and change it. We want to focus on a future step that’s positive. So any of the above examples could be changed to:

What’s my plan to get out of this?

What’s my next useful step?

Who can I talk to that can help me with this?

Key questions need to be open and start with a what, how, who, how much, and not lead to yes or no answers. And remember, you don’t need to KNOW the answer!  It just helps your brain focus and begin to find a useful answer for you.

Try it and let me know how it works for you!
As always, any questions, you know where I am.

Love Charlotte.

Video 5: Shifting To A Better Feeling Mindset (no more ‘Imposter Syndrome’)

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching  //  Tagged , , , , , , ,

Welcome to the Video 5 of my free 8-day Video Series in the lead up to the launch of my new eCourse – The Inner Critic to Inner Coach Online Training. Every day I’ll be talking about an area of significance to your life, and how negative self-talk either causes or perpetuates that problem. And then, importantly, a quick-and-dirty instant solution that you can use right away to make a difference to yourself. In this case, the biggest mindset hack for overcoming the so-called ‘syndrome’.

Mindset and Imposter Syndrome – two huge things!  And phrases that are now prolific in the professional / business / entrepreneurial world.

I hear about these MOST OFTEN in the business communities I’m part of. Why?  Because we all know that your mindset basically equals your success – what you believe you can achieve, you will achieve.

However when your belief in yourself starts to falter, for whatever reason, we can get into all kinds of negative spirals: self-sabotage; low-confidence; procrastination; avoidance strategies and so on. All because we don’t want to fail, and we feel like a failure. And once this self-doubting has really kicked in, we start hearing the phrase “I’ve got Imposter Syndrome…..”

You want to hear my BIGGEST mindset hack for this? OK, here it goes:

STOP CALLING IT IMPOSTER SYNDROME!

Because it simply doesn’t exist. The English language has a bad habit of doing this – turning verbs or processes into static things or objects. You don’t have a ‘syndrome’, you don’t have a disease and you don’t have a collection of symptoms. You don’t wake up in the morning and put the ‘imposter’ part of your brain in, do you? As long as you think of it as a ‘thing’ you are powerless to change it. Because what can you do, take a pill?  No.

Understand this – YOU are creating it with YOUR inner dialogue (and other factors will lead up to this creation, but ultimately this is what you’re doing).

I talk about this concept in much more depth in the eCourse because it is a crucial part of you stopping giving away your power, and starting to get your power back.

So, here’s how you get some energy into the situation and activate your personal power again: first step – stop calling it that.

Second step: Take a moment to actually DEFINE what the problem is for you. What are you concerned or worried about? What’s actually going round and round in your head? Write some stuff down until you get something that starts making sense. For example: I’m worried that I’m not qualified for this job and I don’t have the right tools and resources to feel good at it.

Just notice what changes when you do this and how you can start to get yourself a plan for morning forward.

As always – any questions, please give me a shout.

Charlotte x

Video 4: How To Improve Low Self-Esteem

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching  //  Tagged , , , , , , ,

This is such an important topic!

The distinction between self-esteem and self-confidence (which I’ll be talking about in a few days) is this: self-confidence is how you feel about your abilities, your competencies and your capacity to do something.  Self-esteem is how you feel about YOURSELF – about who you are as a person.

How you feel about yourself as a person depends on what you believe. A belief isn’t objectively ‘correct’ or something ‘absolutely true’ – simply something that your brain holds as ‘absolutely true’. What you believe is fundamentally influenced by what you talk to yourself about inside your head. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s real – what’s really happening out there in the real world – and your internal thoughts, images, words etc. It simply responds as if they were real. Of course, the logical part of you knows the difference, but not the unconscious part. So, what you’re telling yourself about yourself is crucial to what you believe about who you are, and therefore the sum of your self-esteem.

The beginning of a solution to start improving low self-esteem is to find something POSITIVE about yourself and who you are, and make it something you already BELIEVE is absolutely true.  And I advise going with the smallest possible thing – as long as you genuinely believe it about yourself. It’s much better to go small and believable, then go lofty and ideal, as these kinds of things will be rejected by your brain. And make it about YOU – even if it has to be about your appearance. If you have a poor body-image and each time you look in the mirror you’re telling yourself you’re fat and that no-one would want you, then find something about your body/appearance that you absolutely and positively like that’s already rooted in your belief system. It can be as small as “I really like the colour of my eyes”.  And then focus on that when you look in the mirror or think about your body.

