In my work with female business owners, executives and entrepreneurs, there's always one thing we have to tackle first and that is the persistence and pervasiveness of our inner critics. We all have them, those pesky inner voices, that tell us what we should do or have to or can't do. And the way our inner critics work is they take stories from belief systems or perceptions of past experiences and they leapfrog you over the present, where you're powerful, and they put you into a powerless, scary, unknown future. And they use the tools of expectation, assumption and projection to do so. Expectation is judgment. You should do this. You should know this. I should know it. You should know it. It's judgment. Assumption is when you have a gap in your knowledge and you fill it with a guess. And you pretend you know because you're assuming, you're guessing. It's just a guess. And projection is just that it's telling you the scariest thing you can imagine because scientifically your mind cannot distinguish between what's real and what's imagined. So, your brain believes it. And it floods your body with stress chemicals ... cortisol, adrenaline ... preparing you for fight, flight, freeze, which also shuts down your prefrontal cortex, which is where you access your decision-making. It's a gateway to memory, empathy, creativity. It's shut down because you're in a Fear-Stress Cycle. So, I want you to listen for your inner critics. They create reaction. If you listen to your inner wisdom, now, you have choice. And that is where you're powerful. Be powerful.
