July 4, 2025 • 26 mins
Do you believe being hard on yourself keeps you motivated? That self-criticism somehow equals discipline? In this episode, we’re throwing that belief overboard. Because tough self-talk isn’t keeping you on track… it’s dragging you down.
Join me as I walk through how negative self-talk acts like rocks in a wagon or cannonballs in your boat, and what to do instead. You’ll learn how to swap self-criticism for compassion, so you can create more confidence, energy, and clarity—especially in midlife.
🎧 BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL KNOW:
✔ Why self-criticism shuts down motivation, learning, and creativity
✔ The difference between self-discipline and self-compassion
✔ How to stop dragging a wagon full of emotional “rocks” through your life
💡 OMG Moment: Self-criticism doesn’t make you better—it shuts you down.
🛠️ Take Action
Notice your thoughts. When you hear that inner voice criticizing your body, your choices, your progress—pause. Ask yourself, “Would I say this to a friend?” Then reframe it with self-compassion. Every time you do, you’re lifting a weight and making space to move forward.
🌱 Why This Episode Matters
Midlife brings a lot of changes—career shifts, relationship dynamics, aging parents, evolving identity. In the midst of all that, we need more kindness, not less. Speaking to yourself with compassion is not weakness. It’s a strength that helps you stay grounded, focused, and energized for whatever comes next.
👉 Ready to shift your inner dialogue?
Take my Inner Voice Quiz at cherylpfischer.com/innervoicequiz to find out who’s doing the talking in your head—and get your next step to move forward with more ease.
🎯 Want to dive deeper into tools like tapping and affirmations?
Join us in the Midlife Pivot community on Patreon—free all summer at patreon.com/mindyourmidlife.
❤️ If this episode helped you, leave a 5-star rating and review. It helps new midlife women find us—and helps me keep creating content for you.
🎧 Follow the podcast so you don’t miss next week’s conversation about midlife transformation and the limiting beliefs that keep us from stepping into it.
Text me to ask a question - I'll answer on the podcast!
🌸 Liked this episode? Share it with fellow midlife women over 40 navigating hormone balance, an empty nest, and self-confidence!
🫶 Love this show? Leave a review to help more women over 50 find us.
💡Want support through menopause, mindset shifts, or midlife transitions?
Book a free Mindset Coaching / Intro Call: cherylpfischer.com/coaching, and join us in Midlife Pivot on Patreon.
Let’s talk self-care, self-talk, and owning your next chapter—without the “midlife crisis” narrative.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Cheryl Fischer (00:01):
I wonder if you subscribe to the theory that you
got to be tough on people tomotivate them, and showing mercy
and making it too easy or justallowing people to give up too
quickly that means they're nevergoing to do anything.
Have you ever had a coach thatwas kind of that sort of
(00:22):
motivator?
Here's the problem.
While in some situations, maybea bit of toughness in coaching
is not a bad idea, in mostsituations it's not a good idea,
and especially when we aredealing with the thoughts in our
(00:46):
brains that are talking to usall day long.
No mercy, tough criticizethat's a big nope.
So let's talk about why thisself criticism backfires and how
to actually do somethingtotally different.
And how to actually dosomething totally different.
Welcome to Mind your Midlife,your go-to resource for
(01:10):
confidence and success, onethought at a time.
Unlike most advice out there,we believe that simply telling
you to believe in yourself orchange your habits isn't enough
to wake up excited about life orfeel truly confident in your
body.
Each week, you'll gainactionable strategies and oh my
(01:30):
goodness powerful insights tostop feeling stuck and start
loving your midlife.
This is the Mind your Midlifepodcast, so let's see if you
(01:53):
identify with a piece of mystory.
I knew for a long time that Itended to be very critical of
myself and kind of a worrier,you know, thinking of all the
worst case scenarios andthinking of what I should have
said in the conversation.
Or I can't believe I did thatsilly thing and I never really
paid that much attention to it.
I just said that's mypersonality.
I know where it comes from, Iknow who I'm related to.
(02:15):
That's my personality.
And then one day you may haveheard me tell this story I was
standing in my kitchen and Idon't think I was cooking or
anything, I was just doingwhatever I was doing, and my
husband was there as well and Iwas telling him about the online
(02:37):
business that I was doing and I, as I recall, thought I was
just having a conversation.
We could have been, you know,emptying the dishwasher or
getting snack out, who knows.
We're just having conversation,is what I thought.
And at one point he paused andhe said to me why don't you just
(03:01):
stop doing that business?
And I said what?
Where did you get that from?
And he said well, all you do iscomplain about it.
So if you're not happy, thendon't do it, do something else
and the cartoon version of me ishead exploded.
(03:27):
I had no idea, no idea that whatI was doing there in the
kitchen and in his perspective alot more than that, I guess was
complaining about how hard itwas and the difficulties and the
worries and the concerns.
