You’re ready to quiet that inner mean girl in your head.

You know you’re really hard on yourself – and try to stay positive. But you keep falling back into old habits of beating yourself up.

You wish you didn’t have to hustle so much to prove your worth to friends, family and other people.

Hi, I’m Andrea Hanson. I’m an author and master certified mindset coach. I help health and wellness solopreneuers get out of their own way so that they get seen and get paid.  

I teach them how to quiet the critical voice in their head and live life unapologetically.

My own inner mean girl ran my life for as long as I can remember. I didn’t even realize I had an issue with self worth – I just thought I had to work harder than most to prove myself to everyone else.

Being mean to myself was a direct reflection of my lack of self-worth.

My feelings of self doubt creeped into the corners of my life, affecting everything from my earn potential to how I acted around friends and family. I actually believed this harsh way I spoke to myself was “the hard truth” and motivated me to be better. 

When I really took a look, I realized this voice was holding me back in so many ways.

-My business was a rollercoaster of highs and lows because I would have big plans, and then pull back on them because I would doubt they would ever happen for me. Or something great would happen and I would tell myself that it wouldn’t happen again (so, of course, it wouldn’t).

-I lost out on opportunities and relationships because I was afraid to speak up. Leaving me feeling frustrated and even betrayed by myself. Conversations replayed in my head for days when I wished I said something but didn’t (of course in my head I was the badass hero saying everything I meant to say – but would never dare say it out loud). 

-I constantly deferred to “experts” to tell me what to do because I didn’t trust myself to make the right choice. I even paid tens of thousands of dollars to someone who I thought would help – but only led me to a detrimental business error that I’m still feeling today. Not trusting myself led to trusting the wrong people. 

-I believed things like having multiple sclerosis and not having children made me have to work much harder than most to prove my worth.

My insecurity and lack of resilience became too much. I saw how much I was censoring myself and holding myself back. I saw that I could be so much more if I stopped putting these limits on myself.

The funny thing is, people would be surprised to hear this about me.

I’m often described as a confident, strong woman – people had no idea about my struggle beneath the surface. But that’s one of the sneaky things about the inner mean girl – the struggle is silent so no one has to know if we don’t tell them. 

It’s easy to pretend that nothing is going on – until we realize just how hard we’re working to both mitigate the mean girl and pretend that we’re as confident as everyone thinks we are.

When my inner mean girl spoke up about my multiple sclerosis, I shut her down immediately.

I had much less tolerance when my inner mean girl spoke up about my chronic health condition. I had an answer, a work around, or quickly found the reason behind the meanness every time. I knew how toxic it was with my health and had a zero tolerance. But somehow that didn’t extend to the rest of my life. As if all my energy was spent on protecting my health and I didn’t have any to spare for other battles. 

My ultimate low point came when I stopped doing everything I loved because I was so tired of the hustle in my head.

I constantly tried to push myself , do more, prove myself because I thought my success was the only thing that proved my worth. And I would always beat myself up when it wasn’t perfect enough.

There came a point when I didn’t want to write, learn, coach, hike, even socialize. Anything I did would lead to self-criticism, or looping, fearful thoughts of what other people thought of me. Even if I was doing something relatively zen like hiking or meditation – my mind was busy, carefully planning out how to handle another situation perfectly. I’d try to calm my mind with a hike but would still whip up endless to-do lists in my head.

Being so critical of myself felt like walking on a tightrope – and one wrong move would totally take me out. So it became much easier to do nothing.

I felt constantly frustrated, resentful – and even disconnected from other people. 

It felt like I couldn’t do anything right and was doing everything wrong. Even saying the wrong thing would feel detrimental. I couldn’t move – I didn’t give myself any room to grow. And I became claustrophobic in my own skin.

I used to think the way out of feeling this way was to simply stay positive and be nicer to myself.

Stop being mean and turn my thoughts around, even telling myself that I am good enough. That worked for a hot second before my inner mean girl snuck back in. This cycle repeated itself too many times to count and made me doubt my ability to take control of my life.

The way out wasn’t beating back my mean girl – it was making peace with her. Self-doubt and how we treat ourselves is based on a relationship we have with ourselves. Healing that is the only way to stop the constant struggle with self-acceptance and live life unapologetically.

People often ask me how they can stop being so mean to themselves.

If there were a magic pill to quiet that inner critic I’d say, before looking at relationships, before Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplashworking on losing weight or changing your morning routines, look at how you’re talking to yourself. Change that and you’ll find your magic pill. 

After doing the work of healing their relationship with themselves I often hear people saying they didn’t know life could be like this, and they’ve changed in ways they didn’t know possible. 

That’s what I truly love about this work – not only did it heal me in ways I didn’t know possible but it can do the same for you, too. 

When I get on a video chat with my clients I can detect their inner mean girl instantly. And I totally understand the constant frustration and stress because I was there. 

Today, I recognize my inner mean girl when she comes out, and she doesn’t hold me back.

I can understand her and move past it. Gone is the frustration that everything I’m doing is wrong. Also gone is the worry that I will do something wrong- because mistakes are human and will happen. I trust myself to know what’s best for me. I consult experts for input, not to hand over control. And I no longer unfairly compare myself to others, telling myself they “get” something I just don’t.

And that’s what I will teach you, too. Trust and confidence in yourself – and quieting that mean girl in your head. 

Are you ready?

Check out how you can start to quiet your inner mean girl here. 

As seen in:

US News and World Report

Runner’s World

The Life Coach School Podcast

Building Ambition Podcast

Beyond the Basics Health Academy Podcast

The National MS Society: MS Connection Summer 2014 Issue