How to remind your inner voice to be your cheerleader

When I was a little girl, I watched an old cartoon where all the food that someone had eaten got put back together in the persons tummy and two sausages were in a boxing ring having a fight! It’s strange how impressionable we are at a young age, this cartoon had a huge effect on me as I was convinced the food I ate would get put back together in my tummy so would always try my hardest not to leave one item uneaten, this was reinforced when I started reading The Beano with the cartoon strip, The Numskulls, based on a team of tiny human-like technicians who live inside the heads of various people, running and maintaining their bodies and minds.

To this day I still use these imaginary little people as an analogy for explaining how the mind and body works, when you are trying to remember the name of an actor or the name of a song and you have that Eureka moment at three in the morning, it is because the little person in charge of the filing cabinets has eventually found where they filed it!

One of the main reasons I am sharing this with you is it is one of the tools that I use to recognise negativity and anxiety. We all have a little voice or two in our heads that criticises our actions, tells us we are not good enough, capable enough or strong enough. The trick is to recognise that voice and learn how to counteract it. The moment that you start taking control and talking back to that voice is when you start to change your life.

 If someone stood in front of you and said half of the things to you that we say to ourselves, you would find it completely unacceptable, you would react, and others would understand when you told them how another person had made you feel but somehow, we seem to accept whatever the little voice says about us and take it to be the truth!

Let me introduce you to Mr Negativity and his friend Mr Anxiety, they have taken up residence in your mind and have appointed themselves very firmly in charge of the Positivity/Negativity switch, they love it when it is flicked to Negative, this is their stage, and they love performing on it, but the spotlight is only on them when the switch is in the negative position. Before they showed up, we were very much in control of that switch and we did not really have to worry about it too much as it was permanently in the positive position, we did not have to work at it and life was a lot lighter and brighter. At some point Mr Negativity and Mr Anxiety won the battle for the default position of the switch, giving them the perfect platform to perform and project their script of negativity onto us.

The perfect solution would be to evict this pair of unwanted mind guests, but this is going to take some practice, so in the meantime whilst we are working on their eviction notice what we need to aim to do is take back control of this pesky switch! Recognising it is in the negative mode is the first step towards making a change, the next step is being able to switch it. To enable this, we need to find our inner voice, the voice that is going to tell this pair to be quiet, shock them into silence and allow us with confidence to make the change.

How can we do this? What do we say to them? Here is an exercise that can help.

1. Get into a comfortable position and take three deep breaths, inhale deeply though your nose and exhale through your mouth to help centre yourself and focus your energy.
2. Focus your eyes on one spot on the wall until you feel the need to close them.
3. Picture yourself in a beautiful garden, you are stood in front of a bed of yellow roses. Go ahead and touch one of the roses petals, notice its velvety texture. Imagine you could step into this happy colour, this soft yellow, and allow it to become part of your energy.
4. Continue to breathe in and out deeply, but now imagine that you can smell the beautiful fragrance of your yellow rose too.
5. Once you feel relaxed and calm, you can then give yourself some positive suggestions, such as:- I am calm and relaxed – My thoughts create my life – I am peaceful and balanced – I can do this. I am strong – I am healing – I am healthy and balanced – My body supports me.
6. Once you feel calmer and more centred, picture a doorway in the middle of the rose bed, walk confidently through it. On the other side there is the positivity switch, reach over and switch it from negative to positive.
7. Exit back through the door with the reassurance that you are now firmly in control of the switch and allow yourself to spend a moment with the roses before opening your eyes once more.

Over time you will find, with practice, that just by closing your eyes for a moment and picturing this scenario and using your inner voice to project a suiting positive affirmation you will be able to conquer Mr Negativity and Mr Anxiety once and for all.