Inner Critic: A time when the inner critic crept up on me, was when I was sitting on the top floor of the library studying. I started to zone out and listen to other people’s conversations around me. I began to notice that almost everyone was clicking (at least so it seemed) with whatever subject they were studying. I began to feel down on myself for not quickly grasping the material I was going over or for being as knowledgeable of it as the others around me. Telling myself that I was not as good at school as others, making it seem like I was never going to accomplish my goal. My inner self was telling me that I was not as good as others, and it began to affect the way I was working. After this thought process I began to become less focused and less motived towards doing my work. I started listening more to the people around me rather than focusing on my work. Which of course just made things worse and I eventually just gave up all together and left the library.

Revise: To change this to Inner Guide one must change the language that is being used. Instead of viewing your shortcomings compared to others as negatives use them as a learning process. Instead of “I am not as good at this as others” change it to “I just need to put a little extra work in than others.” Also change the viewpoint of, these people are getting it quicker than me, to maybe I haven’t put as much time in as them or it will just take me a little bit longer. When people are better at something than you don’t take it negatively, ask them what they are doing and compare it to yourself to see if they are doing things you aren’t or vice versa, and change things to try and better what you are doing.

Inner Defender: Inner defender recently came to surface as a result of my grade on my Packaging class exam. I did not do well and all the professor gave us to prepare for the exam is lecture notes. I told myself “If she would have given us more ways to prepare I would have done a lot better.” I told myself that only giving us notes was not enough for me to do well on the exam. She needed to give us more ways to prepare, like practice exams, or practice problems. In my mind the least she could have done was give us an idea of what to expect. Because of the lack of extra study tools was lacking I told myself that was the reason that I did not do well. It made me more upset at her teaching than at my own grade. I didn’t want to study for the next exam because I believed that since we were only going to get the same type of information again I was going to make a bad grade again.

Revise: Instead of placing the blame on other people one should use the incident to better themselves, to help move the voice of inner defender into inner guide. Learn lessons from the incident and change the way you go about things. Instead of myself saying “If she would have given us more ways to prepare I would have done a lot better,” say “what can I do differently since this is all she gave me to prepare.” That puts the blame in the middle instead of completely on the other person. With inner defender words like them or they should often be replaced with me or I, to better learn from the situation. For this since you know what you have been given to study for the exam, use what you have to make other ways of preparing. Say things to yourself like “I can make flashcards out of this,” or “Ill make my own practice exam.” This way steps are being taken to improve the situation that you’re in, instead of placing the blame completely on someone else.

Inner Guide: After the check in meeting in which I had not completely the most of the major assignments and therefore was rather behind in CU 1010 my inner guide took over. I had completed zero of the objects for my portfolio and I was on track to basically fail the course. The first thing I said to myself was “I need to change what I am doing.” Although I was in tight spot completely because of myself I didn’t experience any inner critic or inner defender thoughts. I told myself “even though you have dug yourself into a hole you can still get out” and it greatly affected my behavior and attitude. I began to plan out the coming days and weeks of the semester in order to catch up with the pace of the course. I started wanting to be successful, instead of just telling myself I needed to be. I had confidence in myself to succeed; I believed that the actions I was taking were really going to benefit my cause. Instead of telling myself that I couldn’t catch back up or that it was someone else fault, I told myself I could do it.

Reflection:I would say that my inner voice is a strong mixture of both inner defender and inner critic. They strongly influence my day-to-day life in many ways. For me daily it is more a constant battle between the two than one out doing the other, when something goes wrong the two argue against each other. I normally immediately go into inner defender mode then afterwards inner critic comes out and starts to question my own actions. I think that they both come out for specific reasons mainly related to my own self-confidence, inner defender will voice its thoughts as to not let the blame fall on me, taking the pressure off my confidence. Then as more thought goes into it inner critic puts my self-confidence to the test, questioning my ability to succeed in things. I have witnessed these traits more than ever this year at Clemson. After going on academic probation I was quick to put the blame onto other things but after more though was put into I realized that I was also at fault for my poor performance. Although I eventually put too much thought into it and thought everything I did last semester was wrong and I wouldn’t be able to succeed in college. I would really like to change the way my inner voice works, most by moving it more toward inner guide than anything else. The main way I think that this can be done is by raising my self-confidence to a level where I have complete faith in myself. Too put this into practice I need to take every situation, no matter the outcome, as is. By doing this I can just say this is the situation I am in and these are the results. If I have raised my self-confidence it will help steer my inner voice toward inner guide. With more self-confidence in situation where I did not do well on something I will know what my ability was in the situation and make the changes that need to be made to succeed later. More self-confidence also means that I can also realize that for certain situations it really wasn’t my fault for doing poorly on something. This, also means I have enough self-confidence to not just put the blames on others for things going bad, and take the blame when needed. This change in self-confidence and switch to inner-guide will have effects in every aspect of my life, most importantly to me school, and allow me to become much more successful in what I do.