4 easy steps to tame your inner critic and take back your life
Our insecurities can stop us living our best lives – but there is a simple key to finding contentment, a new book argues.
Have you ever felt insecure, lacking in confidence, jealous, judgmental or compared your life with someone else’s?
“If you’ve answered yes, then congratulations, you have your very own shit,” grins Gary Waldon, the Gold Coast-based author of new self-help book Sort Your Sh!t Out.
Transformational change specialist and first-time author Gary, 56, argues we’re all trying to reach a state where our inner critics aren’t running rampant.
“There’s basically two things people deal with – stuff and shit,” he muses.
“Stuff is what’s happening in the world around you, and shit is what goes on in your head.
“It might have started with your parents, or the bullies from school, but it is more than likely created from your own insecurities and it stops you from living your best life.”
The trick to banishing your inner critic is to give it a name, says Gary.
And that’s an actual name.
“It’s a powerful strategy,” says Gary.
“I call the voice inside my head ‘Bob’, as I kind of like the name. It gives me something I can relate to and be objective about.
“When the inner voice gets going, I say, ‘Bob are you being real with me or are you giving me fake news?’. It’s a way of taming the voice.”
- Hunting happiness: How I learnt to be happy
The SH!T toolkit for great mental health
Gary’s “no bullshit, Aussie-as-heck” guide includes a Self-Help Improvement Toolkit (SH!T) with four key themes:
- Know your shit: Dig into your mind and identify where your shit really comes from.
- Own your shit: Don’t blame others for your unhappiness, learn to own your shit.
- Deal with your shit: Knowledge with no action is useless, develop strategies to deal with it.
- Manage your shit: Just like going to gym, you need to work at staying sh!t-fit for whatever the world is going to throw at you, Gary says.
His final tip for finding contentment?
“One of the biggest thing I’ve learnt is to live in the present and forgive yourself the failures of your past, they’ve made you what you are today, but they don’t define you.”
- Professional advice: 6 things psychologists do to look after their mental health
Written by Liz McGrath
