Sell That Inner Critic a Vision of Success!
When your inner critic comes into play, it’s hard to sell that Negative Nelly on your WHY or your goals. You may be frustrated and feel like you’re never going to make peace with her.
You’re right to be concerned. If you don’t get your inner critic under control, the odds of you engaging in self-sabotaging behavior as it relates to the goals necessary to live your WHY dramatically increase. You must keep moving forward when changing your life for the better.
How to sell your inner critic on the odds of your WHY being successful? How to sell her on your goals being believable and achievable?
Pretend that she’s a customer at a direct sales party and you’re the consultant. (Seriously). It’s your job to sell her on the concept of success and how it’s supposed to play out in your life.
Remember, if you make your goals believable, your subconscious mind will be better able to process it as “achievable.” Then you stay the course, achieving one goal at a time until you reach your WHY-related objective. This is why a daily goal-setting ritual is so critical; it ingrains believability and achievability into your daily mindset until you’re practically bored with what used to scare you silly.
If your inner Negative Nelly starts whining about how hard or painful working on a particular goal will be, specifically sell her on your WHY and how it’ll improve your life once you’re living in harmony with it.
As Negative Nelly objects to your sales pitch, sell to her (i.e., reinforce within yourself) the awesomeness of your WHY, employing all five senses as you make your pitch.
More specifically, what will it look like when you’re living your WHY?
What will it feel like when you’re living your WHY?
What will it smell or taste like?
Don’t laugh! When I think of my WHY, it looks like I’m living somewhere tropical, palm trees and all; I feel the warmth on my skin and the soothing water I’m swimming in; I can smell the saltiness of the sea and the freshness of the air; and I’m tasting a truly resplendent Mai Tai cocktail with a perky little umbrella floating around in it.
See?
Go over the goals, both long-term and short-term, which are necessary to achieve all of the multi-sensory awesomeness of your WHY, much like you’d go over an order form at a direct sales party with a customer. If, while you sell to your Negative Nelly, she locks up as she calculates what these goals are going to cost her, you cross-sell her big-time.
What?!?
In direct sales when you’re “cross-selling,” you’re encouraging your customer to add something else on to her order that complements what she’s already going to buy. You sell her on how the set works, until she happily agrees to the add-on and completes her purchase.
How to do this on Negative Nelly? Perhaps your WHY includes weight-loss goals, which in turn requires workouts. Negative Nelly is telling you that workouts stink because they lead to blood, sweat and tears. You can focus on the benefits of losing weight and getting healthier…then consider all the cool new workout gear you get to buy…. Voila! That alone can do the trick.
So try cross-selling yourself on your goals and your WHY the next time you want to quit!
Want to continue working on positive thinking to use on your Negative Nelly inner critic? Try the book, The Power of Positive Thinking, by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, available on Amazon.