I thought it was just makingconversation and the fact that
(03:47):
he heard that in such adifferent way really made me
pause, and I tell this storypretty regularly because it was
the turning point that made mego oh, maybe the stuff I'm
(04:08):
thinking and the stuff I'msaying does matter, even when
I'm talking to myself, and thatabsolutely is the first time I
paid any attention to mindset,personal development, anything
which is now something that Ifocus on Crazy huh.
So what I realized is that thewords I was using and they were
(04:35):
coming out of me in thatparticular situation, but they
were in my head all the time thewords I was using were focusing
on what had gone wrong, what Ishould do differently, what I
wasn't doing but I should bedoing.
I was trying to maybe toughenmyself up.
I was trying to not get myhopes up, which is a saying that
(04:59):
I can't stand.
I maybe was telling myself Iwill not get anything done if
I'm just sitting around enjoyingmyself all day.
This should be hard anddifficult.
Hard work, focus, tough.
We don't actually have to speakto ourselves that way and in
fact I will argue it'sdetrimental.
(05:22):
It's detrimental.
So Dr Kristen Neff is someonewho's studied this extensively,
has written about thisextensively, and she says with
self-criticism we are both theattacker and the attacked.
It's like slapping ourselveswhen we fall down, thinking that
(05:46):
will help us stand up faster.
That's her quote.
So imagine you trip oversomething out on your sidewalk
and then you smack yourself inthe head and say get up.
Obviously that's not going tohelp.
That's not going to help.
So self-criticism maybe isn'tthe big motivator that we
(06:07):
thought it was.
It is a false belief to say ifI'm not hard on myself, then I
will insert thing you don't want.
Get lazy, not get it done.
Lay on the couch all day, notwork hard enough.
If you are saying any form ofthat statement to yourself, if
(06:27):
I'm not hard on myself, if Idon't catch all these things,
then I'll never do it.
Get lazy.
That's not true.
It is a false belief andthere's no way.
It's true.
First of all because when wesay these always and never kind
of statements.
They're never, always true, canI use that?
(06:50):
But what we foundpsychologically is that
self-criticism triggers andyou've heard me say this before
our fight or flight response andthat response is a nervous
system response.
We are triggering our nervoussystem to go into the
(07:13):
sympathetic nervous system andit's actually not just fight or
flight, it's fight, flight,freeze or fawn.
Our bodies are either revvingup with adrenaline to fight,
they are revving up withadrenaline to run flight, they
are just frozen in place.
(07:35):
That's freeze or they are justkind of we're making ourselves
so small and tiny, that's fun.
We're letting everyone else bein charge and when that happens
it shuts down any learning wecould do.
It shuts our brains down fromtaking in new information.
(07:56):
It 100% shuts our brains downfrom problem solving, from
solving any issue that you mightbe in the middle of, and
thinking creatively, and itshuts down our motivation.
And if that's not enough foryou, it also shuts down our
digestive system.
That's why you may have heardthe term rest and digest.
(08:18):
But anyway, we're talking aboutself-criticism and self-talk
today.
We're talking aboutself-criticism and self-talk
today.
So let me give you a visualexample to remember.
One of my mentors always usedthe saying don't shoot holes in
your own boat, and I love thissaying, and so let's make a
picture out of it.
So let's say that your life isa boat.
(08:42):
You maybe let's call it ahouseboat, shall we?
You have this houseboat andit's your first houseboat and
you've done a bit of work on it.
It's not perfect.
You wish it was a little moresleek, you wish it was a little
bit bigger, you wish it lookedmore successful.
You see what I'm doing.
(09:02):
You wish it could go a bitfaster or had already gone a bit
faster, but it's your boat andyou're proud of this boat.
Overall in general, it looksgood, it floats, you're in there
, it's your boat.
And when you start criticizingthis boat, it's the equivalent
(09:27):
of taking out a cannon andshooting a cannonball into the
side of your boat.
You're telling yourself thatyou look dumpy and you look a
Cannonball into the side of yourboat.
You're telling yourself thatyou should be really a lot
(09:49):
farther along in your careerthan you are now.
Cannonball into the side ofyour boat.
You're telling yourself thatyou are, I don't know,
uncoordinated and you can't movearound well because you're
getting old and everything hurts.
Cannonball into the side ofyour boat.
You're looking at your body andyou're going and telling
(10:12):
yourself it's not attractive orwhatever.
Your critique of the day isCannonball into your boat.
How do you think that boat'sdoing on the water?
I'm pretty sure there's notmuch of that boat left at this
point.
It's gonna sink.
There's no benefit to shootingholes in your own boat Zero.
(10:42):
So when mean to yourself and itoften sounds like should have
this or looking at somethingabout your life and thinking I
thought I was better than this,this is terrible, this is not
appealing, it's not attractive.
