Angry or critical self-talk. By this I mean the internal voices that say, Why don’t you just give up? You’re never going to be smarter or richer or thinner, as discussed in the chapter “Ask Small Questions.” It’s a myth that this kind of harsh self-treatment will goad us into better performance. In reality, it stimulates the fight-or-flight response (discussed at the beginning of this book) and stops progress in its tracks. You can quiet these voices by bringing your awareness to them—and by taking the small steps of kaizen, which are designed to calm the stress associated with change.
