How To Overcome Negative Mental Chatter & Crush Your Business Day

How To Overcome Negative Mental Chatter & Crush Your Business Day

 

This morning, I woke up feeling a little tired. The reason being that I was up for about 2 hours last night due to the baby moving! I’m in the third trimester of my pregnancy and once in a while this will happen.

Anyway, the reason I share this is because my mind had lots and lots of inner chatter going on. It doesn’t help that my hormones felt like they were all over the place!

My mind was saying things like: “I’m so tired.” “I didn’t sleep well last night.” “This is annoying.” “Ugh now I feel a bit moody and down because of my hormones.” “I’m not seeing enough progress in my business – this is way too slow for my liking.” “Ugh I don’t feel like doing anything at all.”

What accompanied that inner chatter was this overwhelming feeling of ugh.

You know? When you’re just frustrated and down and can’t even be bothered?

Have you been there before?

The problem with inner chatter is that it can seriously get in the way of your progress in business.

If you let it, that inner chatter can guide your choices all day long and leave you feeling completely drained and unproductive.

So many business owners let their inner chatter influence their actions throughout the day which leads to procrastination and a lack of sales.

That’s why it’s key to learn how to actually overcome that inner chatter so that you can continue crushing your business goals.

For that reason, I thought I’d share my experience from this morning as it really demonstrates how convincing your inner chatter can be! But also, it demonstrates how you can still overcome it if that’s important to you.

 

The key is to continually notice the inner chatter for what it is, and continue to choose actions that are based on your desired business goal, not based on what your mind is telling you!

 

The inner chatter will go on and on sometimes, and you can use it as a bit of a challenge with yourself.

For example, you can challenge yourself by thinking: can I hear the chatter and act according to my values anyway? Can I notice random doubts and fears and stories from my mind and yet still chose to take steps that will move me closer to my business goal?

Even when my mind is being SO negative… Even when my mind is being so convincing…

That’s what I practice on a daily basis. The inner chatter shows up, and I practice mindfully noticing it and do my best not to let it dictate my choices.

I thought I’d share an example of how this showed up for me this morning and what I did. Hopefully, it’ll make it more practical and doable for you!

As I mentioned above, I had less than perfect sleep and was feeling quite moody from pregnancy hormones this morning, which meant that my inner chatter was loud. Really loud.

Anyway, I’m SO grateful for my daily habits because I’m now at a point where even when I really don’t feel like it, I can still get on with my daily routines. Even when I experience LOTS of resistance and negative mental chatter.

It doesn’t hurt that my husband has his own morning routines that inspire me on days that I’m not feeling it (and vice versa for him).

Anyway, I roll out bed, put on some pregnancy joggers, a sports shirt, and a hoodie. I then walk out to the living room, where it’s surprisingly cold for a January morning in Melbourne. Nathan (my husband), is there doing his 45-minute strength routine.

He smiles at me. I smile back (feeling SO grateful that I get to live with this human). I definitely don’t feel like it, but I get started with my workout anyway. I open my rose gold MacBook, head over to YouTube, and type in “HasFit”. They have a bunch of strength-based trainings for free online and I find them motivating.

I hit play and just start doing what they say to do. Again, this is SO much easier than trying to motivate myself on my own to do a workout especially on days when the mental chatter is loud.

Everyone is different when it comes to workouts. Personally, I know I’ll work harder when it’s led by someone else. Plus I find it more fun and energising.

Before I know it, I’ve completed the workout and my arms feel like jello (it was an arm workout).

Whilst Nathan finishes his own workout, I stretch, and then we have breakfast together. Already, I feel better that I’ve worked out. I’ve won against the mental chatter! I’ve been able to overcome it by simply CHOOSING an action based on my goal of being fit and healthy.

Even though I can tell the fatigue is still kind of there, I feel more alert and energised as a result of sticking to my key habits.

Also, I notice the feeling of pride for doing something that felt hard and for not listening to my mind.

We shower, get dressed and head out the door for a 10 minute walk to get some sunshine before starting our business day. When we get home, we put a 10 minute guided meditation on. My mind is loud again saying not to do the meditation.

“It’ll be boring. It’ll be hard. It’ll be ugh.” That’s what my mind says. I notice the inner chatter, and press play on the guided meditation anyway. Again challenging myself to see how much I can NOT listen to my mind!

Once we’ve meditated and made coffees, I’m ready to journal and plan out my day in my planner and move on to my other business habits.

You won’t be surprised to hear this but my mind doesn’t feel like journaling. It says, “do it later.” 

Then, my mind continues by saying, “actually, just don’t do it all. You don’t feel like it.”

Despite how convincing it is to abide by it, I begrudgingly start journaling. It doesn’t take very long. Just 10 minutes or so.

What’s interesting is that as I continued taking these small steps, which included tracking my business numbers, editing some of my Facebook ads, sending an email to a client, updating my blog, writing some marketing material… I noticed that around 11.15am I started feeling more in flow.

Now, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes your whole day feels noisy with chatter. But today? I noticed the cloud lifted around 11am and suddenly, I felt myself really tap into a new motivated state.

I can guarantee you that it was because I was “in action”. I was building momentum. And I was getting into the present moment through action. 

Maybe you’ve found this to be true for you as well. Getting on with it and actually just starting can move you into a new state of mind and get you to feel very differently.

Not only that, you’ll have made so much progress in your business! 

Hopefully this example of my morning and how much mental chatter was going on will remind you that this shows up for absolutely every business owner. But that you don’t have to let it ruin your entire day.

 

When there’s a disempowering story looming like a grey cloud over your head, it’s so easy to let that dictate your choices.

 

But, what I’ve learned through mindset work, is that allowing the story to dictate your life and your actions limits you on so many levels.

It can stop you from doing most of your key daily habits. It can slow you down in business. It can prevent you from taking value-based actions that really matter to you that will make you more money in the long-run. 

Before you know it, you can spend a day feeling so grumpy and not having moved forward in your business at all! We’ve all been there.

That’s a shame because ultimately it’s just noise in your head. That mental chatter doesn’t HAVE to dictate your life.

You can choose to simply notice it and then disregard it and carry on with your business goals.

I’m not saying it’s easy – trust me. It’s not easy. It’s pushing against resistance.  And it definitely requires practice. But, the more you’re able to choose aligned actions rather than simply letting your disempowering story guide you, the easier it becomes to do.

You become better and better. And you learn to catch your mind’s little stories. You gain more awareness over time of what it sounds like and how it tries to trap you.

 

Something I like to ask myself on days like that is, “yes but how do I want to feel when my head hits the pillow tonight?”

Often, I remind myself that I want to feel like I moved the needle forward in my business by taking small steps and implementing the key actions that increase my results over time.

I want to feel proud at the end of the day that I didn’t let procrastination win. Also, I want to know that I was able to notice my mind’s chatter and act according to my values anyway.

The great thing with this is that over time you’ll have created so much momentum in your business. Instead of procrastinating due to the doubts and worries and inner chatter, you’ll be absolutely crushing your business objectives.

Not only that, you’ll feel more in charge of your life. And you’ll feel so good about yourself for taking back control of your day.

I’d love to know, what kind of negative mental chatter do you experience? What exactly does your mind tell you? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

Looking for more help? I’ve just made a free guide for you on how to overcome your self-doubt in business. In the guide, I provide 8 easy steps that you can work through to build your self-confidence and finally grow your business!

You can grab it here for free: 8 Easy Steps To Overcome Self-Doubt!

Enjoy !

 

Related Article: How Do I Get Rid Of Limiting Beliefs

Related Article: How To Get Out Of Your Head And Into Action