Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Your Inner Coach With Carly Taylor

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Your Inner Coach With Carly Taylor · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hi everyone, welcome to this week's Mojo Monday. So I
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: have a really good friend who is also my training
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: buddy at the gym. So we spend a lot of
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  Speaker 1: time together, much of it sharing the pain of a workout.
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  Speaker 1: And when you train with someone that often, you really
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  Speaker 1: get to know each other on a deep level. And
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  Speaker 1: one thing that helps us to do hard things in
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  Speaker 1: the gym is is talking to ourselves. And I don't
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  Speaker 1: mean talking to each other. I mean, talking out loud
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: to ourselves. So we get to hear how each other's
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  Speaker 1: mind works, which is pretty unusual. And sometimes that looks
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  Speaker 1: like swearing at the barbell before we lift it. And
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  Speaker 1: we do it because when you're about to lift a
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  Speaker 1: really heavy weight, a heavy weight for me, which of
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  Speaker 1: course is not going to be that heavy for other people,
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  Speaker 1: but it's heavy for me, your mind starts doubting you.
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  Speaker 1: Some of the things that my mind tells me, you're
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  Speaker 1: too old for this. Who are you to even think
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  Speaker 1: that you can do this? You know, you're going to fail.
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  Speaker 1: And I call that voice the inner gremlin. And in
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  Speaker 1: the gym, I get to choose at that moment whether
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  Speaker 1: to listen to it, maybe swear a bit and lift
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  Speaker 1: the bar anyway. It's actually a really good opportunity to
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  Speaker 1: notice that inner voice. Outside of the gym... It's a
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  Speaker 1: lot harder. I've noticed that I'm usually just listening to
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  Speaker 1: that voice. I take it all as truth and I
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  Speaker 1: can easily get really caught up in it. A Welsh
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  Speaker 1: doctor and preacher, Martin Lloyd-Jones, he talked about this in
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  Speaker 1: the mid-20th century and he wrote a book called Spiritual Depression.
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  Speaker 1: And what he suggested was that much of our unhappiness
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  Speaker 1: comes from listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself.
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  Speaker 1: And I really love that. He pointed out that you
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  Speaker 1: don't choose the thoughts that show up the moment that
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  Speaker 1: you wake up. Your mind just starts talking and chatting
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  Speaker 1: away to you. It will remind you of yesterday's problems
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  Speaker 1: and today's worries before you've even put your feet on
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  Speaker 1: the ground. His point was that rather than just listening,
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  Speaker 1: you can actually answer back. And that's a really simple idea.
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  Speaker 1: Most of us do not do that. We treat that
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  Speaker 1: voice in our head as if it's our only reality.
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  Speaker 1: There's really good evidence, though, on how to answer back well.
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  Speaker 1: Ethan Cross is a psychologist at the University of Michigan
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  Speaker 1: who studies what he calls chatter. And he has a
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  Speaker 1: book with the same title, which I have read and
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  Speaker 1: would really recommend it. The negative... thought loops that we
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  Speaker 1: have are what keeps us stuck. And one of his
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  Speaker 1: key findings is that the words you use when you
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  Speaker 1: talk to yourself make a real difference. So in one
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  Speaker 1: set of studies, Cross and his colleagues gave people stressful
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  Speaker 1: tasks like preparing for a speech with very little warning. Now,
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  Speaker 1: if I had to do that, I would definitely have
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  Speaker 1: my gremlin piping up. That would really scare me. But
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  Speaker 1: beforehand in this study, some people reflected on their feelings
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  Speaker 1: using I, and then others used you or their own name.
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  Speaker 1: So this was how they were talking to themselves. The
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  Speaker 1: people who used you or their name were rated by
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  Speaker 1: observers as performing better. They also saw the task as
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  Speaker 1: much more of a challenge and less of a threat.
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  Speaker 1: And that lines up really well with the research on hardiness,
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  Speaker 1: where seeing stress as a challenge is at the core
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  Speaker 1: of being hardy, which is the title of this podcast.
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  Speaker 1: So a challenge is something that you can step into.
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  Speaker 1: A threat is something that you want to get away from.
