Hey, welcome back to Day Five of our seven day meditation challenge. Yesterday, you got to explore the negativity bias. This built in programming we have into our brain to focus more on what could go wrong rather than what can go right. This tendency also seems to show up in how we talk to ourselves, and many of us refer to this as our inner critic. Chances are, you're quite familiar with your inner critic.

It's the voice in your head that tends to tell you when you're not good enough, you can't do something, why something is going to go wrong or why you're going to mess it up. We all have different degrees of, of an inner critic and some of us have many different inner critics that arise in our mind. So I'm going to share a two part strategy that you can use to start to work with with this inner critic when it arises. The first is to give your inner critic a name. Give your inner critic a name.

So since I have a number of different inner critics, I have a lot of different names for my inner critics, but one of them is Cranky Cory. Cranky Cory tends to show up in the mornings when there's a lot of work to do and Cranky Cory's tired and he might say something like, "Ugh, dude, this is going to be such a long day. Just keep hitting the snooze button. You don't have enough energy to do this right now. It's not going to go well.

Just don't do what you're doing." Sometimes Cranky Cory has a point and we're not in a good position to be doing what we're doing and we actually need rest. But a lot of times, Cranky Cory is just being a little cranky and kind of lazy. And so when I hear Cranky Cory, if I don't bring him into awareness, if I don't, if I'm not present to him, then he sort of operates in the background and subconsciously controls me. But if I can hear a Cranky Cory and I could say," Oh, I see you Cranky Cory. I see you.

Good morning." Well, now it becomes a little bit more playful. And now Cranky Cory can't be pulling all these levers in the background of my mind, subconsciously informing me what to do. Instead I can hear the voice, maybe that voice saying like, "There's no way you're going to be able to do this well today or do whatever you're doing." And I could go, "Oh, hi Cranky, Cory. Good morning. Yeah, I know, I know.

This is, this is tough. This is going to be hard." I can, I can now have an interaction with Cranky Cory. And so by, by giving that voice in this case, Cranky Cory a name, it allows me to interact with it. And you can do this in your own particular context. Might not be in the morning or there might be one central voice that arises for you throughout the day.

Debbie downer pants, whatever it might be. And you get to be playful in giving it a name. Now the second part to this comes after we've given it a name and we've given it some sort of identity, and this is to collaborate with this part of you. And so when Cranky Cory arises and he goes, "Dude, just give up. Stop doing what you're doing.

You're not going to be good at it anyway." I can go, "Yeah, Cranky Cory. I know. This does seem tough. And I see that you have some strong thoughts about this, but this is important and you know, it is important. And you know that we have this vision for our life that we're trying to get to, trying to improve.

You know, if we were to think differently about this, if we were to feel a little bit more empowered, how might we think about it? What might we be saying to ourselves." And Cranky Cory might go, "Nothing. It's going to be awful. It's going to be terrible." And we go, "Yeah, I know Cranky Cory. But if we could think a little bit more positively or be a little bit more optimistic, how would that sound?" And eventually you could get Cranky Cory to come on board and start to shift to that narrative. So the first stage is just giving it an identity, giving it a name.

And then the second stage is starting to collaborate with it, meet it and ask it how it can help you in service of where you're trying to get. So have some fun trying this out. Thank you for your practice. And let's settle in for our meditation.