I'm honored to host a guest blog this morning from two friends of mine whose book Reform Your Inner Mean Girl comes out today! Amy Ahlers and Christine Arylo, two powerhouses who are filled with love, have co-authored this interactive and transformational book.
And be sure to take the Quiz below to find out how your inner critic voice might need to be reformed! :)
Are You Bullying Yourself?
7 signs you are sabotaging your life, happiness and relationships
By Christine Arylo & Amy Ahlers
You hear about Mean Girls all the time. Mean Girls in the hallways of junior high. Mean Girls in the conference room or at the PTA meeting. People even make big bucks off of glamorizing and exploiting Mean Girl behavior. Think The Real Housewives of (insert your favorite city).
And while you may be able to turn off the tv or steer clear of not-so-nice women, there is one Mean Girl that no woman can escape.
Meet your INNER Mean Girl.
She’s the force that lives inside of you that fills your head with negative thoughts, bullies you into making self-sabotaging choices, and can make even the most successful woman feel like crap in two seconds flat. She bullies you into working more, doing more, and saying yes when you should say no. She’s a pro at making you feel inferior by comparing you to others, pointing out what you haven’t yet accomplished, and judging you by totally unrealistic standards.
She’s the one behind your obsessive thinking, worrying, and perfectionism, and the one who makes you eat/spend/drink too much and ask for too little when it comes to what you need and what you are worth.
She’s also the one that sabotages your relationships. She’ll make you over-stay in unhealthy relationships out of loyalty and fear. She’ll become an outer mean girl and point the finger at what your friends or mates are doing wrong, so that you don’t have to look at yourself or be vulnerable. She’ll even make you feel like you don’t belong, don’t enough friends, and are doomed to be alone.
At the deepest level your Inner Mean Girl is a reflection of the things within yourself that you can’t be with – fear, shame, anger, disappointment, sadness, rejection, not feeling loved – that subconsciously you are trying to avoid feeling, but are in fact are running you and ultimately sabotaging the happiness and success you work so hard for.
The person we women bully the most is ourselves. Our girls are doing it too, starting at the age of 6! We are in the midst of a self-bullying epidemic. And the culprit behind it is your Inner Mean Girl.
The good news is there is a cure. Much like outer mean girls, Inner Mean Girls can be reformed.
Step number one is to get to know your particular type of Inner Mean Girl and how she bullies you. Over the past 5 years, we’ve worked with over 30,000 women and girls around the world, and are pretty sure that all of us have at least one Inner Mean Girl. But most of us are unaware that the self sabotaging actions we take, the negative thoughts we think and the pressure we feel is coming from ourselves.
Here are a few signs of self-bullying – see which ring true for you. Do you:
- Get down on yourself for not measuring up to the expectations you or others have for your body, career, children, finances or relationships?
- Feel like you are not accomplishing enough no matter how much you get done?
- Pressure yourself to say yes to others even when you don’t really have the energy or the time to give?
- Obsessively think about the future, about other people’s problems, or about what could possibly go wrong?
- Continually do things that sabotage you – like eating too much, dating the wrong people, spending money you don’t have, working yourself to exhaustion?
- Procrastinate? Avoid completing things? Play it safe and small?
- Do everything on your own and then feel stressed, resentful or like the world is on your shoulders?
These are all forms of self-bullying – and that is just the short list! If your friends could hear the hurtful thoughts inside your head or witness the judgments and pressure you put on yourself, they would call the authorities!
From our work, experience and research, we have found that one of the most prevalent reasons women are unhappy, unfulfilled, stressed out and not having the relationships or life they desire, is the mental and emotional abuse suffered at their own hands through their own self-destructive thoughts and self sabotaging choices.
So how do you stop the self-bullying?
Now that you have identified some of the ways in which your Inner Mean Girl bullies you, the next step is to find out what kind of Inner Mean Girl you have. We have discovered 13 distinct types of Inner Mean Girls that specifically torment and sabotage women. These include the Achievement Junkie, Good Girl, Worry Wart, Doing Addict, Perfectionist and more. Perhaps you can relate?
Once you identify your Inner Mean Girl Archetype, you can begin to make shifts in how you show up and think.
To determine your specific type of Inner Mean Girl, take a free (and fun!) quiz at www.InnerMeanGirlQuiz.com
Once you take the quiz, you’ll receive a report scoring and ranking all 13 types of Inner Mean Girls so you can see your highest scores and most active Inner Mean Girls. We’ll also give you with the report, specific Inner Mean Girl Deactivators, simple techniques that give you the super power to disarm her and in the process stop the negative chatter or stop yourself from the self sabotaging, self-bullying actions.
Here’s to you regaining control of your mind, your body and most of all, the relationship and friendship you have with yourself.
Amy & Christine's book is available for purchase on Amazon. Order it here.