#thinkingenvironment

If you are interested in developing your best self, keep listening. During this podcast series I will be exploring self-coaching tools and asking can they really help you achieve your full potential and make your dreams reality.

In episode 2 titled Head full of dreams, the title was inspired by the Cold Play song, I will be exploring the Inner voice and how it can be used to help you to succeed

Have you ever wondered why you don’t always achieve what you really want to do?

What stops you from following your dreams or prevents you from achieving or sustaining the goals you have set for yourself?

Why do those New Year resolutions never get past January?

Could your Inner Voice and be holding you back.

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I’ve been involved in mentoring and coaching other people for most of my career but a couple of years ago I started to look into self-coaching to help myself get over a difficult period in my life.

After watching the TED x talk I had a Eureka moment and I realised how my inner voice was stopping me from achieving some of my dreams and goals and still does on occasions. it doesn't take long for doubts to creep in and the voice to begin whispering and I realised self-coaching is not a one-time thing which will fix everything it’s something you need to be mindful of and work on every day.

Have you ever felt STUCK.

STUCK in a place in which you have difficulty escaping from. That STUCK place can inside your mind, a place which can limit your dreams. Our minds are wonderful places and can create wonderful ideas and solutions but sometimes it can also create a space in which ideas become STUCK when it tells you.

You won’t be able to do that, you will fail, everyone will laugh at you, it’s too hard.

From the outside looking in you may seem confident, committed, not scared to try something new, positive, optimistic. And all those things are true, you are all those things but within the boundaries you have made for yourself.

Within the comfortable places where you know you will succeed, where you know you have the power to change things.

But when something new appears on the horizon, something you’re not sure about, when you are pushed out of your comfort zone you can retreat back into,

You won’t be able to do that, you will fail, everyone will laugh at you, it’s too hard.

You may procrastinate, go back to your old ways, try to avoid it in the hope it will go away. But it doesn’t then you left feeling stressed, anxious and defeated because your dreams are still dreams and you are no closer to making them real.

Does this sound familiar to you. Can you relate to this? Many people have had similar experiences. I myself have this same inner voice.

Your inner voice is the voice only you hear, the voice that is with you from birth right through to death, the voice which gets you to where you want to be but also stop you from going to where you want to go.

This session will explore the inner voice the inner critic and look at how you can use your inner voice to work towards the goals you set for yourself

Amongst all the daily chatter that goes on around us and within our own minds its important to provide a thinking space for your thoughts to develop and help you achieve your goals. For me practising mindfulness provides that space.

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or be overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

Professor Mark Williams, former director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, says that mindfulness means knowing directly what is going on inside and outside ourselves, moment by moment.

He says

"It's easy to stop noticing the world around us. It's also easy to lose touch with the way our bodies are feeling and to end up living 'in our heads' – caught up in our thoughts without stopping to notice how those thoughts are driving our emotions and behaviour," he says.

"An important part of mindfulness is reconnecting with our bodies and the sensations they experience. This means waking up to the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the present moment

"Another important part of mindfulness is an awareness of our thoughts and feelings as they happen moment to moment.

"It's about allowing ourselves to see the present moment clearly. When we do that, it can positively change the way we see ourselves and our lives."

Before you start on this journey of exploring your inner voice try a mindfulness moment. Head space is a good app to help you try out mindfulness.

This leads me nicely into the Thinking environment approach developed by Nancy Cline and  introduced to me by the fabulous Lou Mycroft during an Advanced Practitioner CPD day. I was immediately drawn to its simplicity and its effectiveness in creating a thinking space to solve problems which allows your brain time to sort through your thoughts and bring clarity to your thinking.

This approach can be used in many situations and although it is mainly used in groups or paired activities I feel can work well within self-coaching. Using some of the self-coaching principles to provide clarity to our own thoughts.

Today’s podcast explores the Inner Voice which is supported by the Thinking Environment principle of Feelings and recognising our own feelings and allowing sufficient emotional release to restore thinking.

I could do a whole podcast series on the Thinking Environment, but I’ll leave that to Lou Mycroft who is the expert. But I will be dipping in and out when I feel it is relevant. If you are interested in the Thinking Environment look up Nancy Kline’s book Time to Think or the website which will provide further information.

