Five ways to turn your inner critic into your inner coach

It’s vital to turn your inner critic into your inner coach.

Even though, according to a leading psychologist, it’s good to feel nervous about an upcoming presentation.

Ethan Kross explains the feeling is a warning triggered by our Inner Critic.

Telling us to prepare or fail.

And he offers five great tips to ensure our Inner Coach is in charge when the day of the presentation comes along.

Read on.

Background noise

Kross calls it “chatter”.

The conversation in our head.

Often pitting critic against coach.

And Chatter is the name of his new book, explaining what to do about it.

Here are five of his top tips.

1. Speak to yourself as if you’re speaking to a friend

Encourage yourself by using your own first name.

Like this: 

“Come on Bill.

“You can do this.

“You’ll be great.”

Advice to give yourself as you’re stepping on stage for your big presentation.

Or jumping on a Zoom call to pitch for business. 

Kross and other psychologists talk about Solomon’s Paradox.

By which most of us can give advice to friends but struggle to give the same advice to ourselves.

Using our first name in an encouraging manner makes it feel like external advice.

2. Surround yourself with emotional and logical support

We need to feed logical advice into our brains. 

Along with emotional support.

In a sentence, it would sound like this:

“I hear you – I feel your pain – let’s discuss solutions.”

When we choose our advisors carefully, we feed our brains with the right material to build the right solutions.

He reminds us of the leaders of the Starship Enterprise.

Captain Kirk made the right emotional choices.

Spock always found the logical answers.

And we need both to navigate our universe.

3. Take control of what’s about you 

Ever notice how Rafa Nadal fidgets constantly when playing tennis at the highest level?

That’s because Nadal says he fears what’s going through his head far more than his opponent. 

So he creates rituals to deal with it.

Ethan Cross tidies his kitchen until it’s sparkling when puzzling over an issue.

Whereas I work in my garden, putting it in order.

The tidiness helps my inner voice settle.

4. Avoid ruminating

This is when you turn an issue over and over and over in your head.

Almost like raking over the dying embers of a fire.

But when you give the embers oxygen, they can burst into flame.

And recreate the troublesome fire all over again.

It’s another key step to turn your inner critic into your inner coach.

5. Seek awe to find perspective

My wife stares out at space on cloudless nights.

She sees endless stars.

And then feels tiny.

Leaving her problem feeling insignificant.

I feel alive cycling through the countryside.

Taking in blossoming floral bushes and trees in full leaf.

Making me feel more alive.

And able to copy with any issue.

But sometimes just losing yourself playing with children or grandchildren leaves you in awe of the simple pleasures of life.

Turn your inner critic into your inner coach

The book’s strapline is:

“Turn your inner voice from inner critic to inner coach.”

This is precisely what I said my third book would be called.

Much better that a qualified psychologist got there first.

But we offer the same advice as the author on all our courses.

Whether that’s in-person or virtual Presentation Skills training.

Our e-learning Working with the Media course.

As well as Building Self-Belief.

All of them require the transfer of power.

To turn your Inner Critic into your Inner Coach

I firmly believe that our success and happiness are shaped by how we interpret the world rather than what’s happening in it.

So listen to your chatter.

Take these five steps to filter out the negatives.

And turn them into positives

And let us know if we can help you put the voice inside your head to good use in promoting your cause.

Bill McFarlan is co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Pink Elephant Communications in Glasgow.

You can read his full profile here.

Featured photo in Turn your inner critic into your inner coach blog by Pink Elephant Communications.
Photos in Turn your inner critic into your inner coach blog by astro_matt / CC BY-SA / JD Hancock / CC BY / byronv2 / CC BY-NC / Foter / Eduardo_il_Magnifico / CC BY-NC-SA on Foter.com.