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  Speaker 1: The situation can be exactly the same, like two people
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  Speaker 1: about to get on a roller coaster. One is going
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  Speaker 1: to have that inner chatter as if it's a threat,
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  Speaker 1: and the other one can have that inner chatter in
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  Speaker 1: a chatter as if it's a challenge or exciting. So
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  Speaker 1: what changes then is how you talk to yourself about it,
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  Speaker 1: which then changes how you experience the actual event. So
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  Speaker 1: using you or your name puts a bit of distance
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  Speaker 1: between you and the problem. So most of us are
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  Speaker 1: good at giving a friend sensible advice or useful advice.
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  Speaker 1: We can see their situation clearly because we're not emotionally involved.
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  Speaker 1: We're not inside it. But talking to yourself by name
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  Speaker 1: gives you some of that same view of your own situation.
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  Speaker 1: And then this is where the sage comes in. The
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  Speaker 1: sage is the part of you that would give a
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  Speaker 1: good friend good advice. The sage is calm, it's wise,
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  Speaker 1: and it's fully on your side. So the gremlin tends
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  Speaker 1: to talk in I, always, never, The sage tends to
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  Speaker 1: talk in you and it uses your name. The Stoics
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  Speaker 1: were doing this 2,000 years ago and their idea of
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  Speaker 1: the sage is where this comes from. So Marcus Aurelius,
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  Speaker 1: which I've spoken about in previous episodes, He wrote his
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  Speaker 1: journal called, which we now call Meditations. It was his
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  Speaker 1: private journal, never meant anyone to read it, but we
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  Speaker 1: can all read it now. And in much of it,
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  Speaker 1: it sounds like he's preaching to somebody, but he's actually
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  Speaker 1: coaching himself. He reminds himself of what matters. He corrects himself.
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  Speaker 1: He gets himself back to work. And one of my
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  Speaker 1: favourite passages opens in Book 5 and Marcus is talking
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  Speaker 1: to himself, he's talking to himself out of bed on
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  Speaker 1: a morning where he really doesn't want to get up
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  Speaker 1: and we can all relate to that. He asks himself
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  Speaker 1: whether he was made to lie under the blankets and
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  Speaker 1: stay warm and reminds himself that he has work to
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  Speaker 1: do as a human being. It's the same moment Lloyd-Jones
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  Speaker 1: described the gremlin talking to the second you wake up
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  Speaker 1: and then Marcus answering back. So the most powerful man
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  Speaker 1: in Rome was being his own coach. And we can
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  Speaker 1: still read how his mind works today, which I just
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  Speaker 1: think is amazing. Now, the gremlin is going to keep
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  Speaker 1: showing up. This is not about getting rid of the
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  Speaker 1: gremlin because the gremlin's part of our human minds. It's
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  Speaker 1: just the way we are. And arguing with it rarely
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  Speaker 1: helps either. The sage's job is to get you back
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  Speaker 1: to doing what really matters. Even if the gremlin is
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  Speaker 1: still chatting away in the background, you can still have
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  Speaker 1: it there, coexist with a gremlin while you get on
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  Speaker 1: with what matters. So next time you have that inner
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  Speaker 1: critic pipes up, that negative self-talk, notice it as your
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  Speaker 1: gremlin and you can even give it a name and
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  Speaker 1: then answer as the sage using your name. You can
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  Speaker 1: name your sage and ask it what you need to do.
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  Speaker 1: So it's almost like your sage is like your wise
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  Speaker 1: inner coach. So for me at the gym, that might
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  Speaker 1: sound like, Carly, focus, breathe and just lift. And I
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  Speaker 1: can say it in my head or I can say
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  Speaker 1: it out loud if no one's around or I can
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  Speaker 1: say it to my training buddy because she totally gets it.
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  Speaker 1: But no matter what the gremlin is saying, no matter
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  Speaker 1: how critical it's being of you, you can coach yourself.
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  Speaker 1: There's a part of you that is wise, that can
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  Speaker 1: take risks, that can recognise your strengths or the strengths
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  Speaker 1: that you need in this situation and then do what matters.
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  Speaker 1: So listen to that part of you and then watch
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  Speaker 1: what happens. Have a great week, everyone. I'll catch you
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  Speaker 1: next week. See you.