There’s a neurological reason why finding an existing positive belief really works to turn this around, which I go into in much more detail in the upcoming eCourse – Inner Critic to Inner Coach.

For now – try this quick self-talk solution, and tell me how it works for you.  Any questions please get in touch!

Charlotte x

Video 3: Creating More Happiness (not depression)

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching  //  Tagged , , , , , , ,

This is such a wide and important topic! And today, we are focussing on one key element – how negative self-talk is inherent in the creation of ‘depression’ and what you can do straight away to begin to turn that around, while debunking a major myth in the process. Even if ‘depression’ is not something you identify with, and you just want to create more of the good stuff, keep on reading!

**NB: when I reference the word ‘depression’ today I’m talking about mild, episodic, temporary periods of depression, and not persistent, severe or what may be termed a ‘clinical’ depression. If you have these issues, this may help you, but your spectrum of treatment obviously needs to be considerably broader. Please consult a professional if in any doubt.**

Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology teaches us two very important concepts. Firstly, we used to believe that negative and critical inner dialogue (self-talk) was a symptom of a depressive state. We now know and understand that instead it is one of the key causes of it. And this makes perfect sense in the understanding a simple equation – talk to yourself like crap, judge and criticise yourself, and you’re going to feel bad.  It’s not possible to talk to yourself in this way and feel good at the same time. Your brain can’t do this.

Secondly, the solution to this is NOT blind optimism, or Pollyanna Positive / rose tinted glasses kind of thinking. In fact, from his analysis he found that this kind of thinking no more served us in our lives then the really negative stuff did. People who thought this optimistically were not equipped to deal with life’s inevitable adversity when it arose, and they were therefore unable to build useful resilience in response to such events.  Listen to his definition of learned optimism (vs pessimism) here.

Michael Yapkow, an expert in the fast reversal of depression using brief therapy, has found something similar to be the case, which he teaches to his patients:  it’s not that happy people go around giving themselves high-fives every day for tying their shoe laces, or look at themselves in the mirror and say “you’re SO awesome!”.  No. In fact, people who are living happily rather than depressed still have their negative dialogue, it’s just they have learned not to listen to it any more or take it seriously.

I teach this in much more depth in my upcoming online training, because this understanding helped me form one of the key principles of developing a useful and healthy Inner Coach practice.  If we don’t want extreme optimism and high-fives, then what is it we are going for when developing an Inner Coach, that’s actually useful to us? This is all explained.

For now, imagine you had a volume control on that Inner Critic, as if it were a bad radio station you were tuned into. Try imagining you could simply turn it down, so you don’t have to listen to it all the time.  Now, what’s that like?

Any questions or feedback, give me a shout. I’d genuinely love to hear form you.

Warmly, Charlotte.

Video 2: How To Make The Right Decisions (no more self-doubt)

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching  //  Tagged , , , , , ,

Welcome to the Video 2 of my free 8-day Video Series in the lead up to the launch of my new eCourse – The Inner Critic to Inner Coach Online Training. Every day for the next 7 days I’ll be talking about an area of significance to your life, and how negative self-talk either causes or perpetuates that problem. And then, importantly, a quick-and-dirty instant solution that you can use right away to make a difference to yourself. In this case, one that allows more courage in your decision making.

Okay – confession time!  I lead you here under false pretences. Sorry!  You see, there is no such thing as a ‘right’ decision. There’s no-one in the sky with a clipboard, marking every one of your decisions off with a tick or a cross.

There is just decision making and then feedback: the natural consequences of that particular decision. These consequences are either desirable, or useful to your life, or, undesirable and not so useful to you. And of course, some decisions have no real notable or immediate consequence to you (e.g. whether I wear my grey tights or my black tights).

**NB: I’m not talking about extremes where people make decisions to intentionally physically harm another human being. I’ll leave that kind of analysis up to the right experts, which is definitely not me.**

I’m talking about the average person on the street, you and me. What can happen is that we become DISABLED in our decision making because we believe there’s a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’. And it’s this belief that feeds the Inner Critic’s endless tape of self-doubt, and keeps it going around and around like a hamster in a wheel. I know that if you’re reading and watching this, I don’t need to describe self-doubt to you – you know it all too well.