One, something like that thatis shooting a hole in your own
(11:04):
boat, that's what we mean bynegative self-talk or
self-criticism.
Let's flip it the other way.
Is there another way that youcould talk to yourself?
Now I don't want you to spiraland say I can't believe I talked
to myself like this.
Oh my goodness.
Our brains are wired to keep ussafe and so when you get
(11:26):
yourself into any situation thathas just a little bit of
uncertainty to it, or you feel alittle bit of nervousness or a
little bit of embarrassment,your brain may emphasize that to
you so that you pull back andget safe out of that situation.
Now, probably the situationthat gave you a little bit of
(11:47):
nervousness or a little bit ofembarrassment or a little bit of
concern was totally safe andmaybe even where you wanted to
be.
But our brains don't alwaysknow that, so it's not your
fault.
You've not done something wrongif you've got all this negative
self-talk going on, and let'sfigure out what we can do
(12:08):
instead.
So I want you to focus onself-compassion, and, while
maybe it wouldn't make sense tocoach a sports team by just
telling them all day to relaxand enjoy how great they are,
the good coaches use a lot ofcompassion, and we need to do
(12:30):
that with ourselves as well.
And hear me when I say this thisis not a personality trait.
It's not true that some peoplecan be kind to themselves and
compassionate toward themselves,and some people just aren't
that way.
Aren't that way needs airquotes?
That's not true.
(12:50):
This is a skill you can learnto be more compassionate, more
kind toward yourself, and it hasnothing to do with, again, air
quotes letting yourself off thehook.
Remember the quote from DrKristen Neff.
Remember the shooting holes inyour own boat.
(13:11):
It is not about going easy onmyself and thus I'm not going to
hit my goal.
It's not about that at all, andmaybe this will help as well.
Another quote from Dr Neffself-criticism asks what's wrong
with you.
Self-compassion asks what'shappened to you.
(13:35):
So it's okay when we're tryingto be compassionate and kind to
ourselves.
It's okay to think aboutsomething difficult that we've
gone through.
I'm going through difficultthings right now.
We're all going throughdifficult things.
I'm not saying we forget thatand we never feel it.
(13:57):
I would never say that we wantto be kind about it to ourselves
.
And my visual for you about selfcompassion is you are a person
(14:18):
and I dare say you are the mostimportant person in your own
life, because if you didn't haveyou, you have nothing.
So talk to yourself like you'dtalk to your best friend and boy
, do we not do that a lot of thetime.
(14:40):
Imagine the stuff going on inyour head and imagine you
picking up the phone or goingout to dinner with your best
friend and saying those thingsout loud to them.
Wow, wow.
(15:01):
If you're listening to thispodcast, I'm betting that you're
not the type that would justtear down your best friend with
all the critical stuff that youmay have been saying to yourself
in your head.
So self-compassion is speakingto yourself like you would to
your best friend.
I know you've been goingthrough something.
(15:23):
I'm here for you.
I know you can do it.
You look great today.
I don't know All the differentthings you might say to someone
in your life.
You can say those things toyourself.
That's good.
It helps and it often motivates, in fact, because when you are
(15:48):
in a good place in terms ofwhat's going on in your head,
you can be more creative, youcan come up with ideas, you can
smile more, you probably areprone to get out of the house or
move more, and all those thingsare going to lead down the path
to our success.
Okay, so what should we do?
Dr Shad Homesteader says youwill become what you think about
(16:09):
most.
Your success or failure inanything large or small will
depend on your programming, whatyou accept from others and what
you say when you talk toyourself.
And he has a book with thatname as well.
I'll put it at Cheryl PFishercom slash read really
interesting book about self talk.
(16:29):
So what are we going to do?
You're hearing me.
You're thinking yeah, I do it,I do it, I do it.
I speak so badly to myselfsometimes, and you're hearing,
hearing me say it's not you, ithappens to everyone.
That's part of self-compassion.
What are we going to do?
The first thing is to catch thatcritic, just being aware when
(16:52):
that voice starts going.
What'd you wear that for?
Why are you wearing these shoes?
Oh, you look terrible today.
What is going on with your skin?
Why are you still in this job?
To yourself, catch it, evenjust being aware, is going to
make a difference.
And then I want to ask, I wantyou to ask yourself would I say
(17:16):
this to my friend?
And here's another way to thinkabout it.
Imagine you are walking downthe street and you're pulling I
guess we'll say a wagon behindyou.
Or you're trying to push agrocery cart.
Are you pushing that down thestreet?
We'll pull a wagon, we're goingto pull a wagon down the street
.
And here's what's happening asyou're walking down the street,
(17:40):
you're looking at the trees,you're thinking about your day,
you're thinking about your week,you're thinking about your
outfit, you're thinking aboutwhere you're going.
