How would you rate your level of satisfaction with your life abroad?
Let’s say on a scale from 1 to 10.
you are in the best place to look at how things are going in your life and, depending on how satisfied you are, you can either celebrate your successes or define anew what you want in life and which actions you are going to take next..
 
Living abroad often means compare what you have here to what you had back home: mixed feelings are often what you experience in this comparison.
The hardship of living abroad is often related with the difference in  culture that manifests in many different planes: colleagues behave differently than us at work, at the supermarket we don’t find the food we are familiar with, everybody speak another language and so often what back home is considered normal here is not at all normal.
 
But my question for you is:

To answer this question you bring the focus inside yourself, you consider what you really want from life and become more aware of the reasons that brought you abroad: the pursue of your passion, dream or love.
 
If you want, it goes back to our deepest dreams and ambitions, maybe even childhood’s dreams.
How do you achieve your dream while also living the satisfying life that everybody deserve?
 
What I want to offer you here is a short activity. The objective is to get a picture of your current personal situation and of the situation you want to achieve in your life.
 
 
Look at the picture at the beginning of the post (if you like print it out) and fill in for each section a number that represent how satisfied you feel about that area of your life. You work on a scale from 1 (totally unsatisfied) tot 10 (completely satisfied)?
You are invited to be as creative as you possibly can in filling in your level of satisfaction.
 
After you have filled it all up you can work with these questions to reflect further:
 
If you look at the picture that emerges from this exercise, what do you think?
What surprises you the most?
What are you the most proud of?
What are you most concerned about?
 
I sincerely hope that you enjoyed this post and the activity with the wheel of life.
I wish you the best of success with your life abroad and I will be happy to hear from you if you feel that I can be of service to your process.

The objectieves of this short training are:

• Help you become more aware of the existance of your inner critic (lesson 1)
• Show you who the inner cirtic really is and whay it does what it does (lesson 2)
• Suggest ways you can improve your relationship with your inner critic (lesson 3)

​You can actually start a fruitful collaboration with your inner critic, use its natural skills and experience to your advantage. All you need to do is to change your perspective.
In the course of your life the inner critic has been growing with you, learning everything about your life and your environment.

Until now the relationship has been conflictual, but what if, the relationship would have to change. What if instead of you in a submissive, childlike position, in front of a inner critic that feels like a demanding parent, you would assume the position of an adult, strong in his/her shoes, relating to another adult, the inner critic.

The relationship and the interaction would then be more aimed at mediating, negotiating, exchanging information and consulting on all kinds of topic that concern your life.
You’ll be surprise of the stunning insights the inner critic will have for you and most important, you will be in a centered and adult place in yourself from where you can do a lot with that information to influence your life and achieve your goals.

How do you do that?

One simple way to start your new relationship with your inner critic is to imagine it in front of you. You can close your eyes and imagine your own inner critic in front of you, it's head until its shoulder is enough. As you do that it is important you stay in contact with yourself and your strenght: it is you that are imagining and it is you in control of the imagination. When you feel ready you can tell the inner critic what you want from the relationship with it.
Repeat this activity and notice how the relationship changes and how youe feel about it.

Let me know how it is going with your inner critic and if you need any help.

Do you want to read the previous blogpost about the inner critic?
INNER CRITIC short summer course: lesson 1/3
INNER CRITIC short summer course: lesson 2/3

The objectieves of this short training are:

• Help you become more aware of the existance of your inner critic (lesson 1)
• Show you who the inner cirtic really is and why it does what it does (lesson 2)
• Suggest ways you can improve your relationship with your inner critic (lesson 3)

​The criticism that we have heard growing up have created the necessity to protect your vulnerable core from hurt and pain. The inner critic has taken the job on itself to protect you, in a way. By criticising you and telling you the worst anyone else could ever tell you, the inner critic is trying to prepare you and to help you getting ahead of possible criticism from the outside world.
Does it work? Unfortunately not.
It’s hard to listen to so much criticism, about everything, all the time.
So very difficult, in fact, that when we can’t take it anymore we do as if we are not really listening to it, and as if we were actually ignoring what the critic says. This makes the critic believes that it is failing to protect you and urges it to get even more aggressive to get your attention.
This is in a nutshell the endless cicle of criticism that inevitably crashes your spirit and cripples your creative abilities.
You can probably already see how breaking the cicle starts with simply acknowledging the message of the inner critic. This alone can have a great calming power on its attacks.
What you also achieve, when you take a step back and acknowledge the message of your inner critic, is strenghtening you core self, your awareness and ability to influence your life.
From your strong core-self you can look at the inner critic for what it really is: the result of your history and something that is honestly trying to prevent you from experiencing pain.

I would love to hear if this blogpost is helpful for you and how you are dealing your inner critic.

You may also want to read the first blogpost about the inner critic:
INNER CRITIC short summer course: lesson 1/3

​

The objectieves of this short training are:

• Help you become more aware of the existance of your inner critic (lesson 1)
• Show you who the inner cirtic really is and why it does what it does (lesson 2)
• Suggest ways you can improve your relationship with your inner critic (lesson 3)

(Wikipedia) The inner critic or "critical inner voice" is a concept used in popular psychology and psychotherapy to refer to a subpersonality that judges and demeans a person. The inner critic is usually experienced as an inner voice attacking a person, saying that he or she is bad, wrong, inadequate, worthless guilty, and so on.

Do you recognize any of this? Do you know what your inner critic says to you?

Your inner critic is probably diminishing the value of what you do and expecting you to do more and more, better and better. It probably has strong opinion about your looks, your ability to function and to relate to others.
The critics you have received from influential people in your life growing up have helped the critic develop and now these people are not anymore in your life, the critic works on its own.

The first important lesson of this course is: learn to look at your inner critic from a little bit of a distance, learn to take a step back.

The inner critic is talking to you this way:
"...you are stupid! Dam it, you did it wrong again, there is no hope.

Would you even speak to another human being the way your inner critic speaks to you?

Probably not. Why accepting passively that kind of talk then?
You could instead talk from your strong adult self:
"...this was not the best choice, I see how I can do this differently next time."

In the video a nice example of how the critic works even in people that know to be great at what they do.