Managing your self talk for self acceptance.
When I was about 9 or 10 something changed in my relationship with my little sister. (My little sister that's just less than a year younger than me.) We went from being inseparable and loving to fighting and arguing in the blink of an eye.
All of sudden we went from begging each other to sleep in each others' beds, (Me, because I am always cold and she was the main source of central heating in the days when not everyone had central heating. Her, because she was scared of the dark and the mere mention of Dracula would have her jumping her lovely, hot body into my bed.) to not being able to stand in the same room with each other.
Maybe it's because we shared a room and we were getting to the age where you want your own space, or maybe it was pre-teen hormones kicking in, whatever it was we started to be seriously mean to each other.
Why am I telling you this? Well, I'll tell you.
I'm not proud of it, and I've subsequently apologised to my gorgeous sister, who I love dearly, but we started to call each other horrible names and continued to do so right into our teens. Now, there was a 'no swearing from the kids' policy in our house that was strictly adhered to, but we would try to get away with it by calling each other a 'cow'. (This actually annoyed my mum as much as swearing would, but it was a fine line.)
This cow would be prefixed with something.
For me, my sister would usually go for, "You ugly cow. You sad cow. You snotty cow." My wounding arrows of choice would be, "You stupid cow. You thick cow. You daft cow." Lovely!! I know.
And as siblings do, we knew we had found the weak spot and we repeated it and repeated it. As much as mum stopped us, we'd whisper it quietly after she'd left the room. It seeped into our subconscious beliefs.
And eventually often, I did feel ugly and sad next to my long legged, blonde, bubbly, gorgeous sister. And eventually she felt stupid next to her hard working, conscientious, studious sister. We'd conditioned each other with these little labels to believe that they were true.
My sister and I in our adult years have spoken about this and
forgiven each other for what we said all those years ago as young girls. We didn't mean what we were saying, we just wanted to hurt the other person when we were annoyed by each other. Today we try to be
cheerleaders to each other and love each other dearly.
It was interesting. As I started to look at and understand my inner
critic voice in my late 30s, and I wanted to give it less power in my mind after my near miss of a second burnout, that I should call it "Mean Little Cow.” It’s why I wrote my children’s book of the same title, in order for children, and adults reading it, to understand its impact.
CLICK HERE for a copy.
Calling someone a cow in my eyes is a real insult. (Poor cows, as a veggie I really do love them and don't know why we picked on them all those years ago. LOL)
So how do we undo that
conditioning? How do we quieten down that inner critic that takes from references buried in our subconscious? How do we show it what it is saying isn't the truth? Or is a warped version of the truth at best? Acknowledging that the primary role of the
subconscious part of the brain is to keep us safe allows us to understand that it’s looking for evidence of danger and leaning into a negative bias.
One way to do it is use my
RISE Method. My way of transforming those limiting beliefs that can stop you in your tracks and hold you back from living your Vision now.
Using this RISE Method means you have a chance to breathe deeply and question the validity of the Mean Little Cow voice. It’s an opportunity to choose the conscious side of the brain and engage your empathy, exploration, innovation, navigation and activation Sage powers (Reference - Shirzad Chamine: Positive Intelligence.)
One of the biggest reasons some visionaries take longer than others to bring their Vision to life is because of their self doubt and unchecked negative self talk.
The biggest gift you can give yourself is self acceptance. Know your strengths and weaknesses and work on them without beating ourselves up for it. It can be tough as a purpose driven business owner because for many you start up on your own and have to be good at ALL the key areas.
Strategy
Customer Service
Product Development
Accounts
Marketing
Sales
Operational delivery
Tech support and development
The list goes on and on. Accepting that Accounts aren’t your thing, or that despite your best efforts sales isn’t a strength, and letting yourself off the hook by outsourcing to someone with that zone of genius can be a huge relief. It can also make the difference in the scope and scalability of your purpose driven business, as well as how you feel in it.
Self acceptance is more powerful than self esteem if you agree with this quote from Seltzer (2008):
“Whereas self-esteem refers specifically to how valuable, or worthwhile, we
see ourselves, self-acceptance alludes to a far more global affirmation of self. When we’re self accepting, we’re able to embrace all facets of ourselves—not just the positive, more esteemable”
This really touched me deeply. What if I could like and love even the parts of me that were judged to be flawed? What if I could like myself in the face of mistakes or perceived ‘failure’? What if I could like myself despite not being good at everything or not meeting everyone else’s expectations of me? How visionary.
Accepting yourself as a work in progress, warts and all. Being your own best friend.
It’s something I’ve been doing for over 10 years and I love where it has taken me and where I get to go on my visionary journey.
If you have a Mean Little Cow voice that is holding you back and making you believe you are only successful and loveable if you are achieving 7 figures, pleasing others or being eternally productive, then it’s definitely something to consider working on.
I'd love to hear if you have a name for your negative, inner critic over on my Facebook page where I have shared this blog and how to manage to make her, or him, pipe down.
CLICK HERE
If you'd like to do some work with your 'Mean Little Cow' voice and accept yourself more as the Transformational Leader you are CLICK HERE to sign up for my ‘Be Your Own Best Friend’ online self study programme.
"Doing the 'BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND' WORKSHOP was a revelation to me. I am a director in a vibrant company, a mum to two teens, a wife and primary carer for my parents. I had been feeling a bit adrift and overwhelmed with all the things I 'should' be doing. This programme gave me the clarity of how little attention I'd been paying to my needs, the resentment that was building up and a clear path forward of how I can remain loving, but true to myself too. It's improved my performance at work and relationships at home. Everyone wins." JB, UK
Share
