In this episode we think about our own inner dialogue. How do you speak to yourself? Are you critical? Quick to judgment? Pessimisitic? Put yourself under pressure? All of these things are so common in academia yet we never really get shown how to manage our minds. Instead we either indulge these thoughts (ie we believe them and look for evidence they're true) or we admonish ourselves for having them (ie we tell ourselves "we're our own worst enemy"). In this episode I'll give you a very practical (and slightly silly) technique to help you develop a more kind, compassionate, and firm inner voice. And it involves Winnie the Pooh...
Transcript
Hi everyone and welcome to episode 24 of the PhD Life Coach. Today we're going to think about how Winnie the Pooh can help you manage your mind. Now you might remember some of the inspiring quotes from Winnie the Pooh. Like:
“you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.”
That's lovely, you could put that on your wall. But that's actually not what I'm talking about today. What I want to think about is how we talk to our inner voice and how Winnie the Pooh can help with that.
Now, what do I mean by our inner voice. For most people, we talk to ourselves in some way. Some people actually hear those voices in their head. Other people, it's more of a kind of just thinking those thoughts towards yourself. And one of the things that I hear from my clients a lot, and I've experienced myself, is when this inner voice says things that don't necessarily help. When you are about to be brave and do something new and your inner voice is going, “ooh, be careful. Are you sure this is the right time? Maybe you're not quite ready for this.” So sort of saying cautious things to you.
Maybe they're saying a bit meaner things. Maybe sometimes your inner voice is saying to you, “you are not really good enough. You don't belong here.” That's something I hear a lot from PhD students. “You don't belong here. This isn't the place for someone like you. Everyone's cleverer than you.” So it's this sort of critical inner voice.
Sometimes it's an over-enthusiastic inner voice. This is one I get a lot. “Yeah, you can do. Yeah, that'd be brilliant. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do all the things. Why not? Let's go.”
So you have a whole variety of inner voices. Some people hear some of them more often, some of you'll hear others, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this. Most of us have it. There's no problem with this, except for when these voices aren't helping us live the life we want to live.
They're not helping us to feel the way we want to feel, do the things we want to do, and achieve the things that we want to achieve. Whether that's actual goals in terms of getting your PhD, getting a promotion, whatever it is, or whether it's goals of living a calm and satisfied life, or living a fun life or whatever.
There are various problems that come up with these inner voices telling us things that aren't necessarily helping. The first is that sometimes we believe them. Sometimes we hear these thoughts and go, “Oh, maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I don't belong here.” You know, we, we take them literally, we indulge them and then we start to make decisions from that place without really analysing the thought as to whether it's true or not. And if you've listened to my past podcasts, you'll have heard me go through those three questions that I want you all to keep in mind:
- is this thought true?
- what else is true?
- and what if it's true and that's okay.
And we can query these voices, but often when we hear these thoughts, we don't. We just accept them, start to believe them and indulge those thoughts and that's really starts to affect us.
Another thing I've seen people doing, particularly people who've done a little bit of coaching, is they then start to criticize themselves for having this thought. So quite a few of my clients will say to me, “I know I'm just beating myself up and I shouldn't do that, but I can't help it.” It almost becomes this additional stick to beat ourselves with. We've got a critical inner voice saying, “oh, maybe you're not good enough for this. Maybe you haven't made enough progress.” And then we're layering on top of that another critical voice going, “oh, by the way, you shouldn't be thinking that either. You should be able to be nice to yourself. If you paid more attention in coaching, you'd be able to be nice to yourself.”
We start to critique our inner voice, we start to be mean to it and some of this even gets perpetuated in self-help advice online. So one of the things you might have seen is “banish that high school bully in your head. Kick them out, tell them you won't stand for it anymore”, and a really adversarial fighty approach to this voice that's in our head.
Treating it as though it's our inner high school bully, or like this inner meanie that we've got in our heads and okay, may, maybe you can make it shut up. I've never seen that work for me or any of my clients, but voice is still part of your head. It's still part of your psyche. It's coming from somewhere. You're not beating yourself up on purpose.
