3 Ways Your Inner Critic Kills Your Confidence

Coach Will (0:09)

Hey, hey, hey, hello, hello, and welcome to The Unstoppable U Podcast. It's your host, Coach Will, or at Coaching With Will on socials. And this is my weekly podcast where I share bite-sized wisdom and action-oriented success principles, all dedicated to help you crush your goals, develop confidence, and become truly unstoppable in life. So, without further ado, let's dive in.

Today, we are diving into three main ways our negative self-talk shows up in our life. I've coached hundreds, and probably at this point, thousands of students. I've coached people older than me. I've coached people younger than me. I've also coached myself through things. And I've kind of summarized three main buckets, let's call them, or themes of negative self-talk. Our inner critic throws at us that, unfortunately, we believe. But not for long. If you continue to listen to The Unstoppable U Podcast and join Unstoppable U, then I promise you, you're gonna get really good at kicking these negative thoughts to the curb. So, let's dive right in. As I'm going through these, I want you to literally think of how does this show up in my own life? How does this negative thought relate to me? Whether it's in sports, whether it's in school, whether it's in your relationships, whether it's in playing video games, whatever it may be, I have a good feeling that these three things are gonna be showing up a lot in your life as it does in my life as well. So number one, the number one, in my opinion, way that our inner critic or our negative self-talk shows up in our life is by what I call labeling.

What does labeling mean? It means I am blank. Whatever shows up after you say those two words, I am, that is labeling. So labeling can be really positive, because if you're saying to yourself, I am confident or I am consistent, I am hardworking, I am doing my best, then that's amazing stuff, right? That's very, very powerful, and you are labeling yourself as really awesome stuff. Whereas on the other hand, and I'd say about 80% of the time, before I really learned how to be confident and how to watch myself talk, how to reject a lot of the things that we're talking about today, and eventually how to replace those things with positive things, then, well, this labeling was mostly negative, right? So we'd say to ourselves, I am dumb, or I am unattractive, or I am not good enough for these people, I am unathletic. So when we label ourselves, again, this is the most powerful form of negative self-talk our inner critic gives us. And I want to kind of point out something that is really important, and a lot of students really appreciate and relate to.

And it's this, the problem, y'all, isn't that you have negative self-talk.

Let me say that again. The problem isn't that you have the negative self-talk. The problem is that you're believing everything it says. The goal isn't to be negative self-talk free.

The goal isn't to never have negative self-talk again. The goal is to listen to the negative self-talk, to listen to those labels that we have in our head, and say, no, no, no, that is not true. And if it is true, then I'm gonna turn it into something else and say, you know, I might not be the best at math, but I'm working on becoming better. So we'll talk about that in future podcast episodes of how to replace these negative labels with positive labels. But number one is labeling ourselves as blank. So I want you to think about it for your own life. What comes after the two words, I am? The more you can get clear on what those words are, think about it, the better your action plan can be, and the more intentional your action plan can be, as you're listening to all of these podcasts, about how to overcome those negative labels. So that's number one.

Number two is a really big one as well, and this is trying to predict the future. Let's just call it the what if questions. So our inner critic, and if you've listened to past podcasts, or if you are in Unstoppable U yourself, you know that my inner critic I've named as Randall. When we name our inner critic, it proves to ourselves that A, we're not our thoughts, and B, we have power over that thought. We have power over that thought, which means we can just reject it if we want to, as long as we're aware of it. And so, a big, big, big category of the negative thoughts that go through at least my head, as well as a lot of students, is just trying to predict the future. It's like every single time we go to school, or every time that we talk to someone new, and we're not so confident in ourselves, what are we usually telling ourselves? They're probably going to reject us. We're probably going to fail this test. I'm probably going to miss out on the basketball team. I'm probably going to fail at this audition. We try to predict the future, and again, the problem isn't that those thoughts are going through our head. The problem is that we aren't equipped with the tools to reject those thoughts and to replace them with something more positive. So just think to yourself, how do you, or how does your inner critic, try to predict the future? And another way to think about this is what if questions do you ask? What if this happens? What if that happens? What if this happens, right? We go through those questions all day long. And let me tell you all, very rarely does it help our confidence. Very rarely does it help our happiness, help our joy, help our energy. Why? Because we usually fill those what if questions with only the negative. We never ask what if questions that are positive. We never go into, let's say, a new school and say, well, what if everyone accepts me? Or we never try out for a basketball team and say, well, what if I make it? Or what if I am the star player of the tryout? What if I do really, really well? What if I have my best game ever? You see, our mind is really good at making us believe that the worst case scenario will happen. So think about it for yourself. What what if questions are you asking? And how is your mind trying to convince you that it knows what's happening in the future? Be present, take a deep breath, and know, remember, Seneca says, we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. So take a deep breath and remind yourself that, well, none of those things are actually happening, and follow the negative what if questions with positive what if questions.