Every time you say to yourself Ilook dumpy today.
You're basically throwing arock into that wagon.
And then you say to yourself Ican't believe I said that thing
in the meeting today.
Rock in the wagon oh, I can'tbelieve I said that thing in the
meeting today.
(18:00):
Rock in the wagon oh I can'tbelieve Joe said that thing to
me.
Why didn't I react?
I never think of anything tosay at the right time.
Rock in the wagon there's somany things.
What happens when you pile rockafter rock after rock in the
wagon?
It gets harder and harder topull it.
(18:21):
You're dragging it, you'releaned over, you're shuffling.
Now you can barely get down thestreet, and maybe that is the
best visual to show you.
If you're trying to moveforward in life and yet you keep
throwing these rocks in yourwagon, moving forward becomes a
(18:42):
huge, huge challenge.
Whereas if we could take thoseout and maybe it takes time to
be aware that they're there andto switch them, but if we could
take them out, wow, we can moveforward faster and more
comfortably and standing upstraight and walking ahead.
So how are we going to get therocks out?
Now that we're aware of them?
(19:05):
Let's kind of reframe.
Every time you reframe thosethoughts, you get to take a rock
out.
So if you're thinking toyourself oh, you blew it again.
I can't believe you did that inthe meeting today.
Maybe you can say that was hardand I'm learning.
Or you're really like, oh, Ican't believe I'm I'm gaining
(19:30):
weight.
Or I don't like how I look, Ican't believe I've let this
happen.
You can say sometimes it's hardto look in the mirror.
Sometimes it's hard to look inthe mirror, but every day is
getting better.
Whatever you put after that butnegates the first part, see if
there's a way you can shiftwhat's going on in your head.
(19:50):
Now I'm not trying to tell youthat this is something you can
just flip a switch and sayreframe, reframe, no problem,
reframe Again.
Your brain is trying to keepyou safe and we may have very
ingrained habits of thinkinghere that we're dealing with.
(20:11):
So it takes time and you haveto be kind to yourself as you're
learning to make this shift.
It took me a while and I stillfall into this trap regularly.
You want to be aware when youthrow in those rocks in the
wagon, you want to see ifthere's a way you can shift the
words, reframe the message, getthat rock back out of the wagon,
keep moving forward.
(20:31):
And so what you typically need,as you're taking time to adjust
to something, is a practicethat you can kind of regularly
do, because when you're in amood me saying reframe, you're
going to go, whatever.
So my two favorites areaffirmations, and you heard me
(20:52):
say something with a but in themiddle is one of my favorites.
If we say things over and overto ourselves and write them and
we add a positive emotion, wefeel really good about them.
They will start to become partof us.
And then my other favorite istapping, which is using
acupressure points to allowemotions to flow through our
(21:16):
bodies and heal and move forward.
So powerful.
And the idea is repetition,repetition, repetition,
repetition.
So this month in Patreon, weare talking about affirmations
and tapping.
So come hang out with us,because I think you're going to
(21:40):
learn exactly what you need.
Patreoncom slash mind yourmidlife, Just click, join for
free over the summer.
Everything is free, totallycool.
I think you'll love it.
Okay, so this is mind yourmidlife.
So you've got that.
We're talking about mindset.
This is one of the key basicprinciples, honestly, of mindset
(22:01):
and self-talk is speaking toyourself in a kind way.
Why does it matter so much?
In midlife?
We have extra pressure onourselves during this period of
life.
We have extra change, ourcareers are changing and even if
they're not changing right now,they will at some point that
(22:23):
seems to be approaching.
Our bodies are changing andthat could be good heavens a
million things.
We have parents whose age and,potentially, living situation is
changing.
We have kids who are growing upand living situation is
changing.
We might be thinking aboutreinventing ourselves.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of change at atime.
(22:45):
It's a lot of people involvedand we don't get to control
other people right.
So there's a lot of pressure tothat, and if you can be kind to
yourself and stop throwingrocks in your wagon, it will
give you energy to move throughthat.
It will give you the ability tothink more creatively when
(23:08):
you're solving problems.
And if you are being just cruelconstantly to yourself, it's
more rocks in the wagon and it'sdraining your energy.
Being gentle and kind toyourself is discipline.
Discipline is not aboutberating yourself and just
(23:28):
making yourself feel bad.
It's being gentle and beingkind, even when your brain
strays away from that, sometimespulling it back, because that's
what keeps us going.
Your OMG moment today that Iwant you to really, really
remember is criticism doesn'tmake us better, it shuts us down
when you are self criticizingall the time in your mind.
(23:51):
It doesn't even matter whetherthese words are said out loud,
even just in your mind.
If you're criticizing yourself,it will shut you down.
It doesn't make you better.