So back to the inner voice, inner critic, inner worrier whatever you want to call it is fine because it’s yours.

To explore this further I will pose some questions to see how the inner voice can sometimes work against you and stop you from progressing.

This isn’t to say your inner voice is a bad thing, but we need to recognise when its working for us and against us and adapt what we do to work towards a positive outcome. As with anything this is not a one fit for all and it’s certainly not something you can do once and all will be forever wonderful. It’s something you have to work at to reap the rewards.

So here are the questions to consider, you may want to pause the podcast to contemplate or not that’s up to you.

Think of a time you wanted to try or did something new but you didn’t do it or you felt you didn’t succeed at it.

Imagine the inner voice words in your head. Only you can see them.

What was your inner voice was saying to you when you didn’t complete a task or try something new.

What was you assuming that was stopping you?

So for example my inner voice said to me before recording this podcast series.

It won’t work, it will be too difficult to do.

I’m not techy, I won’t be able to do it.

No one will listen what’s the point, waste of time.

If they do listen, nobody will like it.

People may laugh think I’m foolish.

Just a few of comments my inner voice said to me, which stopped from pursuing this podcast for a long time.

Now just imagine by magic your inner voice words are is being displayed on national TV at peak viewing time. Everyone can see what you are thinking and saying to yourself.

What do you think people would think about you if they saw these words? If you find it difficult to imagine pretend these phrases are about someone else what would you be thinking about this person?

How do the words make you feel?

What body sensations do these emotions create?

For me every one might think

I’m unhappy, cynical, grumpy, narrow minded, anxious and not reliable or willing to try something new.

It made me feel moody, irritated, resentful, hopeless, regret, de-motivated.

This in turn created physical body sensations and I felt drained of energy, muscle tightness, nauseous, tired, unfocused, foggy mind ,low self-esteem, stressed and anxious.

Think about the words again and ask yourself

Would you want other people to feel that way about you?

Would you say these words and phrases to you friends and family when trying to support them?

So why would you say them to yourself???

To make the inner voice work for us we have to recognise how it can sometimes have a negative affect us and then work at rephrasing those words and phrases to make us feel better about ourselves and achieve our goals and aspirations.

So take a moment to look back on the inner voice which isn’t helping you and change what its saying so it does.

May new inner voice said

This is new Ill check it out and see what I have to do.

If I’m not sure how to do it I’ll get help.

It’s not my responsibility to make people listen or like it, I can’t control other people’s actions and thoughts. It’s their choice.

If people like it that’s a bonus.

I will feel good that I have learnt something new and tried something new.

It made me feel more, confident optimistic, open minded, motivated, with greater self-belief and was glad I tried something new.

It made me feel happy, energised, inspired and curious.

This in turn affected my physical body sensations and I felt more alert, focused, relaxed and able to think more clearly

It also had a secondary effect on others, my husband was inspired to create his own podcast and I’m hoping my fellow APs in the podcast group will take the plunge and create theirs. Also I am a positive role model for my children and when I say to them you can do anything you want to do you have to believe in yourself I am speaking from experience.

Wow all that just by changing my inner voice a little bit.

Just by changing the way you think about something can sometimes have a positive impact on what you do and the goals you want to achieve can be achievable.

Think of it like this.

You or someone else has identified an Event/ Circumstance/Goal you or they want you to accomplish

The next thing that happens is you Inner Voice sends thought to you these can be positive or negative but ultimately these thoughts will have an impact on what you do next.

Your thoughts will create feelings and these feeling will create emotions and body sensations.

From this you will decide the Actions you will take.

These actions will either provide the desired result or result in you not successfully achieving the desired result.  

To summarise

Your thoughts create feelings, emotions, body sensations which will provide a result of fulfilment or non- fulfilment.

 Remember

Only you can make the changes needed to succeed.

It’s up to you what you do with the information provided.

It’s up to you to decide if it’s something that you could use.

You have to take ownership of your life

Only you can achieve your goals make your dreams come true

It’s too easy to blame outside influences. This is something you can’t control.

But you can control how you react to them and adapt to make it work for you.

Be your best self.

I hope you have enjoyed the podcast and it has motivated you to explore you inner voice.

Join me for the next episode of the inner coach where we will be

Exploring incisive questions and how they can help you to succeed.