Free Mindset Coaching Exercise to help Your Audience Stop Self Critical Thoughts and Feel Less Anxious
You may come across clients or know people who have it all together, but are still critical of themselves.
You will notice that clients who are self-critical get anxious, stressed out or feel fearful pretty often.
I'm sharing a FREE 5-step exercise which helps your clients to create new, balanced thoughts to replace their self-critical thoughts. And feel calmer, in-control and empowered as a result.
You can download the FREE exercise below:
This free exercise is part of my done-for-you mindfulness course.
You can launch your own workshop + add an extra stream of income without all the hard work with this ready-to-launch workshop (well, why not?)
If you want to jump right in and download the FREE 5-Step Conquer Self-Critical Thoughts coaching tool to use with your clients, I’ll send it to your inbox.
Now, let's get back to this 5-Step Conquer Self-critical Thoughts exercise.
The rationale
Jumping from “I am a failure” to “I’m a success!” is too big a leap for many of us.
So in this exercise, we will not be creating ‘positive’ thoughts to replace the self-critical ones. We will be creating new balanced thoughts, which are believable.
I will share an exercise to challenge your clients’ unhelpful, self-critical thoughts. And create new, believable thoughts to replace them and help them feel calmer, less worried and less anxious.
If you prefer watching a video of this coaching technique instead of reading it here, you can click on my YouTube video below.
Step 1 of 5: Get your clients to write their most prevalent negative thought down
Just focus on one thought for each exercise. For example:
“I am a failure who fails at everything she does - and this project is going to be the same.”
Step 2 of 5: Write down evidence which support that this negative thought is true.
This may sound counter intuitive. You may also realise that many of us will struggle trying to dig up evidence to support our negative thoughts.
This will remind us subconsciously that perhaps this thought is not 100% true after all.
Still using the example negative thought "I'm a failure..." from Step 1, an example for Step 2 can be:
“I never stay at any job for longer than a year. I tried to start a business, but I lost motivation halfway. I chose the wrong subject to major in, in college - should have chosen a major which will give me respect and a high-paying job.”
Step 3 of 5 : Write down evidence which prove this self-critical thought UNTRUE.
For example:
“I still managed to graduate from college, thus, I’m not a total failure. Colleagues have told me I am good at presentations. I have received feedback from clients that my work has helped them.”
The more evidence your clients can come up with, the better.
Step 4 of 5: Create new, balanced, thoughts - to replace the self-critical thought.
Step 4 requires your clients to be honest with themselves. The new thoughts have to be believable to them.
If the new thoughts do not resonate with them, create more new balanced thoughts until they feel good about themselves.
For example: “I am someone who is very idealistic and I jump into new projects with excitement and without doing proper research. That was why my side hustle failed in the past. I am someone who was unsure of my identity in the past. So I followed the ‘herd’ and studied a popular subject in college which I had no interest in. I was someone who was not used to following my passion. So I applied for jobs which were ‘respectable’ but I had no interest in. That was why I kept quitting jobs.”
As you can see, we are reframing their self-critical thoughts to become thoughts which are more fair, kinder to their circumstances and objective in nature.
Step 5 of 5: Get your clients to write how they feel before and after this exercise.
For example:
“Before this exercise, I felt:
Helpless
Anxious
A little depressed about my life
After this exercise, I feel:
Empowered
Hopeful
Calmer”
In Step 5, you can see that there should be a shift in their emotional state after this exercise.
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Even though I extracted this exercise from my done-for-you mindfulness workshop, I still have to rewrite it so that you can easily read it as a blog post.
I hope you can apply this exercise and that it gives you inspiration during your coaching sessions.
Thank you and sincerely,
Shikah