Being kind to ourselves,finding things to appreciate
about ourselves, givingourselves room to grow and learn
from our mistakes is what keepsus going.
(24:12):
So what would you shift aboutthe way you talk to yourself if
you're actually talking to yourbest friend?
To yourself, if you're actuallytalking to your best friend?
Okay, if this episode resonatedwith you, I want you to take my
inner voice quiz.
You want to find out what innervoice is talking to you.
Is it the coach?
(24:32):
Is it the cheerleader?
Is it the critic?
Who is it?
And I'll give you a tip for howto grow through that as well.
So go to CherylPFishercom slashinner voice quiz.
You'll see that link in theshow notes and, of course, come
hang with us in Patreon.
As I said, that link is in theshow notes as well.
If you're listening on Apple,make sure you tap the five stars
(24:55):
, if you wouldn't mind, and takejust a minute and leave a quick
review.
You would be shocked at howmuch it helps to get this
podcast out to more people, andI'm so grateful to you for doing
that.
And, of course, make sure youhit the follow button, because
next week I have a guest joiningme.
(25:16):
We're going to talk abouttransformation during this
period of life and the limitingbeliefs that make it difficult
sometimes.
And in the meantime, remembermidlife is our time to slow down
, to notice what's going onaround us, what's going on
inside our heads, and createsomething amazing.
I wonder if you subscribe to the theory that you
got to be tough on people tomotivate them, and showing mercy
and making it too easy or justallowing people to give up too
quickly that means they're nevergoing to do anything.
Have you ever had a coach thatwas kind of that sort of
(00:22):
motivator?
Here's the problem.
While in some situations, maybea bit of toughness in coaching
is not a bad idea, in mostsituations it's not a good idea,
and especially when we aredealing with the thoughts in our
(00:46):
brains that are talking to usall day long.
No mercy, tough criticizethat's a big nope.
So let's talk about why thisself criticism backfires and how
to actually do somethingtotally different.
And how to actually dosomething totally different.
Welcome to Mind your Midlife,your go-to resource for
(01:10):
confidence and success, onethought at a time.
Unlike most advice out there,we believe that simply telling
you to believe in yourself orchange your habits isn't enough
to wake up excited about life orfeel truly confident in your
body.
Each week, you'll gainactionable strategies and oh my
(01:30):
goodness powerful insights tostop feeling stuck and start
loving your midlife.
This is the Mind your Midlifepodcast, so let's see if you
(01:53):
identify with a piece of mystory.
I knew for a long time that Itended to be very critical of
myself and kind of a worrier,you know, thinking of all the
worst case scenarios andthinking of what I should have
said in the conversation.
Or I can't believe I did thatsilly thing and I never really
paid that much attention to it.
I just said that's mypersonality.
I know where it comes from, Iknow who I'm related to.
(02:15):
That's my personality.
And then one day you may haveheard me tell this story I was
standing in my kitchen and Idon't think I was cooking or
anything, I was just doingwhatever I was doing, and my
husband was there as well and Iwas telling him about the online
(02:37):
business that I was doing and I, as I recall, thought I was
just having a conversation.
We could have been, you know,emptying the dishwasher or
getting snack out, who knows.
We're just having conversation,is what I thought.
And at one point he paused andhe said to me why don't you just
(03:01):
stop doing that business?
And I said what?
Where did you get that from?
And he said well, all you do iscomplain about it.
So if you're not happy, thendon't do it, do something else
and the cartoon version of me ishead exploded.
(03:27):
I had no idea, no idea that whatI was doing there in the
kitchen and in his perspective alot more than that, I guess was
complaining about how hard itwas and the difficulties and the
worries and the concerns.
I thought it was just makingconversation and the fact that
(03:47):
he heard that in such adifferent way really made me
pause, and I tell this storypretty regularly because it was
the turning point that made mego oh, maybe the stuff I'm
(04:08):
thinking and the stuff I'msaying does matter, even when
I'm talking to myself, and thatabsolutely is the first time I
paid any attention to mindset,personal development, anything
which is now something that Ifocus on Crazy huh.
So what I realized is that thewords I was using and they were
(04:35):
coming out of me in thatparticular situation, but they
were in my head all the time thewords I was using were focusing
on what had gone wrong, what Ishould do differently, what I
wasn't doing but I should bedoing.
I was trying to maybe toughenmyself up.
I was trying to not get myhopes up, which is a saying that
(04:59):
I can't stand.
I maybe was telling myself Iwill not get anything done if
I'm just sitting around enjoyingmyself all day.
This should be hard anddifficult.
Hard work, focus, tough.
We don't actually have to speakto ourselves that way and in
fact I will argue it'sdetrimental.
(05:22):
It's detrimental.
So Dr Kristen Neff is someonewho's studied this extensively,
has written about thisextensively, and she says with
self-criticism we are both theattacker and the attacked.
