Choosing your thinking takes courage
Two Reactions: One Bad, One Good
Reaction One: If I started worrying about their criticisms, my inner critic always joined in and I quickly started thinking things like:
– How can an auto mechanic ever become a successful business owner?
– Who am I to think I can actually lead people?
– Will I just waste my time and money pursuing my dreams? Should I just give up, get out my Visa, and go buy a bigger TV?
When I let these kinds of thoughts loop in my mind, sudden memories of my past rushed into my mind, “verifying” why I could “never succeed”.
It is important to realize that every successful person has these kinds of thoughts to some extent. Those who learn how to truly succeed, however, don’t let their inner critic join forces with the negative things people say. Instead, they take the second approach to dealing with such thoughts.
Courage, the right reaction
Reaction Two: The best method is to double down on replacing all self-defeating voices with the voice of courage. This is incredibly powerful. Whatever the critical person said to you, just let your courage deal with it. Not your inner critic, who will always steer you wrong.
This can be a little tricky, actually, because your inner critic speaks from a place of fear, and the first thing most of us fear when someone criticizes us is that he or she is right. “Maybe I really will fail, and fail spectacularly,” our inner fear tells us. “Maybe this will lead to even bigger failures…” Then our voice of fear starts imagining all kinds of negative scenarios.
If we let this happen, it won’t be long until our voices of fear and self-criticism assure us of something along the lines of: soon we’ll go broke, be forced to live in a ditch, and our home will be hit by an asteroid. Not just any asteroid, mind you, but a plague-infested asteroid that only hits our family, and nobody else. And everyone will see how we caused it with our stupid choice to…
As I said, the voice of fear lives for the ridiculous. That’s just how the voices of fear and self-criticism work. They lie. And they lie creatively and passionately. They also exaggerate as they lie. Why would we ever listen to them?
The truth is, successful people learn not to listen to them at all. Instead, they listen to the voice of courage. Courage isn’t afraid to face the truth, so if something the critics said is actually real, it will tell you so. “You need to improve on this,” your voice of courage will assure you. No judgment. No scary scenarios about living in a ditch. Just: “Fix this! And be thankful the critic pointed it out. Now you can solve it. Let’s get to work on this.”
Likewise, the voice of courage will tell you if the critic was wrong. If so, courage will suggest that you ignore it, or fight it to set the record straight, or get more information, or do whatever you need to do. This is so much better than operating from a place of fear. Courage simply says: “Problem? Okay, let’s learn the specifics. That’s done? Great, now here’s our best course of action.”
Excerpt from: Swing: Finding the Courage to Become
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