By just telling it to shut up and go away, and I shouldn't be thinking this, stop it. It's just not a very compassionate or effective way of managing these sorts of thoughts that we experience all the time.
In this episode today, I want to introduce you to a much more compassionate approach that you can take where we hear these thoughts in our minds, and we have a strategy for not just believing them but not admonishing either.
Where we can take a compassionate and firm approach to managing these thoughts so that we can still do the things we want to do and feel the way we want to feel.
And we do this using Winnie the Pooh. I hope you're all familiar with Winnie the Pooh. If you haven't looked, seen them look it up. And I always have a caveat, you know, got to have an extra bit to the story. Some of you might have seen that in the Canadian Medical Association, I think it was about 10, 15 years ago, they did an article where they tried to say that each of the characters in Winnie the Pooh represents a different psychiatric condition.
So Tigger's, ADHD, and Eeyore’s depression, all of this. I just want to say, if you have seen it, I am not doing that. That is not what we're talking about today for several reasons. Firstly, I think whilst I think they were trying to be funny and interesting when they publish that, I think it's misguided to try and retrofit diagnoses on something that was written a really long time ago without that intention.
I also think it diminishes some of the real suffering and struggling of people who are experiencing these conditions. “Oh I'm just a bit Tigger.” No, you're not got a debilitating condition. So I am absolutely not suggesting that these characters represent different diagnoses.
However, I do think these characters can represent different tendencies of behavior and different types of thoughts, and by characterizing them in this way, we can look at them in a much more compassionate way.
So let's give an example. Sometimes when I get up in the morning and I've had a cup of tea, I've eaten my breakfast, maybe I've gone and sat on the sofa for a bit. I've been scrolling on my phone and everything just feels quite nice and warm and cozy. I hear my inner voice saying, “oh, we could just stay here for a bit longer. We don't need to work yet. You're probably a little bit tired. Let's just stay here and scroll for a bit longer”.
That voice is quite a kind voice, and on some occasions if I'm super tired or not feeling very well, then perhaps it's a voice I want to listen to, but I also know myself well enough to know that that's not always helpful. That usually I will feel better if I get up and get on with a task, that's that's how I am.
I like to characterize that voice as Winnie the Pooh. Now Winnie the Pooh likes honey. He likes sitting around with his friends. He likes a nice, cozy, easy life. And that doesn't mean we indulge Winnie the Pooh.
If Winnie the Pooh - you imagine him as a little separate dude next year. Here's Winnie the Pooh going “Should we just sit here, Vikki? Should we just sit here and eat honey and talk? It’s so nice.” We don't just indulge him and go “oh, okay, yeah, cool. We won't go and work. No, you're right Winnie. Let's sit here.”
But equally, we don't go “Shut up, Winnie your stupid lazy thing. If it was just up to you, I'd never anything, shut up.” Can't talk to Winnie the Pooh like that, poor little bear.
What we can do instead is respond with compassion and kindness. And I'm going to take you through a five step process. I love my step processes. I'm going to take you through a five step process of how we can talk to these characters.
And that's just one example. Maybe you experience really the Pooh talking to you too. Another one that I experience often is Tigger. And Tigger thinks we can do everything. Tigger thinks everything's exciting, we will be most happy if we do all the things. So Tigger talks like this. Tigger is like, “yeah, let's do that. Yeah, we can fit that in. Yeah, let's do that as well. Yeah. And if we do that, we can do it bigger. We can do it better and we can do it more for more people.”
And, and Tigger's utterly over excited and enthusiastic about everything. And again, imagine Tigger on the other side, boinging around and he's suggesting all these things. He's coming from a good place. He's just excited. He likes doing things. He's got lots of creativity and ideas. We don't want to indulge him. We just don't want to go. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Ok. Tigger. Yeah. Yeah, we can. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do everything.” because we know that's the route to overwhelm and eventually procrastination and potentially burnout and all of those things.
