Is your inner Elmer or Wanda getting in your way?
You know who I'm talking about.
That smart, well-traveled, witty, and meticulously organized person who knows more than you about pretty much everything and is always ready to tell you so? That reliable voice who is keenly aware of your vulnerabilities and is quick to passively aggressively point out your shortcomings? The person who cautions you about the likely negative outcome of any new endeavor and who knows all the reasons why you shouldn’t risk putting yourself out there, especially if you are thinking about doing something out of your comfort zone? That person who leaves you feeling deflated, defeated, and filled with self-doubt?
Listening to that negative self-talker in your head is a worse time-suck than scrolling FB or Instagram to remind yourself of how much better, happier, and more well-adjusted everyone and their children are as compared to you and yours.
You wouldn’t allow Elmer or Wanda to say those things to someone you care about, so why let either of them go all in with you on the demeaning, unsupportive, and destructive advice?
Ewww. Ick. That’s not nice.
Well, you don’t need to do that anymore because I’m here to show you there is a better backed-by-science way to ditch the negative self-talk:
A recent NIH study suggests that people who engaged in third-person self-talk, eg. “Hey, Julie…you are prepared, rehearsed and ready for this Keynote Address…your audience is excited to be here today…you got this!” helped with people’s ability to regulate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors when experiencing distressful moments. We typically use names to refer to other people. By using our own name to refer to ourselves, we lead our brains to think about the self similarly to how we think of other people. If it is indeed easier to consider other’s emotions more calmly than our own, then talking to ourselves in the third person ought to be linked to reducing our emotional reactions. Researchers used a Functional MRI (fMRI) to demonstrate how a linguistic shift (using your name) creates a kind of psychological distance where we can better evaluate and adjust our emotional response.
Here is the link if you still doubt the strategy for the no more self-doubt chatter:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5495792/
With apologies to anyone named Elmer or Wanda (on the list of the most likely to be an extinct name in the 2020s), you now have a simple and effective way to ditch your inner critic the next time self-doubt creeps in when you are leading a meeting, making a presentation, pitching your business, or giving that keynote address.
If you, your team, or someone you know (I work with college and grad students too) is letting self-doubt or lack of clarity get in the way in conversations, meetings, pitches, presentations, or interviews I can help. Reach out here for a free 20-minute chat:
https://www.honeybook.com/widget/center_stage_connections_211009/cf_id/620a89655082bf04b0d9623c
With Elmer and Wanda out of my life..I now have more free time to talk to you or someone you send my way!
Happy we are connected…