It's like slapping ourselveswhen we fall down, thinking that
(05:46):
will help us stand up faster.
That's her quote.
So imagine you trip oversomething out on your sidewalk
and then you smack yourself inthe head and say get up.
Obviously that's not going tohelp.
That's not going to help.
So self-criticism maybe isn'tthe big motivator that we
(06:07):
thought it was.
It is a false belief to say ifI'm not hard on myself, then I
will insert thing you don't want.
Get lazy, not get it done.
Lay on the couch all day, notwork hard enough.
If you are saying any form ofthat statement to yourself, if
(06:27):
I'm not hard on myself, if Idon't catch all these things,
then I'll never do it.
Get lazy.
That's not true.
It is a false belief andthere's no way.
It's true.
First of all because when wesay these always and never kind
of statements.
They're never, always true, canI use that?
(06:50):
But what we foundpsychologically is that
self-criticism triggers andyou've heard me say this before
our fight or flight response andthat response is a nervous
system response.
We are triggering our nervoussystem to go into the
(07:13):
sympathetic nervous system andit's actually not just fight or
flight, it's fight, flight,freeze or fawn.
Our bodies are either revvingup with adrenaline to fight,
they are revving up withadrenaline to run flight, they
are just frozen in place.
(07:35):
That's freeze or they are justkind of we're making ourselves
so small and tiny, that's fun.
We're letting everyone else bein charge and when that happens
it shuts down any learning wecould do.
It shuts our brains down fromtaking in new information.
(07:56):
It 100% shuts our brains downfrom problem solving, from
solving any issue that you mightbe in the middle of, and
thinking creatively, and itshuts down our motivation.
And if that's not enough foryou, it also shuts down our
digestive system.
That's why you may have heardthe term rest and digest.
(08:18):
But anyway, we're talking aboutself-criticism and self-talk
today.
We're talking aboutself-criticism and self-talk
today.
So let me give you a visualexample to remember.
One of my mentors always usedthe saying don't shoot holes in
your own boat, and I love thissaying, and so let's make a
picture out of it.
So let's say that your life isa boat.
(08:42):
You maybe let's call it ahouseboat, shall we?
You have this houseboat andit's your first houseboat and
you've done a bit of work on it.
It's not perfect.
You wish it was a little moresleek, you wish it was a little
bit bigger, you wish it lookedmore successful.
You see what I'm doing.
(09:02):
You wish it could go a bitfaster or had already gone a bit
faster, but it's your boat andyou're proud of this boat.
Overall in general, it looksgood, it floats, you're in there
, it's your boat.
And when you start criticizingthis boat, it's the equivalent
(09:27):
of taking out a cannon andshooting a cannonball into the
side of your boat.
You're telling yourself thatyou look dumpy and you look a
Cannonball into the side of yourboat.
You're telling yourself thatyou should be really a lot
(09:49):
farther along in your careerthan you are now.
Cannonball into the side ofyour boat.
You're telling yourself thatyou are, I don't know,
uncoordinated and you can't movearound well because you're
getting old and everything hurts.
Cannonball into the side ofyour boat.
You're looking at your body andyou're going and telling
(10:12):
yourself it's not attractive orwhatever.
Your critique of the day isCannonball into your boat.
How do you think that boat'sdoing on the water?
I'm pretty sure there's notmuch of that boat left at this
point.
It's gonna sink.
There's no benefit to shootingholes in your own boat Zero.
(10:42):
So when mean to yourself and itoften sounds like should have
this or looking at somethingabout your life and thinking I
thought I was better than this,this is terrible, this is not
appealing, it's not attractive.
One, something like that thatis shooting a hole in your own
(11:04):
boat, that's what we mean bynegative self-talk or
self-criticism.
Let's flip it the other way.
Is there another way that youcould talk to yourself?
Now I don't want you to spiraland say I can't believe I talked
to myself like this.
Oh my goodness.
Our brains are wired to keep ussafe and so when you get
(11:26):
yourself into any situation thathas just a little bit of
uncertainty to it, or you feel alittle bit of nervousness or a
little bit of embarrassment,your brain may emphasize that to
you so that you pull back andget safe out of that situation.
Now, probably the situationthat gave you a little bit of
(11:47):
nervousness or a little bit ofembarrassment or a little bit of
concern was totally safe andmaybe even where you wanted to
be.
But our brains don't alwaysknow that, so it's not your
fault.
You've not done something wrongif you've got all this negative
self-talk going on, and let'sfigure out what we can do
(12:08):
instead.
So I want you to focus onself-compassion, and, while
maybe it wouldn't make sense tocoach a sports team by just
telling them all day to relaxand enjoy how great they are,
the good coaches use a lot ofcompassion, and we need to do
(12:30):
that with ourselves as well.
And hear me when I say this thisis not a personality trait.
