A few years ago, I was doing a bit of climbing with my partner, Riki.  We were at a crag with some pretty easy climbs.  It was just us at the cliff, when another fellow arrived and began doing some free-solo climbing (climbing without the safety of a rope).  As he was climbing, we could hear the guy talking to himself.  And man, was this guy harsh!  He was saying things like “don’t fall now you piece of shit, you suck, your worthless,” etc.

If you are like most humans, the voice inside your head is almost always going.

But what does the voice sound like?  Is it harsh and critical?  Or caring, supportive and understanding.

We have a false belief that if we don’t ‘push ourselves’ then we won’t achieve anything.  We often ‘push ourselves’ by being critical, mean and short tempered.  When I was running in competitively,  I ‘pushed myself’ hard.  And while I did have some achievements, most of the time I was fighting injury, burnout, and disappointment.  So the questions is, what did I really achieve?

On a recent run, I again felt a mild pain in my left knee.  As soon as the pain came up, I launched into a whole story about how ‘this injury is going to get worse, I’ll have to stop running, everything will suck if I can’t run, my body isn’t resilient, I always get injured…’

Luckily, I noticed this narrative, took a breath, and changed my tone…’you must be scared that this will turn out to be an injury that makes you stop running, or course that is scary, running is so important to you, running makes you happy and feel good….etc.’

See the difference?  We all do it, some more, some less.  So check in with that voice inside your head and see if you can be more supportive and loving to yourself, its makes all the difference.

And I’d just like to add one more thing: just because you think it, doesn’t mean its true!