The reason that self-doubting exists in our brains is because we are so afraid of getting our decisions ‘wrong’. Even when it comes down to those small and often inconsequential decisions like what to eat for lunch!  Why?

  • because somehow we won’t be OK in the world. We’ll be rejected, criticised, no longer belong
  • because we may no longer be physically safe (our inbuilt survival system kicking in)
  • because what we’re REALLY afraid of is the judgement and criticism and disapproval we will turn inward on OURSELVES
  • because turning on ourselves like that feels BAD. And we are afraid of these feelings.

The ONLY solution then, is to learn to HAVE YOUR OWN BACK and support yourself 100% – no matter what.

That’s it. No more, no less.

If you can find some way to say to yourself in any given moment – it could go this way or that way, and, you know what, I’ll ultimately be OK. I can learn from this.  This will cultivate more courage, and perhaps – dare I say it – more risk taking, getting out of comfort zone, and growth (even if you start with what to have for lunch.)

Any questions – just ask! I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

Until tomorrow where we look at Creating More Happiness (not depression).

Charlotte x

Video 1: How To Control Anxiety

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching  //  Tagged , , , , ,

Welcome to the first instalment of my free 8-day Video Series in the lead up to the launch of my new eCourse – The Inner Critic to Inner Coach online training.  Every day for the next 8 days I’ll be talking about an area of your life of significance, and how negative self-talk either causes or perpetuates that problem. And then, importantly, a quick-and-dirty instant solution that you can use right away to make a difference to yourself. In this case, one that brings you back to calm.

**NB: Just to be really clear and keep everyone watching 100% safe, this is only relevant to minor, low-level anxiety issues like nervousness or small and short freak-outs/panic. If you have major anxiety issues or any kind, major panic attacks or any unresolved trauma, please seek more appropriate help for those issues as they will need a broader spectrum of help and support.**

Your self-talk and your feelings/emotions are inextricably linked, and especially so for anxiety. This is what we call a cycle of bio-feedback. You will either get a direct anxious feeling first, or a self-talk though first. Either way, your self-talk will at some point notice the anxious feeling, and start talking to you about it – You’re nervous, they’re going to notice….. you’re freaking out, OMG what am I going to do? Oh shit, now I’m even more nervous….God, this is so stupid….And so on.

This increases the level of adrenaline in the body and sends you further into anxiety loops. I talk about this in much more detail in my Imperfect Parent eBook.

In a key piece of neuroscience, it was found you can you break this cycle deliberately. You simply notice what sensations or thoughts are going on inside of you, and describe them to yourself in as much detail as possible, using your internal dialogue. The key component that was crucial in the success of changing where the blood was orientated in the brain was if you addressed yourself in the 3rd person, and used your own name. So for example, saying to yourself “OK, I’m freaking out here…” didn’t have the same affect as saying “Charlotte, you’re freaking out… your hands are sweaty, your heart rate is up..”.

This successfully sent the blood away from the Amygdala, stopping Amygdala hijack, and back into your Prefrontal Cortex, your logic and reason centre. I had reason to test this two or three days after hearing about it on the radio when I physically reacted to eating some pineapple and started freaking out, and within 2-3 minutes my nervous system was back to normal again.

All you have to do is use your own name to address yourself in the 3rd person, and describe what is currently happening in your body and thoughts, and your nervous system will re-set itself and bring you back to calm.  I talk about this neuroscience in more detail in the eCourse.

Any questions?  Please let me know!

Otherwise – try it, it really works!

Charlotte x

P.s. See you tomorrow for How To Make The Right Decisions (no more self-doubt).

Why You Need To Stop Calling My Child Shy

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching, Parenting

Have you ever wondered what your childhood ‘label’ is and how it might be negatively impacting you as an adult?  Let’s take a look at that and at why you need to stop calling my child shy.

To share a personal story with you. I was at a small playground a few weeks ago with my four year old daughter. She was playing happily, I was sitting on the sidelines.  She got onto the sea-saw at which time a grandmother with a much older child – perhaps around 10 years old – comes over.