It's not true that some peoplecan be kind to themselves and
compassionate toward themselves,and some people just aren't
that way.
Aren't that way needs airquotes?
That's not true.
(12:50):
This is a skill you can learnto be more compassionate, more
kind toward yourself, and it hasnothing to do with, again, air
quotes letting yourself off thehook.
Remember the quote from DrKristen Neff.
Remember the shooting holes inyour own boat.
(13:11):
It is not about going easy onmyself and thus I'm not going to
hit my goal.
It's not about that at all, andmaybe this will help as well.
Another quote from Dr Neffself-criticism asks what's wrong
with you.
Self-compassion asks what'shappened to you.
(13:35):
So it's okay when we're tryingto be compassionate and kind to
ourselves.
It's okay to think aboutsomething difficult that we've
gone through.
I'm going through difficultthings right now.
We're all going throughdifficult things.
I'm not saying we forget thatand we never feel it.
(13:57):
I would never say that we wantto be kind about it to ourselves
.
And my visual for you about selfcompassion is you are a person
(14:18):
and I dare say you are the mostimportant person in your own
life, because if you didn't haveyou, you have nothing.
So talk to yourself like you'dtalk to your best friend and boy
, do we not do that a lot of thetime.
(14:40):
Imagine the stuff going on inyour head and imagine you
picking up the phone or goingout to dinner with your best
friend and saying those thingsout loud to them.
Wow, wow.
(15:01):
If you're listening to thispodcast, I'm betting that you're
not the type that would justtear down your best friend with
all the critical stuff that youmay have been saying to yourself
in your head.
So self-compassion is speakingto yourself like you would to
your best friend.
I know you've been goingthrough something.
(15:23):
I'm here for you.
I know you can do it.
You look great today.
I don't know All the differentthings you might say to someone
in your life.
You can say those things toyourself.
That's good.
It helps and it often motivates, in fact, because when you are
(15:48):
in a good place in terms ofwhat's going on in your head,
you can be more creative, youcan come up with ideas, you can
smile more, you probably areprone to get out of the house or
move more, and all those thingsare going to lead down the path
to our success.
Okay, so what should we do?
Dr Shad Homesteader says youwill become what you think about
(16:09):
most.
Your success or failure inanything large or small will
depend on your programming, whatyou accept from others and what
you say when you talk toyourself.
And he has a book with thatname as well.
I'll put it at Cheryl PFishercom slash read really
interesting book about self talk.
(16:29):
So what are we going to do?
You're hearing me.
You're thinking yeah, I do it,I do it, I do it.
I speak so badly to myselfsometimes, and you're hearing,
hearing me say it's not you, ithappens to everyone.
That's part of self-compassion.
What are we going to do?
The first thing is to catch thatcritic, just being aware when
(16:52):
that voice starts going.
What'd you wear that for?
Why are you wearing these shoes?
Oh, you look terrible today.
What is going on with your skin?
Why are you still in this job?
To yourself, catch it, evenjust being aware, is going to
make a difference.
And then I want to ask, I wantyou to ask yourself would I say
(17:16):
this to my friend?
And here's another way to thinkabout it.
Imagine you are walking downthe street and you're pulling I
guess we'll say a wagon behindyou.
Or you're trying to push agrocery cart.
Are you pushing that down thestreet?
We'll pull a wagon, we're goingto pull a wagon down the street
.
And here's what's happening asyou're walking down the street,
(17:40):
you're looking at the trees,you're thinking about your day,
you're thinking about your week,you're thinking about your
outfit, you're thinking aboutwhere you're going.
Every time you say to yourself Ilook dumpy today.
You're basically throwing arock into that wagon.
And then you say to yourself Ican't believe I said that thing
in the meeting today.
Rock in the wagon oh, I can'tbelieve I said that thing in the
meeting today.
(18:00):
Rock in the wagon oh I can'tbelieve Joe said that thing to
me.
Why didn't I react?
I never think of anything tosay at the right time.
Rock in the wagon there's somany things.
What happens when you pile rockafter rock after rock in the
wagon?
It gets harder and harder topull it.
(18:21):
You're dragging it, you'releaned over, you're shuffling.
Now you can barely get down thestreet, and maybe that is the
best visual to show you.
If you're trying to moveforward in life and yet you keep
throwing these rocks in yourwagon, moving forward becomes a
(18:42):
huge, huge challenge.
Whereas if we could take thoseout and maybe it takes time to
be aware that they're there andto switch them, but if we could
take them out, wow, we can moveforward faster and more
comfortably and standing upstraight and walking ahead.
So how are we going to get therocks out?
Now that we're aware of them?
(19:05):
Let's kind of reframe.
Every time you reframe thosethoughts, you get to take a rock
out.
So if you're thinking toyourself oh, you blew it again.
