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5 Min Pocket Pep Talk: Listen to This When Your Thoughts Turn on You · The Nadia Chapman Show

• 0:00
  Well, hello there. Welcome to the Nadia Chapman Show, the five-minute pocket
• 0:04
  pep talk version of the show.
• 0:07
  If you're listening to this, maybe you saw the title and just decide,
• 0:11
  you know, I need to hear this right now.
• 0:14
  Maybe you're someone whose brain has been doing that thing where it won't stop
• 0:18
  criticizing and commenting on literally everything.
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  Everything that you say, everything that you do, what you should have done differently,
• 0:28
  what everybody else is doing, what everybody else is doing better.
• 0:31
  It's like a running podcast in your head that you did not subscribe to.
• 0:36
  Do you wake up at two in the morning with this chitter chatter in your mind that goes nonstop?
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  If so, welcome to this episode, and I hope you find great tools where I hope
• 0:47
  that after five minutes, you will feel better. Now, from my perspective,
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  this isn't something that you need to fix or work through.
• 0:55
  This is a bad habit. All right. So a mental pattern that shows up when you care
• 1:00
  about something, when you're taking responsibility, for example,
• 1:03
  and when you step into something that is bigger than you, that actually matters to you.
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  The mistake is thinking the noise means that, oh, you should put on,
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  you know, the brake pedal.
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  You should pause. You should rethink or you should pull back.
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  Maybe that voice you hear sounds confident, but it's not smart.
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  It's not you. It speaks in extremes. I say like it catastrophes everything.
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  It loves urgency. It really obsesses with controlling everything.
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  Its whole goal is to keep things very predictable in your life,
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  even if predictable isn't where you want to be, is where you want to stay.
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  So when it starts talking in your mind again and again, nonstop,
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  and it's always a little bit negative. It's very critical, if I can say.
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  It's not offering any guidance.
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  I'm sure you've noticed that. It's reacting.
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  So most people get stuck because they engage with that voice in their head.
• 2:00
  So they start negotiating with their thoughts and they start replaying conversations
• 2:04
  and rewriting decisions they've made, or maybe like saying, oh,
• 2:08
  wait, wait, wait, wait, I need to be, I need to wait. I need to, to, to,
• 2:11
  take a pause, I need to get better, or I need to take my time before I move.
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  And that's how you, my friend, lose your, ta-da, your momentum.
• 2:21
  I talk a lot about momentum and losing momentum.
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  And not because you're incapable, but because you're letting this chitter chatter,
• 2:29
  this commentary in your head run the show.
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  So here's what actually helps, if that's your case.
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  Realizing that your thoughts don't get a vote just because they're loud in your
• 2:40
  head, okay, is a good first thing.
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  You don't have to believe them.
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  I always say you're not your thoughts.
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  You know, you can choose your thoughts and sometimes it's hard.
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  You don't have to believe your thoughts. You can challenge your thoughts or
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  you can replace them with something a little bit more empowering and positive.
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  You just decide, you know, it's up to you, whether you're acting from them or
• 3:04
  not. That's it. It's that easy.
• 3:07
  So maybe I'm thinking this is a very good five-minute pocket pep talk to download
• 3:11
  or save for later. Don't you think?
• 3:14
  Real confidence is in this big, beautiful, emotional high where everything suddenly makes sense.
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  And I talk about that quite often in this podcast. It is so much quieter than that.
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  It's really being willing to move forward while your brain is still chit-chatting
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  with you and still throwing opinions because it will, and just throwing ideas
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  at you from the sidelines. It will never shut up. It will always be there.
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  So the people that you look up to and the people that you think that are all
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  so confident, they're not necessarily calmer.
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  They're just less reactive and they don't engage with that voice as much.
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  I see that all the time, whether it's with a figure skater or people I work
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  with or people in my life, the critic in their head gets so much louder right
• 4:00
  before something shifts.
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  And I want you to think back in your life, if that was the case for you,
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  think about like before making a big decision or before things start leveling
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  up or maybe a moment where you're about to be seen more,
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  your brain reaches all the way back to old stories and especially old mistakes.
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  And that very old outdated version of you, you know the one I'm talking about,
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  just to try to talk you out of it.
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  And not because it's accurate, but because it's familiar.
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  So when that voice in your head says that you're behind, it's making rules that don't actually exist.
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  And when it tells you, for instance, that everybody else is ahead of you,
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  It's confusing visibility with competence.
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  And when it insists that you can mess this up, it's absolutely forgetting that
• 4:49
  learning has never, never happened without a little bit of a trial period or an error.
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  You don't always need to know how everything will turn out.
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  Of course not, that's impossible. You just need to know that you won't freeze
• 5:03
  if it doesn't go perfectly.
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  That's it. So when that inner critic start dominating the conversation,
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  in your head again, whether it's two in the morning or five in the afternoon.
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  Don't try to shut it down.
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  Just stop reorganizing your life around it.
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  Let it talk. That's fine. You know, keep on moving.
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  You make the call. Keep stepping into action like I always tell you to do.
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  That's how the volume eventually drop. Not because the voice disappears,
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  but because it no longer runs anything important in your head.
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  All right, so give that a try.
• 5:37
  Re-listen to this podcast when you need. I know you know what to do. Good luck.