We know that's not helpful, but equally, you can't be mean to Tigger. Look at his little face. He's just so excited. So he can't be mean to him and go “oh, you always do this yourself, don't you? You always take on too much. You're so stupid. Why don't you just learn to say, no” We can't talk to Tigger like that. We can be compassionate, we can be firm. We can explain.
I want you to think about which characters you hear most. Do you hear Winnie? Do you hear Tigger? I've actually had a lovely morning working out what I think each of the different characters represent. For me, Eeyore is the voice in our head that goes, “oh, there's no point really. Pretty sure it's not going to work. Yeah. Yeah. I think it'll just be a bit rubbish.” That sort of just dejected, seeing the downside, seeing the things that go wrong. Poor old Eeyore, he's not trying to be grumpy. He's not trying to pee on your bonfire, but he just doesn't really see how things could work out, and he's worried you're going to get your hopes up.
Then we've got Piglet, cute little Piglet. Piglet knows he's little and he's very worried and he thinks everyone thinks he's a baby. And so he's the one that's a bit like, “but why would anybody listen to little me? I'm just Piglet. I'm only small. I don't know much what everyone's going to think I'm silly. Everyone's going to think I'm a baby. What am I doing in this place?” Maybe when you go into a networking event or you go to do a presentation, you get your Piglet going, “I'm only little, what am I doing?”
Then there's owl. Now owl's meant to be this like big wise fella… Actually fella? I dunno. Am I misgendering Owl? I don't recall. Let's call Owl “they” as I am not sure of their gender. Owl is the voice in your head that says, “you're probably not clever enough. You're not as clever as me. You're not as clever as those other people.” And again, not trying to be mean, just concerned that maybe you are actually just not clever enough to do this and feeling the need to remind you. So if you hear a voice saying, “you're probably not good enough at this”, you can think of that as Owl sat on their perch looking down at you.
Rabbit. Rabbit wants everything to be just so. Rabbit is the voice in your head going, “oh yeah, but it's, it's not quite perfect yet. Probably should be perfect. Should we try and make it perfect?” It's never quite good enough for Rabbit.
So do you hear that voice in your head? I sometimes hear that voice, but for me Rabbit usually gets drowned out by Winnie the Pooh going “it’ll be fine, it's fine”. So for me, the balance of that actually sort of balances each other out to some extent.
Then we have Kanga. Kanga is the protective parental type. Kanga is the one that says, “you're probably not ready yet. You probably need to learn some more. Maybe do another course, maybe do some more training, because I just don't think you're quite ready yet.” And that's Kanga for me.
And then little Ru. Little Ru has no sense of self-protection. Little Ru is the one going, “yeah, let's do this. Woo”. Without even thinking about it. Yeah. Tigger enthusiastically wants to do everything, but Ru's got an eye for danger. Ru's got no sense of self-preservation with no consideration for practicalities at all.
If the Winnie the Pooh characters don't resonate for you, pick other characters. Pick Marvel characters. I know nothing about Marvel. I got mocked recently because I had no idea there was a difference between Marvel and DC. Who knew?
But if that's your world, pick characters from that. Are there people there that you are like, “oh yeah, that's the voice in my head. They're just like them”. Or are there voices from other films that you've loved or books from your childhood? Try and characterize these voices
And the key is they have to be somewhat adorable. Okay. Please don't characterize voices in your head as the good voice and the bad voice where we have to banish the baddy. No, we are not doing that. They have to be somewhat adorable and that's what I love about Winnie the Pooh. That's why for me, this really, really works, is all of these characters are saying things to us that are not particularly helpful, but they're all really cute. There's none of them we dislike. Okay? They're all really cute. They all mean really well.
That's how I want us to think about our negative thoughts. They mean well, they're trying to help. There's nothing bad about them. There's nothing wrong. They're just not helping right now.
Like annoying toddlers, they don't mean to be annoying. They're cute. They just want to do the thing they want to do, but we still need to learn to manage them.
So what do we do? How do we manage? I said I'd give you a five step plan.
Here is your five step plan, and those steps are:
- Validate
- Check
- Reassure
- Act
- And remind.
