How can we learn to choose our thoughts consciously? In this Expert Insight Interview, Joanna Kleinman discusses battling inner criticism in entrepreneurship. Joanna Kleinman is a licensed psychotherapist, motivational speaker, and author of the book Dethroning Your Inner Critic: The Four-Step Journey from Self-Doubt to Self-Empowerment.
The interview discusses:
- Confronting and overcoming the inner critic
- The MIND method of recognizing and changing your thoughts
- Choosing the dream life
Confront and Overcome the Inner Critic
Our inner critic has always been with us, and it always will be. However, we can learn how to dethrone it from our minds. We are the most powerful when we can distinguish what our inner critic says and why. People have around 50,000 thoughts per day, and the majority of them are automatic. The key is to become so familiar with the inner critic to spot it when it happens. Then, we can intentionally direct our thoughts to be in alignment with the life that we design.
The MIND Method
The acronym MIND explains the method of recognizing and changing our thoughts. M stands for meeting our inner circle. We should take a moment to examine those automatic thoughts that we have in our minds. Usually, they keep us in our comfort zone or make us think that we are good enough only if we achieve our goals. That is why we see so many successful people who achieved their goals but are still miserable. We think that after we accomplish our goals, we will be happy. Instead, we should strive to be content while we are trying to achieve our goals.
Letter I in the MIND method stands for investigating the indication signs. Those are the emotions, body sensations, and behaviors we have when we experience our inner critic. When something unpleasant happens, we start creating a story in our heads right away. Thus, we have to realize that circumstances do not influence how we feel, but our thoughts about those circumstances influence our feelings. When we understand that, we will be able to take responsibility for our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Furthermore, we have the same thoughts repeatedly. Thus, N stands for neutralizing those never-ending messages. And lastly, D stands for designing our lives. Creating new thoughts influences emotions that align with the life that we want for ourselves.
Choose Your Dream Life
Changing our thoughts does not happen at once. It is a commitment from moment to moment. It might create a feeling of discomfort sometimes, but it is better to feel uncomfortable while changing your life for the better than feeling discomfort from not doing anything about creating the life of your dreams.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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