I can't believe you did that inthe meeting today.
Maybe you can say that was hardand I'm learning.
Or you're really like, oh, Ican't believe I'm I'm gaining
(19:30):
weight.
Or I don't like how I look, Ican't believe I've let this
happen.
You can say sometimes it's hardto look in the mirror.
Sometimes it's hard to look inthe mirror, but every day is
getting better.
Whatever you put after that butnegates the first part, see if
there's a way you can shiftwhat's going on in your head.
(19:50):
Now I'm not trying to tell youthat this is something you can
just flip a switch and sayreframe, reframe, no problem,
reframe Again.
Your brain is trying to keepyou safe and we may have very
ingrained habits of thinkinghere that we're dealing with.
(20:11):
So it takes time and you haveto be kind to yourself as you're
learning to make this shift.
It took me a while and I stillfall into this trap regularly.
You want to be aware when youthrow in those rocks in the
wagon, you want to see ifthere's a way you can shift the
words, reframe the message, getthat rock back out of the wagon,
keep moving forward.
(20:31):
And so what you typically need,as you're taking time to adjust
to something, is a practicethat you can kind of regularly
do, because when you're in amood me saying reframe, you're
going to go, whatever.
So my two favorites areaffirmations, and you heard me
(20:52):
say something with a but in themiddle is one of my favorites.
If we say things over and overto ourselves and write them and
we add a positive emotion, wefeel really good about them.
They will start to become partof us.
And then my other favorite istapping, which is using
acupressure points to allowemotions to flow through our
(21:16):
bodies and heal and move forward.
So powerful.
And the idea is repetition,repetition, repetition,
repetition.
So this month in Patreon, weare talking about affirmations
and tapping.
So come hang out with us,because I think you're going to
(21:40):
learn exactly what you need.
Patreoncom slash mind yourmidlife, Just click, join for
free over the summer.
Everything is free, totallycool.
I think you'll love it.
Okay, so this is mind yourmidlife.
So you've got that.
We're talking about mindset.
This is one of the key basicprinciples, honestly, of mindset
(22:01):
and self-talk is speaking toyourself in a kind way.
Why does it matter so much?
In midlife?
We have extra pressure onourselves during this period of
life.
We have extra change, ourcareers are changing and even if
they're not changing right now,they will at some point that
(22:23):
seems to be approaching.
Our bodies are changing andthat could be good heavens a
million things.
We have parents whose age and,potentially, living situation is
changing.
We have kids who are growing upand living situation is
changing.
We might be thinking aboutreinventing ourselves.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of change at atime.
(22:45):
It's a lot of people involvedand we don't get to control
other people right.
So there's a lot of pressure tothat, and if you can be kind to
yourself and stop throwingrocks in your wagon, it will
give you energy to move throughthat.
It will give you the ability tothink more creatively when
(23:08):
you're solving problems.
And if you are being just cruelconstantly to yourself, it's
more rocks in the wagon and it'sdraining your energy.
Being gentle and kind toyourself is discipline.
Discipline is not aboutberating yourself and just
(23:28):
making yourself feel bad.
It's being gentle and beingkind, even when your brain
strays away from that, sometimespulling it back, because that's
what keeps us going.
Your OMG moment today that Iwant you to really, really
remember is criticism doesn'tmake us better, it shuts us down
when you are self criticizingall the time in your mind.
(23:51):
It doesn't even matter whetherthese words are said out loud,
even just in your mind.
If you're criticizing yourself,it will shut you down.
It doesn't make you better.
Being kind to ourselves,finding things to appreciate
about ourselves, givingourselves room to grow and learn
from our mistakes is what keepsus going.
(24:12):
So what would you shift aboutthe way you talk to yourself if
you're actually talking to yourbest friend?
To yourself, if you're actuallytalking to your best friend?
Okay, if this episode resonatedwith you, I want you to take my
inner voice quiz.
You want to find out what innervoice is talking to you.
Is it the coach?
(24:32):
Is it the cheerleader?
Is it the critic?
Who is it?
And I'll give you a tip for howto grow through that as well.
So go to CherylPFishercom slashinner voice quiz.
You'll see that link in theshow notes and, of course, come
hang with us in Patreon.
As I said, that link is in theshow notes as well.
If you're listening on Apple,make sure you tap the five stars
(24:55):
, if you wouldn't mind, and takejust a minute and leave a quick
review.
You would be shocked at howmuch it helps to get this
podcast out to more people, andI'm so grateful to you for doing
that.
And, of course, make sure youhit the follow button, because
next week I have a guest joiningme.
(25:16):
We're going to talk abouttransformation during this
period of life and the limitingbeliefs that make it difficult
sometimes.
And in the meantime, remembermidlife is our time to slow down
, to notice what's going onaround us, what's going on
inside our heads, and createsomething amazing.
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