Spring Clean- time for a freshen up! For your mind.

Hello Mr or Mrs Inner Critic. You’d better be scared. Spring is coming!

January is a hard month, Christmas is over, no more tinsel, glitter and excuses to eat copious amounts of chocolate. All that lies ahead is colder weather, gloomier days and February. So why do we think it’s a good time to make resolutions? To force change on ourselves when our resolve may be at its lowest.

Surely now, Spring, this is the time.

We have the hope of summer ahead of us (and there is always hope for the British summer) and the world is slowly blossoming and blooming around us. Full of new life, buds bursting open, lambs bleating and frolicking in fields. Could it be anymore Keats out there!

So how do we challenge that mean little voice, how do we bring about a different way of thinking in our minds? The answer is slowly, with compassion and with the understanding that everything is a choice, and that choice may have different outcomes depending on the day, the time, whether we’ve had lunch! So we need to cut ourselves some slack.

The first thing perhaps to do would be to identify a couple of those critical phrases. They’ll be ones that make regular appearances in your life, popping in at inopportune moments. Try to notice when they pop in your head. Try to notice what you are doing. Maybe write them down in a little notebook or journal over a couple of days.

Let’s not get obsessed by it, it’s about noticing which ones seem to be the main culprits, because there will be ones, ones that scratch at your head, ones that seem to feel comfortable, settled.

So when you’ve had a little time, have a look, what’s the pattern? What’s going on here?

Let’s have an example, I always find it best when there is, because let’s face it we could be on totally separate pages at this point.

You’re at home and you’re just about to prepare a new dish for the family, something a little bit different. You’re feeling quite excited about it. You chop, you hum, your favourite tunes playing in the background. When you realise you haven’t got quite a vital ingredient.

‘You idiot!’ that little, mean voice says, ‘You idiot, how did you get this far without realising you haven’t got any (insert ingredient here). Typical of you, always unprepared, always getting it wrong.’ And so on and so forth. That mean little voice will just keep going, chipping away at your joy. Pulling you down. Over reacting.

Now this is the time when you could challenge that narrative, put a little truth into the situation.

Because lets face it, it’s not the end of the world you haven’t got the (insert ingredient here). It’s not a catastrophe, in fact there are many options. You could quickly nip to the shops, you could use something different, you could pop it in the fridge to be finished tomorrow, or you could laugh, roll you eyes and grab a pizza out the freezer.

You see it’s not the end of the world, and you are not a useless person. Just a human who made a human mistake, like everyone else does. This moment doesn’t define you, it doesn’t make you a failure in your whole life. It doesn’t even make you a failure in this task! And if you were chatting to your friend you would be saying all of this to them, so why are you being so hard on yourself?

Challenge that voice, tell it to quieten down, replace the narrative going on in your head. Tell it to shut up!

It will take time and practice, it’s had free reign for a long time. Be kind to yourself, be compassionate, allow for days when the voice is too noisy. Allow for days when you feel disheartened, but every time you challenge it, every time you replace those words with kinder ones, it shrinks. Sometimes a tiny amount, sometimes a lot. Until it’s barely a whisper on some days, and perhaps blinks out of existence on others.

So spring clean your mind, throw out all the old fusty stuff, and start this spring with fresh wonder and awe of you!