How to control that voice in your head! The 4 step Voice Exchanger strategy

Here is a proven way to get that negative voice to shut the hell up.

This is only a quick article so I don’t have the time to explain why you need to do this but a client just messaged me to tell me how powerful this little technique is that I created that I thought I would share it with you too. As always let me know how you get on and of course my books and courses are packed with strategies, tools and techniques that work so let’s work together and make you more successful.

I call this the 4 Step Voice Exchanger strategy for when your head is full of negativity and you tell yourself bad things like;

• Where did that wrinkle come from?
• Is that what I really look like from the back?
• They are never going to want to work with me!
• Why am I so useless?
• Wow, I suck at maths, grammar, public speaking, asking for what I want!
• I can get anything right!

Whatever negativity that voice is giving you I see it damage clients success and happiness all the time, it even destroys your confidence and undermines your ability to believe you can achieve and not fail again and again and again. So let’s get rid of your negative voice and get a healthy one in your head. Here goes…

1. Start to notice what you say to yourself. Notice the negative things you say to yourself for 1 week. Don’t try to change them, don’t try to explain them, just notice them. If you want to make this step mega powerful write down what you notice. You will need to carry a pad and pen with you or store what you discover on an app on your phone – it could make step 3 a lot easier.
2. Say No! We often assume the next step would be to change that voice. Change is sometimes easy but often hard so let’s make this an easy process. In the 2nd week every time you hear a negative statement in your head tell it No! Actually for a lot of clients they don’t tell it no, they tell it “Oh you, F**k off!” Sometimes this step is made easier by imagining that voice has a body to go with it. For one client we imagined it was a squawky brightly coloured parrot. You will see in step 4 what we did with the parrot! For another client we imagined the voice was an evil version of themselves. I asked them to tell me what it said to them and I said to them. “I really don’t like that person” my client agreed and said the nice version of her who took her to yoga and out for cake was going to tell her to naff off – get’s to the point right? Don’t think you need to be imaginative to make this work. If saying NO is enough for you then that’s fine. Do this for 1 whole week. If you don’t manage it, then notice what happened. And start week 2 again. This is about bringing lasting positive change to your life so don’t assume you will fix it straight away. For some clients they come back and tell me they failed and we work on the reasons why it failed and discover what was causing the lack of progress – so you see even failing is achieving if it moves you forward!
3. Say the positive. In step 1 you ideally wrote down what you were saying to yourself. All that negative self talk. For every statement write a positive statement. For instance; “Why are you so rubbish at that!” becomes “I am proud of what I know about this and would like to know more” or “Wow fatty lay off the cake” becomes “I love my food and I love my body” You can be as creative or as blunt as you like. It’s in your head and it is only for your ears. As a rule to guide you if you wouldn’t say it to me, your best mate or the love of your life then you can’t say it to you EVER AGAIN! If you struggle with this stage (and many clients who lack confidence or have something holding them back do) then post to my mastermind group and I/we can help you create new positive sentences to say to yourself. At this stage (and this is very important) you don’t have to believe these sentences, you just have to choose to say them for a whole week.
4. Notice. For week 4 just notice what is happening in your head. It will be one of a few things; either 1. You will notice your voice is changing, you may slip up but on the whole you are getting a far kinder, helpful supportive voice in your head. Notice how it impacts on your actions and results, this will become a good motivator to keep going. Remember the client with the parrot as their negative voice? They came back 2 weeks later and told me that every time they heard that parrot they cooked it with chips! Chips were their favourite and they had joked with me that they could eat anything as long as it came with chips. Such a daft flippant statement turned out to be the perfect way of destroying their negative voice. I last spoke to that client 2 weeks ago and they told me they had achieved an amazing promotion with a very healthy pay rise and it couldn’t have happened had they not destroyed that voice in their head that told them they weren’t good enough – this strategy seriously works! 2. You notice you are getting no improvement but you are noticing all the bad stuff you tell yourself (this is still an improvement, so praise yourself for it. 10/20+ years of telling yourself bad stuff doesn’t always get fixed overnight.) It’s all too easy to only tell yourself off for failing at this proven strategy that Mandie uses with her clients and not appreciate how far you’ve come. Don’t go it alone, ask for help. I’ve been developing strategies to help people achieve and overcome adversity and confidence issues for many many years I know this to be true. 3. You gave up half way through week 2 and never got to week 4! If this is you look to what makes you disciplined and stick with things. How can you migrate those skills to this easy 4 step exchanger? If you don’t do this ask yourself this question (and write down the answer) “

If I don’t do this 4 step process what will I be agreeing to?”think it’s a load of crap and doesn’t work

4. You think this is a load of rubbish and it doesn’t work. In my experience when I’m coaching teams I’m often confronted with someone who thinks my methodology is a load of rubbish and that I’m a tad flippant and far too jokey to be doing any good. And that is fine. They are usually the first to be asking me questions on the practices I use and tell me how life changing they are. So if you do think this is a load of rubbish it tells you more about what you think about yourself and your ability to change than it does the strategy. And that in itself is worth investigating, in a coaching session it would probably tell us why you do what you do and how to get the better results you want.

So that’s it, it’s a lot longer than most techniques I teach which can make changes to your life and success within a few hours, but for something so deep rooted this is a powerful way of getting that negative voice disintegrated and get a voice in your head that says “Wowsers you are amazing, let’s do great things together!”

As always let me know how you get on and feel free to get in touch any time. I know how to make your brain work powerfully for you so you get amazing results in all areas of your life.