Friday, September 01, 2006
Your Biggest Critic
Who is your biggest critic?
Is it your boss? Your husband, wife, girlfriend or boyfriend?
Who gives you the most negative feedback? Whatever it is you’ve done and how ever well you’ve done it?
Just take a minute to run back through your memories and see if you can name a name.
Have you got one?
Is it you?
Okay, may be not “you” but a part of you. The voice inside. The voice with a thousand critiscisms. Remember them?
How great would it be to just shut them up for a while? How much better would you feel if you could take the sting out of their comments?
Well, read on, as I’ve got some good news for you. You can do just that.
Research has shown that the actual words we say contribute only a small amount in the message we are trying to communicate. Tonality is much more important than the actual words. Think about this phrase: “What did you say?”
How many different ways could the same phrase be said and mean something different?
A few examples:
1. In an angry way.
2. A softly spoken loving way, perhaps in response to hearing “I love you” for the first time.
3. In a shocked way, when a small child says a swear word.
4. In a quizzical way.
There are many more you could imagine too. All very interesting but how does this help?
Well, why keep trying to shut the little voice up when you could have an even better effect by just changing the way it talks. It’s your little voice after all, you can control how it speaks.
Try this: Just talk to yourself, silently, for a moment. Say all the things you say to yourself when you’ve messed up and messed up big. Don’t hold back, let yourself have it! Doesn’t feel too good, does it? Now, do the same thing again, except this time say them in a silly high pitched cartoony voice. Say all the same things but change the voice. How does that feel? Not quite the same, is it? Perhaps even quite amusing. This time, say the same things again but say them in a husky, sexy voice. “You’ve messed it all up again”, doesn’t seem to have any bite when it’s said seductively, in fact you may find yourself smiling and wondering how you can mess up some more!
So, the next time you are all set on unleashing your inner critic, let them go for it but from now on give them a voice that amuses rather than upsets!