- Ok. And again, I
So what do I mean by those? So you've got this cute character, you know, maybe it's Winnie the Pooh. Me this morning, I didn't really want to get going, and Winnie the Pooh was definitely talking to me on the sofa.
First thing, and this is true with anybody, if you actually have irritating little toddlers with you, works with them too. First step, validate, because everyone wants to feel listened to.
So first thing “I know, I know you don't want to get up right now. That's okay because we're super cozy on this sofa. Of course you don't want to get up right now. We've got a cup of tea and we're scrolling on a phone that's got endless entertainment. Of course you don't want to get up. That's okay. That's human. There's nothing wrong with you.”
We start by telling ourselves we're not stupid. There's nothing wrong with this thought we're having. There's nothing broken about us. Of course, it's nice to just sit still, so we validate.
The second thing, and this one people often overlook is we check in. Have they actually got a point? Sometimes if we just try and ignore the little nagging doubts in our heads, we miss where it's actually useful information.
So I will then check in and be like, “is Winnie actually genuinely right? Am I actually exhausted? Am I actually ill? Is it the time of the month where really actually being a bit more gentle with myself would be a good thing?”
And here you really have to go to your sort of sensible place and be like, if “I'm being really honest, no, there's no good reason around today”. Or I go, “you know what, actually Winnie, you got a point. Let's have 20 minutes extra and then we'll go. Because you are right. I haven't been feeling that good. Let's look after ourselves.”
So we always check in to see if there's any truth in what they're saying. So similarly, if Rabbit is saying “it's not quite perfect yet”, then you'll check in with yourself. “Okay. , is there any truth in this? It's never going to be perfect, but is it, does it meet the basic criteria? Actually, I don't think I've hit this criteria, so we're going to work on that bit. Okay, Robert, thank you for reminding me. Yeah, we will work on that bit, but the rest of it is good to go.” So we check in to see if there's any truth in what they're saying. You never want to be just dismissing these thoughts entirely.
And then comes the really compassionate bit. This is where we get to reassure ourselves. We get to say, “I know Winnie, I know you don't want to get up right now, but we decided that we wanted to record this podcast this morning and we wanted to get it done before we go for the dog walk. And you are going to have such a nice time at the dog walk. It's going to be lovely. So let's get this podcast going. You're going to enjoy it once we're on it.”
Notice how we don't say “pull your finger out. Stop being so lazy.” We're saying, I know you don't want to, but this is why we're going to, this is what we agreed. We're sort of reassuring. So we validate, we check, we reassure, and then we get on.
Don't spend too long in that reassurance phase. It's the same as with the toddler. Do not negotiate for too long. Explain why you're doing what you're doing, and then move. That might be moving to stop doing something, moving to start doing something. But whatever the action is that you need to do, then you move. Okay, so we act.
And then the final thing is remind. Our brains are persistent. This work that we are doing, this mind management is a skill. It's a skill that's developed over time and that means we're not going to be good at it at first. And to be honest, we've got human brains and we're never going to manage them perfectly forever.
So expect the voice to pop back up. Expect later on for Winnie the Pooh after you've actually got as far as having a shower to go “we could just sit on the bed and scroll for a while though, couldn't we?” I hear that voice often. I've got Winnie the Pooh up the sofa. We've made it upstairs. We've gone for a shower and there's, “oh, could just sit here in your towel for a little bit and scroll and scroll on my phone.”
So you expect them to pop back up and at that point we don't reassure. A lot of this is like parenting advice, isn't it? We don't reassure again. We're firm and we remind, “no, no, we decided. We decided we're moving now. Come on, let's go.” And that's all the justification you need at that moment. “No, we decided we're doing this. Let's go.”
Or if this is Tigger, you know, you've decided “I know you're excited about this thing and I can understand why, because it would be really, really cool, wouldn't it?” And I'm going to check in and go, “would it actually be a really good opportunity? Could it actually fit?”
And you're like, “Nope, nope. It's definitely over enthusiastic. I've definitely got enough on my plate already”. Then we reassure. “I know this is super exciting, Tigger, and I'm not saying no forever, but remember we are doing this, this, and this this month, and we haven't got time to take on another paper, another presentation. So I know it could be exciting, but we're going to let them know we can't help. And let's see if we have time next semester, for example.
