Brian Johnson says your internal critic isn't the enemy. When that voice shows up, use it as a signal to practice what you actually believe. He recommends meeting self-doubt with a deliberate affirmation like "I love pain, uncertainty, and hard work" to turn the critic into a tool for growth.
Chapters
So the chief turd of life is your voice in your head. But if you get it right, you realize that that's actually an opportunity to practice your philosophy. So when the voice arises, you can actually get excited, and you can say, oh, there he is. Cool. What am I going to do about it? Can I use this voice as an opportunity not to shame myself and to do vicious behavior, but to step back and then step up to being your best self? Then you say, I love pain. I love uncertainty. I love hard work. I love this voice, pain. Because this voice is a sign that I now have an opportunity to practice my philosophy at the next highest level. It's never going to go away. And then that voice that used to cripple you now becomes the signal to go. And so the abstraction that is I love pain, uncertainty, and hard work. I'm saying it, but I don't believe it. I want you to get to a point where you actually believe it, and you see that your infinite potential exists outside of your comfort zone. So then that voice becomes the cue, the trigger, the prompt for you to practice your philosophy and get a little bit better.
