Latest / Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic / 23: Monday Moment: The 5% Shift

Transcript

23: Monday Moment: The 5% Shift · Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic

• 0:00
  Speaker: Happy Monday.
• 0:01
  Speaker: I want to offer you a small question to start the week.
• 0:04
  Speaker: What would it look like to be just 5% kinder to yourself today?
• 0:09
  Speaker: Not a total transformation, not suddenly becoming someone who never has a self-critical thought or experiences.
• 0:17
  Speaker: Self-doubt, just 5% kinder.
• 0:20
  Speaker: Okay.
• 0:20
  Speaker: For many years I believed that being hard on myself would make me better.
• 0:25
  Speaker: That if I judged myself enough, I would eventually get my act together.
• 0:30
  Speaker: But in my experience, the opposite turned out to be true.
• 0:35
  Speaker: I remember during a period of my life when I struggled with binge eating on the days when I felt ashamed of my body and criticized myself constantly, my choices usually reflected that.
• 0:47
  Speaker: I would eat things that made me feel like crap almost as if I was confirming the criticism.
• 0:53
  Speaker: But on the days when I felt a little more compassion towards myself, something interesting happened.
• 1:01
  Speaker: I often made healthier choices almost as if I was honoring my body instead of punishing it.
• 1:08
  Speaker: And that experience taught me something.
• 1:11
  Speaker: Criticism might make us more aware of our flaws, but.
• 1:15
  Speaker: It rarely helps us truly expand, and it never brings joy, and yet we're constantly surrounded by messages telling us we need to fix ourselves, improve this, optimize that, change how you eat, how you think, work, rest.
• 1:33
  Speaker: And if you start looking at yourself through the lens of fixing, there's almost no end to the flaws that you can find.
• 1:42
  Speaker: Not to mention.
• 1:43
  Speaker: It is entirely exhausting.
• 1:45
  Speaker: So today I want to consider a different option instead of asking what's wrong with me that needs to be fixed?
• 1:55
  Speaker: What if you asked, what would it look like to be a little kinder to myself in this moment?
• 2:03
  Speaker: Just 5% kinder.
• 2:05
  Speaker: Now I know this can be challenging, especially if your inner critic has been running wild on autopilot.
• 2:12
  Speaker: So sometimes it helps to think of someone you love and imagine what you might say to them if they were struggling with the same issue you're criticizing yourself for.
• 2:22
  Speaker: Or maybe it's noticing the harsh voice in your head and choosing not to believe everything it says, or maybe it's as simple as taking a deep breath and gently redirecting your attention when that voice gets loud.
• 2:37
  Speaker: It doesn't have to be dramatic.
• 2:39
  Speaker: Sometimes the real shift isn't moving from self-criticism to self-love all at once.
• 2:46
  Speaker: It's simply softening your response to yourself.
• 2:51
  Speaker: So today, if the inner critic shows up, you don't have to silence it completely.
• 2:58
  Speaker: Just ask yourself, what would the 5% shift look like right now?
• 3:03
  Speaker: Small shifts matter.
• 3:06
  Speaker: And they add up.
• 3:08
  Speaker: Okay.
• 3:10
  Speaker: Have a great one.