The child gets on the sea-saw with my daughter, who we shall call Pup (for that is her nickname). Pup then decides she doesn’t want to be on it any more, gets off and comes over to me.

That could be a reasonable end to the story.

The 10 year old however sits there, expectantly, while the grandmother repeatedly and pointedly looks over at us, expecting Pup to come back onto the sea-saw.  I should reiterate here that these are absolute strangers to us. 

When Pup chooses not to – because why should she? – she is repeatedly labelled as ‘shy’ by the grandmother. Like, about 5-6 times: “She’s shy? Oh, she’s shy!  She’s feeling shy today? Is she a bit shy? Oh, she must be shy….” etc.  

I found this totally infuriating.  

Why You Need To Stop Calling My Child Shy

It mirrored something that happened with a kindy mum recently. She’s one who always wants to stop and chat, and on this one occasion, she decided she wanted to have a conversation with Pup.

She asked her some questions, and Pup clearly couldn’t be bothered to engage, so she stayed quiet and circled my leg and waited for the woman to go away so she could get on with her morning. Once again, we got “Oh, are you a bit shy this morning?”

I found this totally infuriating, too.

Why?

Here’s the thing, this is why you need to stop calling my child shy.  Anyone who knows Pup knows that she is far from ‘shy’.  She is an extrovert.  She is open and willing to engage with a variety of people. She has a wide circle of friends and is popular and socially capable.  Those familiar with Clifton StrengthsFinder will notice she has a lot of ‘Woo’.

And, you know what else she is? She’s discerning. She is capable of making a choice about who to engage in and indeed the right context in which to engage. As do I.  Is she reticent and quiet sometimes?  Of course!  As I am.  As most members of the population are.  And have a right to be. We have a variety of emotions on a wide spectrum and we have a right to feel them when we feel them.

I looked at the grandmother squarely in the face, and said, “She’s not shy at all. She just doesn’t want to go on the sea-saw right now.”

I made sure Pup heard. It was a confrontational move, but I’d rather have an adult feel uncomfortable with a social interaction than have my daughter internalise an unhelpful label.

Here are the things that make me uncomfortable about this kind of unhelpful labelling:

It is a word that the adult in the situation is using to make themselves feel comfortable at having just been rejected. That’s all. 

If it said enough times or in a context where the child is feeling vulnerable, it can be internalised by them. This means they believe the label as the truth, and start to think of themselves, their behaviours and capabilities in the context of it and only it. In other words, they become the label. 

It can take just a few seconds for this to happen in their neurology, and yet it can last and limit them for a lifetime. 

You can relate to this, can’t you?  What was your childhood label and how limiting do you still find it? 

Why is this unhelpful now, and in the long term?  Because it’s a limitation. If you believe yourself to BE something, you’ll become it, whether it is true, accurate or correct or not, you grow into the label and it dictates how you feel and behave. 

If the label happens to be something useful like considerate or kind, then we are not so concerned.  However as we know from our evolutionary function the negativity-bias, your brain is less likely to internalise the positive, only the negative.

A labelling word like shy is also static and inflexible – meaning that your brain treats it as an object that is permanent, rather than an activity. The opposite example would be sometime like ‘I can quieten and go inward in certain situations where I don’t feel entirely comfortable’. See how this has become an action, a fluid sequence of events, in a specific context?

See how you can begin to see in an around it, and begin to work with it?  That there are counter-examples, other contexts where you are not quiet? See how it becomes less about WHO YOU ARE and more a behaviour that happens AT CERTAIN TIMES?  See how much more useful this description is compared to the labelling word?

These are just some of the reasons why you need to stop calling my child shy.

My recommendations: don’t use these words with your children or yourself. Don’t allow others to use them with your kids. Challenge them when they are used to stop the seed from planting. You can do this.

Heal your own unhelpful labels from childhood. Remember: you only internalised them and believed them because you were young and vulnerable. They are not the absolute truth or correct. Try describing the behaviour like I have above, in the context in which is actually occurs, and see the difference this makes.

You may be interested in my upcoming online eCourse on transforming your Inner Critic to Inner Coach. Language matters, and inner-language matters even more. You can change this and become more of who you really are.

Illustration: Sue Kerr.