Are You Feeding Your Inner Critic or Inner Coach?

Managing our personal well-being along with the health of our companies has been a difficult challenge for every small business owner during the pandemic. For me, this is complicated by the fact that there is a constant battle going on inside my head between the inner coach and the inner critic.

On The Small Business Radio Show this week, Naz Beheshti discusses the key to this problem in her book, “Pause. Breathe. Choose: Become the CEO of Your Well-Being. “ She is an executive wellness coach, speaker, Forbes contributor, and CEO and founder of Prananaz, a corporate wellness company improving leadership effectiveness, employee engagement, company culture, and business outcomes.

Interview with Naz Beheshti

Naz credits her first boss and mentor, Steve Jobs who inspired her to be the CEO of her “own well-being”. She believes that he prioritized “being well to do well”. She feels that people don’t take care of their own well-being because it’s not part of their value systems. But Naz says that you can make better decisions and achieve higher performance when you do.

Naz encourages all small business owners to “stop to play… we were all born to play. If am trying to solve a problem, I take a pause and remove myself and go play (whatever that means for you).” She suggests taking a break every 90 minutes to keep your productivity high. This could be a stretch, a drink of water, or go for a walk.

Naz agrees that everyone has an inner coach and inner critic inside of themselves. She adds “it’s like having a two dogs inside of you- a good dog (inner coach) and a bad dog (inner critic) and it depends on which dog you are feeding in terms of how we are giving them attention. We often listen to the bad dog and focus on the negativity and it impacts us by minimizing our confidence and clarity of thought. The dog you feed determines the life you will lead.”

She suggests a method called “Pause, Breathe, Choose…pause for a few seconds or minutes. It starts with being mindful and then taking a breathe that reengages you in the current moment and not in the past. You are no longer in a negative place and are in a better position to choose what’s next.”

Listen to the entire interview on The Small Business Radio Show.

Image: Naz Beheshti

This article, “Are You Feeding Your Inner Critic or Inner Coach?” was first published on Small Business Trends