Stop Listening To Your Inner Imp

Inside our heads there is a very negative figure, a critic who tells us what we should or should not do and how we have to behave. This inner devil crushes us, creates pressure, hits us on our self-esteem and although we find it very annoying and uncomfortable, in the end we succumb to his chatter and end up considering his messages.

The fact of paying attention to one or the other depends solely on which of them we choose to guide our day to day. The reality is that both the imp and Jiminy Cricket are products of our mind that we have created ourselves. Thus, as they are an exclusive product of our mind, we are the sole owners of both little voices; something that is something very positive because we have room to choose which one to pay attention to without anything or anyone being able to interfere.

We choose our thoughts regardless of the situation in which we find ourselves. We can take the path of negativity, catastrophism, or fear; or choose the path of joy, calm and positivity.

 The language of the imp

You will recognize the imp when, in a certain situation, he begins to whisper to you sentences in the form of questions that contain fear : “What if my wife is in a traffic accident because of me?” Exaggerated words and phrases such as “unbearable”, “terrible”, “I’m unlucky”, “I’m useless”, and so on.

His language is so negative that, if you believe what he says, you will start to feel sad, anxious, angry. .. Your emotions will stop being functional: they will not help you to solve the problem you have in front of you. However, they will help you sink further and make the imp gain momentum and continue speaking with more confidence.

But why is he so interested in teasing me? You’re wrong. The truth is that he doesn’t want to bother you. Deep down, this imp wants to protect you, but he gets confused in the forms, he does not choose the right moment, he is out of date. Their reactions are disproportionate and out of time.

This imp would have served you in many circumstances of your life. What would we have done without him when, in the time of the caves, the beast pursued us to kill us? At this time it was necessary for the imp to go off as an alarm, help us find that stress so necessary to stay alive.

The imp has also ended up adapting to what humans have invented that it “should be” and he repeats it to us every day. In this way, it generates a good dose of suffering: sadness, pressure, anger … emotions that should not be present with intensity in many moments.

Ignore the imp and feel free

To get to the point where we feel negative but healthy, tonic emotions that help us solve problems, we must begin to ignore that critical little voice.

• Observe without judging what the imp says. Even if you don’t like what he’s saying, don’t try to tell him to go away. Let it be and he alone, when he realizes that you are not taking it into account, will end up leaving.

• Laugh and joke with him. If you think about it, it is easy to end up making humor with it, since it is so exaggerated and unrealistic that we can even laugh at the atrocities that it ends up saying. and you will have given yourself a laughter therapy session.

• Have a goal and stick with it regardless of what he thinks. “You can’t”, “You are not good for that job”, “They will laugh at you”, “You will not find anyone like him”, “You are not attractive, no one will hire you” … and it goes on and on. These would be some of the pearls that the imp can drop you, causing you to abandon your purposes. Don’t let it.

• Question it. Since his words are not based on the truth, it is easy to dismantle everything he says. You just have to ask him questions aimed at finding the veracity of all his arguments and he will show you that his arguments are false; based on subjective beliefs but never, in the five senses, in the here and now, in reality.

Fortunately, just as we can make the imp’s strength grow, we can also educate him so that his messages have a depth that is in sync with the real demands of our environment. Achieving this means that if a beast actually comes it will give us a great deal of activation to ensure our survival, and that if it doesn’t actually come they will remain calm.