So we sort of reassure ourselves, then we act. We let the person know that we're not going to do this thing or we get on with the other thing that we need to do. Tigger will probably put pop back up going, “yeah, yeah. But be really good on your promotion application, wouldn't it? That'd be really, really good.”
And that's the point where you remind, you remind Tigger “I know, but we decided we're not doing it. We decided we have enough on our plate.”
So validate, check, reassure, act, and remind.
With these characters, I really want you to think about what your most typical voices are, because we probably all hear the range of voices at some point, but we all have tendencies towards particular ones.
So I am a mix of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. So a kind of, “oh, lazy, cozy, wouldn't it just be nicer not to do it” thing and Tigger going, “we can do everything.” In many ways, that has actually been a protective thing for me that I am Super Overexcited Tigger, but I have enough of Winnie the Pooh in me that I rarely burn myself out by working too hard, because at some point Winnie the Pooh is like, “no, let's just sit down now.”
On the other hand, it can be a tricky combination because Tigger, if left unchecked, signs me up for loads of things, and then Winnie the Pooh doesn't necessarily want to do them all or put in the hours needed in order to make that happen.
Being aware that I have particular tendencies of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger to hang around me means that I'm so much more able to spot it when they appear. I noticed that it's Tigger and that this isn't my sensible brain suggesting that I should do this thing. This is Tigger telling me it'd be fun or I notice that actually when I stop and think about it, I'm not that tired. Winnie the Pooh just wants me to sit around and eat honey. By knowing that it's so much easier to spot it and go through that process much more quickly. I wonder what characters there are for you?.
Be aware of that. Know your Hundred Acre Wood. Know who's likely to come up to you most often and be ready to manage them. As I said, like parenting. This takes a lot of practice and sometimes you will return to indulging your little characters or admonishing them. That's okay. We're not going to do this perfectly.
Christopher Robin isn't perfect. We are not perfect. No one else is perfect. We can't always manage these. The best parents in the world sometimes indulge their children, sometimes they yell at their children more than they intend to. It happens.
All we can do in that situation is be compassionate, be kind to ourselves, remind ourselves why it works better when we manage it another way and get back on to trying to do that.
This sort of supportive self-talk is a skill that you can practice and that you will get better at over time. And as you get better at it, you'll notice that you are able to nurture and support and look after yourself into doing things that you never thought were possible.
So many of my clients believe that the way to get stuff done is to beat yourself into it. That if things are challenging, what we really need to do is develop discipline, have grit, have resilience, force ourselves to do it, when in reality, supportive, compassionate, but firm self-talk is how we get stuff done.
I have a course on this that I run at universities for PhD students. It's called How to Be Your Own Best Supervisor. And in that course we are really thinking about what are the best bosses you've ever had, the best supervisors you've ever had? And when you think about their characteristics, I bet they didn't just indulge you and go, “oh yeah, they, no, this is quite hard. Probably don't bother.” And I bet they didn't spend their time admonishing you and disciplining you and reminding you of all the times you were rubbish.
When I talk to my clients about this, talk to students about it, the most common things that come up as they were understanding, they were encouraging, they believed in me. They were firm. They supported me, they helped me problem solve, all these sorts of characteristics.
And what I'd encourage you to do is to learn to do that for yourself. Learn to nurture yourself, to encourage yourself, to be firm with yourself, and to believe in. yourself Characterizing your inner voices can be a really good first step to doing this.
So let me know how you get on with that. Let me know which of the Winnie the Pooh characters resonates most for you.
If you want further support and you think that your university should put on one of my workshops, tell your supervisors. If you're an academic listening to this get in touch. If you go to my website,www.thePhDlifecoach.com, you go to support for university's page. It gives you the information there. So get in touch. I would love to work with you all. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week.
The PhD Life Coach is part of Wembury Coaching Ltd.
Company number: 13866726
Copyright © All Rights Reserved.