The first coach sounds surprisingly like the Inner Critic. It’s as if they both went to the University of Mean. Yet we talk to ourselves this way all the time. Somehow we think harsh criticism will motivate us, convince us to change, or that it’s necessary to punish ourselves into some sort of submission. And while we instinctively know the coach insulting the kid is wrong, it’s not so easy to realize the Inner Critic is wrong, too. Not only wrong, but ineffective. Telling ourselves we can’t do it, that we don’t have it in us, that we shouldn’t bother trying only makes us want to hide. To
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